Can't get 2014 I3 Rex into Drive

[jashines]

I have replaced and registered the battery, but I cannot get the car out of park. Even if I could get it into neutral so I could push it to a place where a tow truck could get to it!

 

[Anonymous]

According to the break-down guide for the i3:
• To bring the vehicle out of a danger zone, you may pull it extremely slowly over a short distance
of no more than 500 m. If possible, make it rollable first by switching the selector lever to N.

You may need to find a towing company that has wheel dollies. They are used to roll cars out of tight parking spaces and parking garages that tow trucks can't easily get into.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaMJB88XWnI

Have you let it sit overnight plugged in to charge? The car's computers sometimes needs time to reset after a battery swap. On a lot of the tools used for battery registration you can look for error notices, and reset them, which can help 'wake up' the car as well.

 

[jashines]

Bought the Vgate Icar OBD II dongle and when I cleared the charging related errors everything resolved itself.

 

[BL5]

Glad to hear you got batter replacement resolved. BMW i3 is very picky when it comes to low voltage on the 12V battery. I went through a 36 hour process to get mine out of park too!

My suggestion to anyone with a 2014-2015 i3, replace your 12V now. Don't wait until you have symptoms, as it can take time to make sure the replacement 12V is fully charged and clearing out codes.

 

[jadnashuanh]

It's not a bad idea on any battery replacement to charge it up prior to installation. While they might have a nearly full charge coming out of the factory, and an AGM battery is pretty good about self-discharge, it never hurts to charge it up first and might solve some problems getting going again.