Why no passive alarm set?
 

If you ever forget to lock your car via remote or comfort access door handles, the alarm never arms. Never, as in never. I understand there can be reasons where you're working on the car inside and outside and you want it to remain off but this can be a pretty bad tradeoff if you ever do forget to set it.

Say you're carrying tons of groceries and you can barely close the door... you do it with your foot and run inside. The car's left out there, unlocked and with no alarm. In my case my wife exits the vehicle after me all the time (she's preggo and slower to get out) and with comfort access she's the one to do it but sometimes forgets - and by then I don't always remember to either. It was left unarmed the entire night but at least it was in my garage in that case.

Even cheap alarm systems set it passively after 30 seconds or so. Did they overlook something here? Why not have it to be on the safe side? Manual does not indicate any passive alarm.

Passive or not, I don't like the fact that there is no beep when you lock the X5. I mean you walk away, you have your back to the X5 and you push the button and your just not sure whether the X5 locked. So you turn around, stop, look, do it again to see if the rear lights flash.

And if a door is not closed properly it does not lock. How simple could it be, one beep its locked, 3 beeps its unlocked, 2 beeps a door is not closed. MB can do it.

^ idrive has a setting to make it beep... it's probably just disabled for you. 1 beep locked, 2 beeps unlocked.

it beeps, although its hard to hear from far way. Its more like a chirp unlike many car alarms that honk.

The dealer told me that there is no chirp available?

We have it here in the US, I would imagine that you have it as well down under.

It's located in idrive> settings> vehicle/tires> door locks> confirmation
The option for acuostic confirmation for both locking and unlocking are there.

So since nobody else is chiming in on the original question, let me ask this... what do other luxury brands (or even other BMW models) do in this case? Does it passively arm for them?

If I want the alarm set, I will lock the car. I don't see a problem hear:confused: It's not like an alarm will stop anyone from stealing your car anyway. I had the alarm on my previous BMWs and they didn't automatically set.
No offense, but if you forget to lock the car and it gets stolen, that is your fault.

I guess it's personal preference, but I don't want my vehicle setting the alarm unless I tell it to, e.g., if I leave my vehicle unlocked in my garage, I certainly don't want the !@##@#$ alarm going off if I later open the door to get something out of it, and then have to find the key to shut the $#@# thing off.

I have double checked, it only has visual confirmation, no acuostic confirmation. I have owned many BMW and not one has ever had acuostic confirmation.

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:

that's not true... BMW assist CAN unlock vehicles... at least from 2008 on...

Again, passive arming does not and NEVER SHOULD LOCK the car. The purpose of an alarm is to alarm anyway. While it can be an annoyance with false alarms that we hear all the time, they can allow us to set the timer for it in idrive (as with pathway lighting), one time, and we'd be set.

I'm surprised there's nobody who has wondered the same thing here. We didn't all grow up in BMW vehicles I'm sure.

huh...... I didn't know that. It might not be intentional then......:confused:

This particular feature is in all the cars I've had or currently have that uses a remote device (key or key fob) to lock/unlock the door(s) - and it works even with the Keyless Go option on my E63 when locking and then unlocking again WITHOUT opening the door using the buttons on the door handles, I've tested it just to be sure. So assume that the 4.8i will have it as we ordered it with Comfort Access - will have to test it when we pick it up.

I think though, the OP is saying that WITHOUT unintentionally unlocking the car, the alarm system should re-arm itself after a period of time if the vehicle is not locked.

I still do not see the point of this "passive alarm". I could see this causing many false triggers. If you want the alarm set, LOCK THE CAR. What's next, "The car should drive itself so I don't have to". We can't expect the car to do everything for us.

You never forget anything right? I guess I'm the only one who forgets anything ever? It's a safety measure... safety measures are "just in case" kinda things... such as just in case you FORGET to lock the car, an alarm is still on your side.

Despite having a downside, I absolutely don't understand how you can't see an upside to this. Especially because it already exists in other cars and is a feature in many alarm systems including aftermarket.

quickie search result... why active and not passive for bmw? Passive is considered a better safety measure as evidenced by insurance discounts. More. Oh wait, I already claimed passive was better in my very first post!

I'm done trying to convince people at this point by saying the same thing over and over. What I do want is for the company to consider giving us the choice for passive or hear why they didn't put it in in the first place.

My insurance only asked if I had an alarm, not if it was passive or active.

Anyway, I think we all need to calm down and face the facts that the X5 does not have a passive alarm. The old saying "Pick your hill to die on" certainly applies to this. I am certainly not going to lose sleep over this problem. Just enjoy everything else about the X5.
Have a good weekend and enjoy the driving. :thumbup: