How to disable the orange side markers from the US spec cars?

[vinc]

Hello!

As I am looking into shipping my i3 to Europe (about $7K cheaper than buying the same car there), it seems that the main hurdle is the front LED side markers. For some reason, Spain is obsessed with lights, and in order to register the car there, those markers would have to either be white, or be off.

I have seen many people coding other BMWs to turn them off, but nothing for the i3.

Is there a way to do it, even if it is through one of those remote coding services? I assume there is no easy hardware way to do it, or if there is, the car would throw all sorts of errors.

The option is, of course, to replace the entire headlight units, which would be prohibitively expensive.

I am attaching a picture of the sidemarkers I am talking about, for full clarification.

Thank you!

 

[mojo]

I would try disconnecting them and see whether you get any fault lights up. On other cars I've noticed that they don't include monitoring of side marker lights - they are not consider safety-critical enough to be worth the expense of another current monitoring channel.

If they do bring up a warning on the dash, it should be pretty simple to add a resistor across the terminals where the LED was to fool it into thinking an LED is there - it may need a bit of trial and error, but it should not be difficult to find a suitable value.

 

[vinc]

I would try disconnecting them and see whether you get any fault lights up. On other cars I've noticed that they don't include monitoring of side marker lights - they are not consider safety-critical enough to be worth the expense of another current monitoring channel.

If they do bring up a warning on the dash, it should be pretty simple to add a resistor across the terminals where the LED was to fool it into thinking an LED is there - it may need a bit of trial and error, but it should not be difficult to find a suitable value.

Excellent advice! Thank you!