MrMagicPotato
New member
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
- Messages
- 4
My 2014 i3 REX died in my garage 2 weeks ago, the 12V battery failed (I bought the i3 used in 2018, and the battery in it was still the original one, so it "survived" for almost 8 years).
I ordered a BMW one directly from Europe as it would have taken too much for the US shipping and no Remy batteries were available here in the EU. It came with a good charge in it so even if it was built in 2015, I guess it didn't sit discharged for all those years.
I swapped in the new one after having fully charged it.
The car then slowly "booted up" after the long pause, but it was full of errors and faults after (I've read that it's common for the computer to go "nuts" after long periods without the 12V).
Now here comes the problem: among the faults it gave out a "battery unable to be charged" error with the 12V battery logo showing.
I then charged the main battery, and tried again to turn it on, and it still showed the 12v battery charging unavailability. I even tried to drive it around the parking lot and nothing, basically it was letting itself discharge without even trying to charge it. Then 4 days later the battery died.
This morning I finally tried to erase the errors and register the new battery with bimmerlink, but unfortunately, the problem was bigger than the dead battery itself. After starting the car the "cannot charge 12V" persisted, so I checked the errors back with bimmerlink. And found these 2 errors out.
The first error is the culprit, guess component protection means a blown fuse in the DCDC 12V charger.
Guess it was caused by the old dead battery, the car tried to forcefully charge it at all times, trying to keep it alive, but at some point the fuse must have blown.
I looked the error 222240 up on BMW fault codes https://bmwfault.codes/XMLDiagView?doc=MgAwADAAMAAwADEANwA3ADkAMwA4ADkAMQA3ADAANAA=
That's extremely bad news because it's a component inside the EME, and from what I can understand the only thing that they can do is to directly replace the EME, which costs a fortune.
If it's just a fuse wouldn't it be wiser to just try to open the EME and replace it. Or at least try to get a third party technician to see if he can do anything with it. In the worst case scenario, if I opened the EME and didn't manage to repair anything, would BMW still try to repair it, or would they deny the repair since they'd see the EME was tampered with? In that case my i3 would become an extremely heavy paper weight.
Could it be possible that the new battery is somehow faulty and the DCDC charger still can't charge it and gives out that fault even if the EME isn't actually broken?
Got any suggestions? I'm quite desperate cause that EME replacement by bmw is scary expensive.
I ordered a BMW one directly from Europe as it would have taken too much for the US shipping and no Remy batteries were available here in the EU. It came with a good charge in it so even if it was built in 2015, I guess it didn't sit discharged for all those years.
I swapped in the new one after having fully charged it.
The car then slowly "booted up" after the long pause, but it was full of errors and faults after (I've read that it's common for the computer to go "nuts" after long periods without the 12V).
Now here comes the problem: among the faults it gave out a "battery unable to be charged" error with the 12V battery logo showing.
I then charged the main battery, and tried again to turn it on, and it still showed the 12v battery charging unavailability. I even tried to drive it around the parking lot and nothing, basically it was letting itself discharge without even trying to charge it. Then 4 days later the battery died.
This morning I finally tried to erase the errors and register the new battery with bimmerlink, but unfortunately, the problem was bigger than the dead battery itself. After starting the car the "cannot charge 12V" persisted, so I checked the errors back with bimmerlink. And found these 2 errors out.
![PXL-20220806-070501976.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/ba6/ba64d2d48a88f915b76fdb38a58dde76.jpg)
The first error is the culprit, guess component protection means a blown fuse in the DCDC 12V charger.
Guess it was caused by the old dead battery, the car tried to forcefully charge it at all times, trying to keep it alive, but at some point the fuse must have blown.
I looked the error 222240 up on BMW fault codes https://bmwfault.codes/XMLDiagView?doc=MgAwADAAMAAwADEANwA3ADkAMwA4ADkAMQA3ADAANAA=
That's extremely bad news because it's a component inside the EME, and from what I can understand the only thing that they can do is to directly replace the EME, which costs a fortune.
If it's just a fuse wouldn't it be wiser to just try to open the EME and replace it. Or at least try to get a third party technician to see if he can do anything with it. In the worst case scenario, if I opened the EME and didn't manage to repair anything, would BMW still try to repair it, or would they deny the repair since they'd see the EME was tampered with? In that case my i3 would become an extremely heavy paper weight.
Could it be possible that the new battery is somehow faulty and the DCDC charger still can't charge it and gives out that fault even if the EME isn't actually broken?
Got any suggestions? I'm quite desperate cause that EME replacement by bmw is scary expensive.