there is a setting in idrive to automatically lock the car if you forget to do it... i believe this turns on the alarm too.... i don't use this feature, but thinking about it...

Yeh, that feature is there but no acoustic chirp, you can buy a cheap alarm system and get chirp but you buy a $154,000 BMW in Australia and you don't get it, pretty poor.

mine chirps.

Huh. All of the BMWs I've had in the US have always had acoustic confirmation of the alarm. (and I've had quite a few together with my family)

I guess it's not an option for the Australian market.

I've now had cars from BMW, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and Audi in recent years - and have never heard of such a passive alarm system.

Do you mean that the alarm would arm itself when the car is unlocked after a set period of time? If so, what happens when the door opens for the driver/occupant to retrieve something or re-enters the vehicle? Will the alarm be triggered?

I must admit I am having some difficulty in seeing the logic for this passive arming feature...:confused:

I have to agree. It would only cause headaches down the road. Not worth the one or two times that you forget to lock the car. Imagine having to call for help after locking the keys in the car. I can see that happening to every owner once. Also, I'm not sure BMW assist could unlock it remotely like onstar.

I think the feature being described is he would like the vehicle to lock and arm itself if you left the car unlocked for a period of time. On my 07 Acura that I use to have, you could set a drivers preference which would lock the car following an unlock (for which you never entered the car) and then also arm the alarm. I think the logic for the X was that lets say you go to the store but forget to lock - will it autolock on its own and arm itself....otherwise your vulernable to theft!!

Well it doesn't have to lock, but at least arm. You accidentally leave your car unlocked/unarmed in the driveway overnight. If it did arm by itself after 30 sec, someone getting into your car will wake everyone up in the middle of the night... as opposed to just sleeping through it all cause he had all night to get it started with no alarm. Why doesn't this make sense?

Even cheapo cars have a passive alarm after about 20-30 seconds after the last door is closed. :confused: And I've had this on my other car for many years and it has never hindered anything. The only time I purposely turn it off is when it's in the shop and they need to get in and out as they work on it (even then the keys are usually in the ignition to prevent a passive alarm)... but just in case, I turn off the whole alarm system before I hand it over.

Anyway, they gave us the ability to choose between 23 and 24 seconds for pathway lighting but they didn't give us anything for the alarm... oversight or done on purpose is what I want to know.

I would guess that they did it on purpose. It's just too easy to arm and lock with the keys or something valuable in the car (pets, kids, etc....). Plus no way of remote unlocking it would make it a nightmare...... could you imagine the number of calls BMW assist would get.

As an example, Onstar uses a perfect example of the following senario: Tiger Woods gets locked out of his car during a tournament and needs a 9 iron (iirc). Onstar unlocks it for him and .......

BMW assist can't do this. Thus it's going to require the spare key, or a tow. Both of which are very inconvenient.

It's because more people get the chance to make out in a BMW, you'd certainly not appreciate the alarm kicking in at a critical moment??? :popcorn: