Car locked for 5 days...dead battery. This is ridiculous BMW!

[snowsurfer]

Just as an update, got an AGM battery this week, and have been leaving the car locked at night. Haven't seen any issues with battery drain.

[ard]

Originally Posted by snowsurfer

Just as an update, got an AGM battery this week, and have been leaving the car locked at night. Haven't seen any issues with battery drain.

As I recall the 'failure mode' is that the new battery makes a valiant effort to deal with the spurious/parasitic drains, until finally it is depleted and shows errors.

Did you 'upsize' the battery at all? What kind of AGM?

[snowsurfer]

It's an 850A AGM, I assume that's larger than what was in there. They also cleaned the battery cables because they were corroded.

[smuggymba]

I was off of work these last 2 weeks and didn't drive the car at all for 9 days at a stretch and no battery issues at all.

[WWONG]

I haven't driven my x5 for 3 weeks and it started up fine yesterday (i usually haul around my daily beater). I don't think you're supposed to use battery chargers on it though, the electronics are hella sensitive on this car. The manual even says you really shouldn't jump it if it doesn't start unless you absolutely have to, and recommends you get it towed to the dealership.

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by WWONG

I don't think you're supposed to use battery chargers on it though, the electronics are hella sensitive on this car.

If that were true, it would be rather odd that BMW sells a battery charger for it with the BMW logo.

[southwold]

my dealer fixed mine current drain with a firmware upgrade

[Tymatk]

I'm an idiot,

I left the key in the ignition with the radio on (car has DSP), accidentally press lock while the door was open, then i without thinking shut the door ..... .
The missus has the spare and she won't be home in 4 hours, what's the chance for my battery to still be alive then ?

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by ard

I agree, it is ridiculous.

I'd press BMW to run the complete 'overnight' current monitoring plan... there is an SIB on this. BMW really has done a poor job understanding the interaction of modules they've hung on the various buses and I'd be concerned that you have spurious 'wake ups' that are triggering current draws that you don't know about. Get it on the record.

GL

A

The irritating thing is that BMW has a history, even with their motorcycles, of denying problems exist and/or blaming them on the owner/operator, rather than simply addressing the fault.

This seems to be ingrained into the BMW Corporate Culture, as they did the same thing in the early 1990's with their motorcycles. It was so bad with their motorcycles that for a couple of years they gave a "free" BMW battery charger with every motorcycle they sold. Then after 2-3 years of this problem it just magically disappeared and they stopped giving away the battery chargers. They never did admit they had a quality or design problem on their hands.

Customer satisfaction is best addressed by avoiding problems; however, a large part of it is how the problems are handled. Many years ago (early 1980's) I worked in the airline industry and everyone in the industry knew that Delta back then had the worst service and luggage handling of any of the major airlines. However, they always had good statistics with the government, as they handled the problems so well that most of their customers never bothered to file formal complaints with the government. They had bad service and lost a lot of luggage, but they also had more satisfied customers than the other major airlines because of the way they handled the complaints.

BMW could learn from that example.

[1024X5]

Just had my battery changed ...not under warranty because of unfavourable driving habits or something like that. Guess what ... the date reset and the oil change light reset again the same night! I think I may have left the light swith on though? Luckily I had the trickle on anyways and it was full this morning. Gotta keep my eye on it.