Connected Drive fail(s)

[XERT]

Hi, we just purchased (new to us) our first EV and we did alot of research and pulled the trigger on a 2014 i3 REX, had it for three days fully happy with it however... the connected app and remote preconditioning is very important to as here in Phoenix Arizona it's 110 degrees outside and we wanted to be able to precool our car while plugged in (garage) so we could save the battery for miles instead of cooling down a very hot car. Soo here is the problem. We have only had the car for 4 days - first day (in our garage) fire up the app, ask alexa to cool off the car the preconditioning works great! show it off to friends and family , next day I have the coneected drive apps added to the car (you know the apps like pandora paid $50) try to start preconditioning (it fails) try many times again all fail, try doors unlock/lock all fail. Call BMW they work me thru what seems hours of resetting the car, every result ends in connection fails from either the app or the desktop - will not communicate. Get BMW to remove the connected drive app, and set up an appointment for dealer service, Telemetrics? and today (just for fun) I try and lock/unlock doors while my wife is at work 30 miles away it WORKS perfectly! She gets home tonight, (car in garage) try to lock doors (fails) WTF? do I still bring it in for service? Or is my garage in a wierd dead zone? Why did it work so great the first day? Does anyone have any experiance with this? one of the reasons we bought this car was for the preconditioning.

 

[alohart]

Your garage could be in an AT&T mobile dead zone, or maybe a borderline signal strength zone such that communications with your i3 works occasionally but not reliably.

If you have AT&T mobile phone service, you could check the signal strength on your phone while in your garage. Or you might try parking in your driveway to see whether that works just to verify that your garage isn't ideal.

Also be aware that BMW's servers that participate in the communication between the BMW Connected app, the BMW Connected Website, and your i3 are not as reliable as many of the Web services that we are accustomed to. Temporary outages and failures are all too common.

 

[stumbledotcom]

I rarely have an issue getting the Connected Drive app to communicate with the server. When there's a problem, it's almost always because the server fails to get through to the car. Sometimes that's because the car is parked in a location with obviously iffy reception (my home parking space is three levels below ground in a reinforced concrete structure; attempts work less than 20 percent of the time and seem highly dependent on weather). Other times, the car has been parked on the street or in a lot with a clear view of the sky yet communications still fail. For what it's worth, I've noticed that attempting to climatize will sometimes show a failure on the app yet when I get to the car, the climate system is running. I'm guessing that's because the server's start signal gets through but the car's response gets lost due to bad reception or network congestion. Regardless, to me the fault seems to lie with the local carrier BMW is using in my region.

 

[XERT]

Took it to the dealer today, quickly a “genius “ came out only to re affirm my frustrations by agreeing with me and telling me that Bmw has had issues with the app for a while. And it’s embarrassing to them as well. Basically he said I am just going to have to deal with it. not happy

 

[jadnashuanh]

FWIW, over the 4-years I've had my i3, in the last few months, the response rate on the app when sending commands to the car are quicker and more reliable than they were since the beginning...but, it still fails periodically. I will say that I'm not in the greatest cellular signal area, so that's part of the issue. Near the beginning, it took as much as 20-30 second to even get their server to respond, let alone try to send something to the car afterwards or get a response.

 

[i3Houston]

The connected drive feels really outdated; dont think its issue with cellular coverage because AT&T shows LTE where I am but yet, sending signal takes a while but 9/10 times it never receives confirmation back from the car. Sometime it does but that take 1-5 minutes. But regardless I find the car cooling so it works all the time.

 

[Kristian]

I have a 94Ah 2016 i3BEV.
I recently went on holiday and left my cat not plugged into a charger as had 80% charge, but forgot to turn off the preconditioning.
I tried to turn it off at the airport via the Connected app and via the portal but no joy.
I could see my charge state drop every day, so it was not like the car was in a mobile dead zone.
When I got home I went to turn it off directly in the car and got a message to say that auxiliary heating/cooling deactivated as the car was never started several started.

is the BMW Connected app on a subscription as my car is just over 2 years old?
Any ideas why I can't talk to my car, but my car can talk to me?

Thanks

Kristian

 

[jadnashuanh]

It may depend on where you live...in the USA, that service continues after the warranty expires. I'm not positive that's also true for other markets. It helps to put a location in your profile so people can see, as the car does differ somewhat based on where it was sold. There are people from numerous countries that are on this board, so you can't assume a location.

 

[Kristian]

It may depend on where you live...in the USA, that service continues after the warranty expires. I'm not positive that's also true for other markets. It helps to put a location in your profile so people can see, as the car does differ somewhat based on where it was sold. There are people from numerous countries that are on this board, so you can't assume a location.

Location updated. I'll have to get BMW to check when it goes in for its 2 year check up.