High Battery Drain

[Dserban]

I had this for the second time yesterday. I have noticed that it happened after my wife used her key to unlock the car and the battery is not actually drained.
Someone posted a bulletin number and I will take it to the dealer to check this.
I do not believe that changing the battery is solving the issue.

[deutsch100]

Originally Posted by ~KaiFy GaiwanY~

just a Q .. how do u activate or deactivate this feature ? everytime i switch on the engine , i see the AC starting up and its getting a pain in the a$$ , how do i stop this ? i need to warm up the engine without the AC running ..

thanks in advance

This is a VERY good question. We've had 8+ BMWS, and only our 4 X5s did this. If you turn the A/C/Climate control off before turning the car off, when you restart it later, the climate control comes on at about speed 1-2 (fan speed).

NO other BMW does this in their entire line up (since 2004-2008), only the X5. I've asked our dealer several times, and even called BMWNA, and they said it's for fresh air when you start the car. What a crock! If I turn my climate control off, I want it to stay off when I start the car. Not even the owner's manual for X5s (2004-2008, E53 & E70) talk about this "fresh air" feature. Odd, very odd!!

I've given up, and just never take it of "Auto" for the climate.

[Hans_ACS]

Originally Posted by Dserban

I had this for the second time yesterday. I have noticed that it happened after my wife used her key to unlock the car and the battery is not actually drained.
Someone posted a bulletin number and I will take it to the dealer to check this.
I do not believe that changing the battery is solving the issue.

It IS actually drained. My car does not light up the welcome lights when I open the car in a 'battery-drained-situation'. Changing the battery solves the issue for a few weeks, until the car drained the new one also.

Root cause : power extraction by one of the electrical components after the car is closed.

My car is already 4 days at the dealer now, still no solution...

[Tominizer]

WE were just woken up this morning at 5 am with X5 alarm blaring.......... remote doesn't work............ car doesn't start. I threw on the battery charger and everything back to normal. So I seem to now have this issue as well. *crap*

Question, if any of you have a chance when you lock the X5 at night, look in and see if the little light on the shifter showing that it's in park is on. Ours is. I'm not sure if this stays on all night or not as I keep forgettting to check it in the morning.

I know this is the E70 forum, but thought I'd add our experience. We have a 2002 and the battery has never been change.


*update*

Big thing with the E53's is the final stage resistors for the heater and I know ours is pouched due to the huffing sound it's doing sometimes. THe other thing was a recall on the radio unit that apparently comes on in the very cold temps. Anyways, continuing to look into this.

[Hans_ACS]

The light on the shifter stays on forever (both E53 and E70). However, this cannot be the cause of the battery drain, especially when you drive the car every single day (like myself).

[Tominizer]

My battery has been on a charger all morning. It was tested earlier today and they said it's fine. Just needs to be charged.

Picked up a new Final Stage (heater) resistor this morning at the Stealership ($100 CAN plus taxes) and installed it. It's not too hard to do actually.

So hopefully the X5 will be back on the road this afternoon and we'll monitor it for the next while and see what happens.

[burnin m]

I've had my E70 X5 for over a year now, and the simple answer is there are some sort of electrical devices that are creating a constant drain on the battery.

Had the dealer install the iPod kit, which required them to upgrade all the software. Couple of cool benefits - new colors on iDrive/NAV screen. Vehicle accelerates alot more aggresively, i.e., you barely give it half throttle, and the beast is just taking off.

However, now everytime I put it in Drive, it says "shifter malfunction" for like 2 seconds. Bottom line - X5 is a great vehicle, but there are some electrical screwy things with it. I've simply learned to deal with them. Otherwise, like the previous poster, you have your car in the shop for 4 days

[HansV]

I have a 2008 X5 3.0D and it would seem that the s/ware on this vehicle is a little flakey to say the least.
I got the Battery Discharge message this morning for the 1st time..... so lets wait and see ..
Initially I had the issue where the trip meter (not the odometer) would sporadically reset or increase more than the odometer. it took BMW 7 months and 3 re-programming sessions later before they admitted that it was a "known " issue and it was fixed in the Sept 08 release of their software. So it would not surprise me that the Battery issue is also a software "un-documented feature"
Please let me know if you've experienced similar issues.
Hans (otherwisehappyBMW owner)

[LVR]

Hi all

Had a similar problem with my 540 recently. Kept having to reset the clock, courtesy lights not working etc etc...

Took it to my dealer who found the cause after several days of testing. Apparently there was a fault in the display unit for the Idrive, which kept on 'waking the car up' every half hour or so, and as I don't drive long distances anymore, the battery was not being recharged.

The electronics are designed to shut down non essential functions so the car can still be started. As the charge gets lower, the list of functions deactivated increases.

Haven't had a problem since.....

Cheers


John

[whoopy-do]

Ive had all the problems mentioned here over the last 3 months heres what happened….

The high rate of battery discharge warning will also bring up other faults within idrive I had all the symptoms mentioned here and also *4x4 system unstable* etc..before finding out the software in my tracker system was not shutting the module down before the idrive did, the tracker company downloaded new software to the system and all was well after that.

Things that were checked before this was found was, the connection points of the tracking system to the power source, apparently there’s only 2 terminals that it should be connected to. Also the module type fitted; when the tracker is installed it should be made apparent to the tracking company the type of car the tracker is being fitted to, so the correct shut down procedure is set up in the tracking device. I believe it has to be shut down within 40mins of the engine being switched off.

I was told that if you’re tracking system or any other system fitter afterwards pulls more than 80mA when on standby that the car will detect this as a high rate of battery discharge.

I hope this helps

Btw im using a RAC Trackstar Plus with GPS