Just joined to provide some technical advice

[AUTOMAN]

I have owned my i3 Rex for a number of years I bought it after considerable research,it was not 6. months old possibly a ex demo vehicle and had 6k on the clock. Fortunately I was able to obtain a considerable amount of technical information which is invaluable.
The mileage is 37 k at the moment and I have serviced the vehicle as required and have found it very economical and reliable.
I have suffered the problem with the heater which came on just as the cold weather arrived.
I had purchased a fault code reader which indicated the heater unit was at fault, rather than purchase a second hand unit which may last for a short time I decided to purchase the unit from BMW £700 ???.
The actual fitting took about 1.5 hours bearing in mind it was the first time. I took care to bleed the system and the job was done.
I decided to investigate the unit which contained a very sophisticated controller and three heater elements. The unit is not repairable but the 3 heater elements were working so i deduced the fault was in the control unit.There is a thermostat which is replaceable if you can obtain the correct one ,it could provide a quick fix if it was at fault.

 

[AUTOMAN]

Further to my original blog a couple of years ago I decided to up grade my sat nav ,I had noticed certain areas were devoid of new developments.I purchased the sat nav upgrade but was a bit disappointed.
I have contacted BMW and have been given a method to review the upgrade. Have any members experienced any similar problems.

 

[mojo]

Unfortunately it seems to be a "feature" of that type of satnav. The company nominally responsible for the product (in this case BMW) simply buys in the data from one of a number of mapping data suppliers, and lowest cost will almost always be the most important factor.

I don't use my i3's satnav in many areas that change quickly, but I've used Garmin products all over the country, and with those, the latest map data is usually years out of date at the time that you download it to your nav device - on several occasions I've been warned about speed limit data that was relevant for road works that were completed four or more years previously.

Anecdotally, Waze is likely to be more up-to-date than products based only on bought-in data, but I confess I have no personal knowledge of that - I've never used it!

 

[AUTOMAN]

Re the sat nav upgrade which never happened. BMW indicated on their App a sat nav upgrade carried out via the the internet direct to the vehicle. I paid for the upgrade but was not impressed with the upgrade infact it was never delivered.
It appears due to the size of the upgrade it was not possible to deliver it remotely.
But I was totally unaware of the situation. I contacted BMW who instructed me on how to see the information contained in the unit with regards to the upgrade ,there was only the original 2018 initial information.
It appears I will have to take the vehicle into a dealership to get the upgrade.They may not be to happy as their costs may be considerably more expensive .interesting

 

[mojo]

I think the way it works may depend on where in the world you are. In the UK, the later cars can acquire satnav updates "over the air" but it is incredibly slow (because the files are very large). I waited months for mine to update, and eventually noticed that it had taken so long that a new map update had superseded the one that was still being downloaded!

To fix that, I simply went online to my MyBMW account and dowloaded the map update there, and installed it using a USB pendrive. Much easier that way than having to take the car to the dealer (depending of course on where your nearest BMW dealer is!).

 

[AUTOMAN]

Being located in the UK the local Agent is close and it appears will do the upgrade by wire.
The cost being met by BMW I paid £79 but the agents cost is £179

 

[mojo]

I guess it's a solution to the problem, though it either means that you've got to keep taking it back to the Agent (I assume the Agent is a BMW dealership?) every time you want an update, whereas if you do it yourself with a pendrive, you can repeat that easily for subsequent updates without having to take it somewhere and wait while they do it? But I guess that comes down to what you personally find more convenient.

For me, the most irritating thing about it is that you need to use BMW's app to download the map update, and that is only available for Windows or IOS (I don't use either) - but I've given up the fight on that one many years ago!