I think it would be worth setting the park brake as a test, and then using the special tool under the rear floor to release it, solely as practice and for familiarization in case it ever happens to fail. BMW must have had a concern about the release actuator if they spent the money to provide a manual release tool.

Not to scare you, but I believe that next to the manual release tool for the parking brake is a manual crank to close the sunroof if it won't close due to an actuator failure. Might be worth checking how it works too.

When regular posters talk about their concerns over early production models and nuisance faults, this is the type of thing we think about.

Good luck.

But the thing is, after I manually disengage the parking brakes, I won't be able to engage it again until someone from the dealership sets it back. :(

That could very well be true, but it is not what I understood from the owner's manual. The caution in the manual is that releasing the park brake does not fix a fault, it just releases it. If the actuator had failed, it would take a trip to the dealer. If it was simply frozen, releasing it may solve the problem.

Based on the chance that it could require a trip to the dealer, I suggest that E70 owners familiarize themselves with the release mechanism, without activating it (unless you are at the dealer and get confirmation that it is safe to do so).

Thanks for the clarification.

"If the parking brake has been released manually in response to a malfunction, only technicians can return it to operation." - I got this from the manual.

This is quite misleading. I may have understood it wrongly. After seeing the word "malfunction" there, I think you may be right.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand this is if i manually release the parking brakes because of a malfunction, only technicians can return it to operation. Therefore, if I release it manually without a malfunction, technicians won't have to return it to operation.

Did that make sense?

That is how I read it, and how I would expect it to work, but then I don't have an E70 and can't test it in my driveway. If I did have one, I would test the emergency release in the drive-through service bay of my dealer, but that is just me :rofl:

I just would want to be prepared so that I wouldn't necessarily have to wait for a tow, if it did freeze up.

that's normal for most automatic transmissions.

I thought the E70 was simply powerful - "Perfect"
lol

it seems like a good idea when you are infornt of the service bay.
The thing is, you never know when your actuator will fail. This was my case.

I tried manually releasing it so many times but didnt work. The next day, the check engine light came on.

The replaced the actuator, reset codes and it was fine.

Well I got the parking brake mulfunction today too. I am a little over 7000 miles. I managed to manually disengage it but the next time I tried to drive off, I could only drive in reverse. When I switched to D to drive forward, the car would not move and the gear would switch to P by itself.

Anyway I had it towed and they are checking things now. While waiting I spoke to a tech and he confessed that it is a known software issue and that they are expecting a fix by May. What they will do is reset it for now.

Do you think they should recall these X5's with parking brake issues? The dealer I went to had replaced a part (actuator) and re-programmed the computer and they didn't know why it happened. The only thing they were sure, there are unusual number of cases.