The Most Reliable Years For The Audi Q5, And Some To Avoid (According To Owners)

There are several car manufacturers out there that have earned a reputation over the years for producing very reliable vehicles. Typically, these companies are based in Asia, such as the Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda — or those from South Korea, like Kia and Hyundai. Once you get beyond these stalwarts of reliability, it can be a little tougher to discern which vehicles out there will be able to last you a good amount of time, particularly if you are purchasing them on the used car market. Take a company like Audi. This German brand may have a reputation for style and luxury, but how much do you really know about how its cars hold up?

Let's examine Audi's best-selling vehicle in the United States: The Q5. This compact crossover SUV first hit the market for the 2009 model year and has steadily increased its prominence among the company's lineup to be its flagship model, with 2023 being its best year in sales to date. However, just because a car becomes popular does not necessarily mean that it justifies your investment, and on the whole, SlashGear doesn't generally recommend the Audi Q5 on the used market. However, if this is the vehicle you want and you have considered everything you should know about the Q5, there are some decent model years. Here, we are going to look at six different Q5 models. Three of them have earned high marks from drivers for their reliability, and the other three are model years you should steer clear of at all costs.

[Featured image by Vauxford via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]

Unlike a good number of vehicles that hit the market, the reliability ratings started out decently strong in its first few years. However, there are not as many sources as one would like to take as a full consensus to recommend those vehicles. That is why the earliest model that will be on this list will be the 2013 Audi Q5. Up until this point, this is the highest-rated model for the SUV in terms of reliability, according to driver reports submitted to Consumer Reports. They have given it an overall average of 62 out of 100, which is the second highest for any Q5 model year. The drivers surveyed by J.D. Power are even higher in their praise, giving it an average quality and reliability score of 80 out of 100. For both publications, the Audi Q5 falls just behind the Mercedes-Benz GLK that year for the best vehicle of its class, and the difference between the two score-wise is minuscule for both publications.

The 2013 model year does have a somewhat higher number of issues submitted by drivers on CarComplaints, specifically due to some instances of excessive oil consumption. However, it is sandwiched directly between two truly awful model years — both of which will show up later on this list for negative reasons — and compared to those, this year is downright tiptop, which the reliability ratings elsewhere agree with. In a stretch where the Q5 could have completely fallen off the rails, the 2013 model stood as a pretty well-built SUV.

[Featured image by order_242 via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 2.0]

As previously mentioned, the 2013 model year had the second-best reliability ratings from Consumer Reports. For the Audi Q5 that was able to best that model, you need to go forward six years for the 2019 edition of the SUV, which marks the third year of the Q5's second generation. The difference between the two is rather small, but this one takes the cake with a reliability score of 65 out of 100 from Consumer Reports. However, the drivers over at J.D. Power are slightly less positive than they were about the 2013 model, giving this one a quality and reliability average of 76 out of 100. Three points higher one way and four points lower the other way, basically averaging out to the same overall score.

Where 2019 takes a major step up is in how many — or, more appropriately, how few — submitted problems there are with this model on CarComplaints. Amazingly, there are only two complaints from owners on the site: One for a steering issue and one for a sunroof leak. Any model year of any vehicle having only two complaints on CarComplaints is incredibly surprising. Even the number of complaints submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is low at just 30 overall. For comparison, a middle-of-the-road year like the 2016 model had 62.

[Featured image by Vauxford via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]

While there is not a model year after 2019 that reaches the reliable heights of that year, there is still one more model year that has done quite well for itself in its short time in use. That would be the 2023 Audi Q5. While this is still a relatively new vehicle, there is just enough evidence out there to show that this is definitely the best from the last few years. This is the final year of this generation of the SUV, and according to drivers surveyed by Consumer Reports, this is the only model year of this generation — outside of 2019 — that is able to clear the meager threshold of 40 out of 100 when it comes to reliability. Meanwhile, J.D. Power drivers have given it an overall average of 75 out of 100 for quality and reliability, a six-point increase from the previous year's model.

Beyond these ratings, the true test of the SUV's reliability is how few submitted complaints for the 2023 Q5 you are able to find. CarComplaints currently has zero complaints submitted from drivers on its website. Meanwhile, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has only fielded six complaints from drivers over the two years it has been on the streets. At that time, only one recall had been issued for the vehicle as well. The model from just one year earlier has a total of 25 complaints and four recalls. Even the newer 2024 model has accrued two recalls. In a fairly mediocre stretch for the Audi Q5, 2023 is quite the bright spot.

In that recommendation of the 2013 model year, it was mentioned that the years surrounding it were particularly problematic. Well, for the first model year that drivers have found many issues with, we will look at the 2012 Audi Q5. While the 44 out of 100 reliability rating from Consumer Reports is not near the worst score a Q5 model year has received, this is the very first year that the publication actually surveyed enough drivers to get a proper score, and therefore, it is a little difficult to know how much benefit of the doubt drivers were giving it. The reason for saying that is because the actual number of reported issues this model year has received is rather high.

Out of every single model year, the 2012 Q5 has had the second most problems on CarComplaints, and the engine is the biggest culprit of these complaints. There is a surprisingly high amount of drivers noting that the engine was consuming its oil at an incredibly fast rate, and the average cost to repair this was north of $900. Drivers have submitted over 150 individual complaints to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the model has been subject to six different recalls over the years. For those drivers, it was actually the airbags that made up over 50 percent of the problems, whether it be airbags not deploying in a crash or the sensor detecting a passenger not working. There are simply too many question marks regarding the 2012 Audi Q5.

[Featured image by Benespit via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]

After the improvement that was made with the 2013 model year, things went right back to bad with the 2014 model, one of the worst models ever made by Audi. Although the reliability rating from Consumer Reports went up a little to 46 out of 100, the owner satisfaction score on the 2014 Audi Q5 went down from a 3 to a 2 out of 5 score. The important number that went up, though, is the number of issues submitted by drivers on CarComplaints, as the 2014 Q5 has the highest number of complaints of any model year. Once again, the excessive oil consumption of the engine caused the biggest issues. Making matters even worse is the average estimated cost to repair this, skyrocketing up to over $3,200. That price tag alone could be anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of the actual cost of a used 2014 Q5. Naturally, CarComplaints rates this as the worst overall year for the SUV.

The number of complaints levied at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is down a bit, with 84 overall complaints. Instead of the airbags being the main issue, the engine takes up the highest percentage of complaints, including engine failure and the aforementioned oil consumption problems. On the whole, dive recalls have been issued for the vehicle, two of which have been because of a potentially faulty coolant pump. All in all, not a safe bet on the used market.

[Featured image by Vauxford via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]

Although CarComplaints rated the 2014 model year as the worst for the Audi Q5, a very strong case could be made that it is actually the 2018 year that is at the very bottom of the list when you look at the overall consensus for this model. The previous year was the last year of the SUV's first generation, and it was in a toss-up with the 2013 model, which would represent Audi's best years for this list. 

Transitioning to a new generation creates some bumps in the road, and even though SlashGear's first drive review was very positive, 2018 ended up showing a lot of bumps. The 2017 model only had 36 submitted complaints from drivers to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and with this new model, that number jumped all the way up to 150, nearly tripling the complaints. Over on CarComplaints, you can see a significant spike in the year-to-year comparisons as well.

The problems were largely based on the SUV's electrical systems, and the effects were as varied as turn signals being inoperable to random warning lights to the engine not being able to turn on. This model year has been subject to six different recalls, and if you were to investigate what these were on the NHTSA website, you would be met with a gigantic warning that reads, "URGENT: DO NOT DRIVE THIS VEHICLE." If enough problems have been found by drivers to warrant that kind of warning, then getting a 2018 Audi Q5 should be out of the question.

[Featured image by Vauxford via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]

In order to determine the reliability of the various model years of the Audi Q5, a number of different factors were taken into consideration. At the most basic level, there are the reliability ratings that publications like Consumer Reports and J.D. Power have given these model years based on the experiences of the drivers they have surveyed who actually own these SUVs and use them in their regular lives. 

While these are decent jumping-off points, the biggest contributing factor to making this list was based on the number of actual, registered problems that drivers have faced with their Q5s, as well as the severity of those problems. These were determined by drivers submitting their complaints to an organization like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and websites like CarComplaints. Once all of these data points were compiled, three recommendations for worthwhile vehicles and three recommendations for complete avoidance were selected.

[Featured image by Vauxford via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 4.0]