Other electrical problem on the 2005 Audi A6
1 fire 1 of the 7 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
Only 6 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When other electrical problem gets reported
There are 7 reports of other electrical problem on the 2005 Audi A6, 6 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 85,000 miles. It is the 6th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 83,000 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 1 a fire is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $250–$2,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 15 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2019, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 2006 at 110,000 miles.
By volume the 2019 carries the most reports, with 40; the 2005 has 7. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
During a recent rain storm I went to start the car to discover 6 inches of water in the back seat. Rear airbag and some electrical system had been fried. When I contacted audi they said that it was not a warranty issue that it was my fault. That a line under the battery compartment had been clogged by pine needles causing the water to flow into the car through the airconditioning system. It seems to me that this is a design flaw and should be covered by audi. *tr
I purchased a 2005 audi a6 3.2 quattro in august of 2008 with 37,000 miles. In december 2008 I took the car to the audi dealer in pasadena because the left rear taillight, left rear reversing light, and left rear fog light were shorting out off and on. Sometimes they would work, sometimes they wouldn't. The dealer said the connectors to that left tail lamp assembly were melted and it was fixed under warranty. The following summer, 2009, I took the car back to the dealer this time in santa monica, ca for the same problem and an oil change where once again they said the connectors to the left rear tail lamp, reversing light, and fog light were melted. I refused to pay and took car to an independent shop for a diagnosis. They said the vehicle has an electrical short and couldn't fix it. A week or two later, the lights were working again. That was summer/fall 2009. By april 2010, the lights stopped working again. I took the car into another audi dealer this time in downtown, la. They diagnosed the problem saying the electrical system is sending too much electrical current to that side of the car and is causing the wiring to burn at…
My 2005 audi a6 has water damage. Some how over night heavy rain seepage left an inch of water behind driver seat. Car was parked in driveway at a slight incline. All windows and doors where closed. This has caused $2,700 electrical damage to modules located under front passenger seat. These modules alert me about esp/ABS and park brake as well as a module that powers the vehicles mmi/navigation and stereo system. None of these function anylonger. I don't know where the water entered my vehicle. Is audi responsible? This appears to be a design flaw. *tr
Also reported on the 2005 Audi A6
Airbag inflator rupture
Parking brake failure
Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure
Steering column or shaft failure
ABS module or sensor failure
Other visibility problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 7 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 7 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does other electrical problem happen on the 2005 Audi A6?
Across 6 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 85,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other electrical problem on the 2005 Audi A6?
7 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.4 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed