BMW and the Low Voltage Saga

I've probably bought more cars in my lifetime than most people. Not bragging by any means, just the truth. I love cars, and change vehicles pretty often. Couple that with driving new police vehicles all the time, company cars and having a pretty free say in what I want to drive as a personal vehicle (as long as the payments don't kill me) it's been a ride with way over half a hundred or so vehicles in the garage since age 17.

Some have been pretty hot cars, like the Dodge Challenger Hemi, the 1966 and 2005 GTO's, Mustang Mach 1 the 69 RoadRunner, 92 Corvette, and others I can't remember. Oh yeah, the 59 Studebaker with the supercharged engine from a 63 Avanti. Plus a host of others. The point being, I am a motor head and know a bit about cars, buying, repairing and selling. And racing too.

Today's vehicles are sophisticated and unlike the iron of old, more difficult to work on. No longer controlled by a coil and distributor or a magneto and distributor combo, the plethora of computer based modules makes your head spin. And let one go out of whack and you have a dead vehicle; one that many times begs only to be repaired by a high priced dealer mechanic with tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tools. Even that doesn't help when the dealers themselves only can tell you a tale of woe...

Two recent vehicle purchases were high line BMW's, 535imodels, one a 2011 535xiGT all wheel drive and the other a 2010 535iGT rear wheel drive. Each of them beautiful cars in their own right, but plagued with electrical gremlins that couldn't be solved by the dealers. The batteries drain faster than they can be recharged by the vehicles. If you don't drive enough daily, the batteries go dead. And before they do, the vehicles start reacting in all sorts of strange ways, such as the light control modules failing, meaning your directional signals (one or more) fail and your adaptive headlights fail along with their vertical aiming. You will be advised the vehicle will "not restart if stopped", that "the battery in your key fob is dead", "the key fob is not in the vehicle", that "the differential in your xDrive vehicle has failed and must be taken to the dealer immediately", and "the vehicle is overheating" on a cold day when it's been driven only a few miles and the engine temperature gauge says it's still cold. And that's only the beginning of the electronic repertoire the computer may have in store for you on some lonely road in the middle of nowhere..

BMW will take your car for three days and charge your battery for 8 hours numerous times but not replace the battery, since their service protocol is not to replace the battery unless it's truly dead. They will simply say it's "low voltage" and send you on your way, only to have the same problems shortly after. Then they take your car for three days again and do the same dance as their equipment finds nothing wrong but the same low voltage condition.

In exasperation, I sold my 2011 BMW simply because the dealers could not fix the problems permanently. Almost a $70,000 car that was so over-engineered that their solution is to plug in a battery charger at night to keep the battery charged.

On the 2010, I had to do my own diagnostics to find something was draining the battery faster than it could be charged while it was running. It was at the dealers for three days and after being given (finally after much discussion) a new battery, the vehicle malfunctioned 15 minutes away from the dealership en route home. We received a battery charger and I discovered it would not accept a full charge (new battery, remember?) it was not remaining charged and that when started, the vehicle was draining faster than charging. Upon returning to the dealer they kept it for two and a half days more to find the light control module had failed but had o order one in. Again, the advice: Use a battery charger when the vehicle is not in use. Search the Internet for hundreds f the same stories on the BMW forums and BMW won't fix the basic problem.

IF I WANTED A FREAKIN' ELECTRIC CAR WITH A CHARGING CORD

 I WOULD HAVE BOUGHT ONE!  

 

Two days after we got the BMW back, we turned it in on a Land Rover. Not that we don't expect to have some issues down the road with any car, but electrical issues is not one we've heard plaque the Land Rover. Actually, we bought two, so I'll write a blog entry on how they stack up against the BMW's. Hey, if you have to make payments, you ought to at least be able to drive the vehicle, right?