Car shut down while I was doing 70 on the freeway.

[arlorose]

The latest issue with this car that I love and hate all at the same time.

We were driving at night, thankfully in light traffic on 101, and suddenly the interior lights came on, the car started bonging, and the drivetrain malfunction light came on. This is a BEV i3.

I though it went into a safety mode and was reducing my speed, but I realized after I'd made it to a dangerous blind curve of an offramp that it just had no power. I made it mostly on to the shoulder, turned the car off, back on... nothing, off, and back on... and it was back to normal.

So... first off. What the hell? How can a car just go into an error mode and shut down like that without some secondary system to insure safety?

Second, what cased that? Should I expect this to be a normal occurrence now?

Third, when I called roadside assistance to ask if I should drive it or get it towed from the safe spot I'd gotten to, he said he did know and the i-model assistance left at 8:00PM and wouldn't be back until the morning.

So our roadside assistance isn't even good for our cars after 8PM at night?

I'm so tempted to ditch this car at this point and get a Tesla, or even go back to driving an ICE again. I get being cutting edge, but come on, this car has been in the shop more than every car I've ever owned combined, has left me stranded, and has put me in extreme danger. That's not a car you ship to the public. That's a car that still needs a lot of R&D time.

 

[spinball]

That is really odd. Sorry to hear about these troubles. I'd be upset too! I just leased a REx yesterday so I hope I don't have these kind of problems.

 

[WoodlandHills]

Just wait until your dealer tells you that BMW knows your car has a problem, but that they have no idea what causes it or when they will be able to fix it. It's a great confidence builder in The Ultimate Driving Machine........

 

[spinball]

I went into my lease knowing the i-series is more likely to have problems than the other models that have been around for 6 or more generations of refinements. The car feels very much on the bleeding edge of what can be done with current tech.

That certainly doesn't excuse any problems (doubly so at the MSRP) but I do consider that to be the reality.

A malfunction like arlorose is describing is definitely not acceptable, bleeding edge or not!

 

[smyszko]

Sorry to hear about that scary situation arlorose. My car is 5 months old and has had it's fair share of problems, but fortunately nothing as dangerous as that yet. The i3 is my first BMW and is also going to be the last

Have you considered talking to BMW NA about a buyback? It sounds like you've had enough issues and shop time that they might agree. I've seen a few people on the facebook group get rid of their car that way without having to get lawyers involved. If they won't play ball maybe consult a lemon lawyer to see if your situation qualifies?

 

[i3atl]

I'm so tempted to ditch this car at this point and get a Tesla

Good idea, I mean no Tesla has ever had that [same] issue.

http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-test/2013-tesla-model-s-stuck-on-the-freeway.html
http://my.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/12v-battery-warning-and-sudden-shutdown-highway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prXhS5DdUyo


I'm glad no one was hurt, though - that's quite a scary scenario in any car. As is the case with some of the Tesla failures, it may be related to an issue with your 12V battery.

 

[jadnashuanh]

Just to clarify what I think is the 'normal' situation when your battery gets too low with a REx or BEV, the car does NOT stop...it just cannot continue to maintain the current rate of discharge (i.e., energy use). If you continue to ignore the warning on a BEV, it will eventually stop, but you'll have probably been able to drive a few more miles. The REx is not like an ICE where if you run out of fuel, it stops everything, including the vacuum assisted brakes, and power steering, and maybe other things as well. It is still drivable, and if you do have a REx, and slow down, it can recharge enough to then let you continue at a 'normal' speed as long as you have fuel. In this manner, it is far safer than any ICE out there. All those do is maybe light up a light that says your fuel is getting low, along with the fuel gauge, and just like in any EV, if you ignore the gauge and warnings, you can run into trouble. It is the driver that must keep track of the car's condition...it can only alert you, and if you ignore the gauges and messages, you get what you get.

 

[arlorose]

jadnashuanh, just to clarify, my SOC was around 72%.This was not driver's error.

 

[jadnashuanh]

jadnashuanh, just to clarify, my SOC was around 72%.This was not driver's error.

Something is amiss, then. It could be something simple like a door closed sensor - the car can do some things if it thinks the door is open. If it is slightly out of alignment and you went over a bump, it might only show up very intermittently. While you don't have to really slam the rear doors, you do need to close them with some authority. The same is true with the front ones.

 

[arlorose]

jadnashuanh, just to clarify, my SOC was around 72%.This was not driver's error.

Something is amiss, then. It could be something simple like a door closed sensor - the car can do some things if it thinks the door is open. If it is slightly out of alignment and you went over a bump, it might only show up very intermittently. While you don't have to really slam the rear doors, you do need to close them with some authority. The same is true with the front ones.

Yeah, I'm going to let a service tech help me with this. I was more curious if this was something other folks have experienced, not looking for off the cuff ideas. You can be sure I closed the doors firmly... and honestly, if this turns out to be a door sensor issue (which I very much doubt), bad on BMW for shutting down the car and signaling a drive-train error.

 

[Boatguy]

7,000 on my BEV and haven't that issue. I had the Pro-Nav reboot while driving down the freeway which was weird, but not the whole car like you experienced.

My speculation is that's it's software with a bad failure mode, aka "crash". You essentially rebooted the car and it was happy. Not unlike the old joke about if Microsoft made cars you'd have to get out and reboot the car every 30 miles!

The h/w engineers at BMW definitely have done a better job than the s/w engineers. The problem is compounded by the fact that BMW has no consistent or simple matter of updating the software so we're all driving around on different s/w revisions. They have "break/fix" mentality, the poorest of support options. When the car breaks, they bring it in, update the software and hope that fixes it. To test whether it's fixed or not, they send you home and let you drive it, assuming you'll come back if it's not fixed.

I had to do this when I'd had the car for just 3 days, they couldn't even be bothered to upgrade the s/w before delivery. Fortunately the problem was just a loss of air conditioning.

Tesla's over the air update approach is far superior. And overall I concur: when my lease is up, if Tesla is making a good small car (the Model S is too big for city driving) I'll switch in a heartbeat.