Your kidding right? You are suggesting the only way the battery will stay charged is if you plug the car in every night? I thought we had it bad enough what with having to plug in during the winter in some parts of Canada. There has to be something wrong with the X5's that are experiencing dead batteries.

Thats exactly what my sentiments are ! I will report the findings of BMW when I receive them. I will not accept that driving for short trips will not enable the battery to be fully charged. This will mean that X5s in Hong Kong and Singapore will all have battery problems ! I really hope that it is the alternator (they are air freighting one in from Germany) as the X5 35d is really quite superb in all other areas...fantastic acceleration and incredible economy in a BMW !

I agree. I have an april 07 X5 and I have never had any battery problem in over 2 years of driving.

6 Months so far on my X5 4.8 with every option, and no battery problems yet. If you have comfort access, push the "start-stop" button once and then touch the outer handle to lock the car. This will shut off everything.
I have not had any problems with my car batteries other than leaving a light on overnight in the Lexus RX400h and the battery died (Jump Started and fine since then) and my GMC Denali battery died after I left the car in accessory mode for about 2 hours (Jump started and fine since then).