Audi Q4 e-tron charging timer not working as expected

The whole point of a charging timer is set-and-forget: plug in at night, wake up to a full battery, pay off-peak rates. So it is genuinely annoying when you return to the car and the schedule clearly fired at the wrong time, or did not fire at all, or stopped halfway. You think you have a full battery, and instead you are looking at 40% before a long drive.

This is a known pattern on the Q4 e-tron, and in most reports the cause is software (the car's scheduler or a connected app) rather than the charger or cable.

What usually goes wrong

• A My Audi app update resets or duplicates an existing schedule.
• A third-party app (such as Octopus Energy or another tariff provider) issues conflicting start/stop commands over OCPP, which the car treats as session interrupts.
• A location-based charging profile silently overrides the global timer when the car is parked at home.
• The car's clock drifts after losing 12V power or sitting in a basement with no GPS, so "start at 00:30" runs at a different real-world time.

How to bring it back under control

1. Stop layering schedules. Pick one source of truth. If you use the tariff provider's app to control charging, disable the in-car timer entirely. If you use the in-car timer, do not also enable smart-charging through the My Audi app.
2. Delete every existing profile. In the My Audi app, remove all saved charging schedules and location-based profiles. Then run one immediate, unscheduled charge to confirm the hardware still works normally.
3. Rebuild only what you need. Add one schedule, on one source, and test it for a full overnight cycle before adding anything else.
4. Update or reinstall the app. If the misbehaviour started after an app update, reinstalling the latest version fixes it in many reported cases.
5. Check the in-car time and timezone after any 12V disconnection or software update.

It is also worth confirming the cable is not adding noise. A clean handshake from a healthy portable cable such as a Voldt® Audi Q4 e-tron Type 2 charging cable means the car logs one session, not a chain of fragmented ones the scheduler can misinterpret.

A bit of technical context

The Q4 e-tron's timer behaviour lives mostly in the connectivity gateway and the My Audi backend. When third-party apps participate (often via OCPP or a smart-meter integration), they can suspend and resume charging in ways the car logs as separate sessions. That is part of why a timer can appear to "give up" partway through.

Bottom line

Pick one scheduler, delete everything else, and rebuild from a clean state. Most timer issues on the Q4 e-tron resolve once the layers of competing logic are removed.