Excessive Battery Drain Fix from BMW AG
 

The X5 is in for the ever so popular battery drain message and I come to find out that there may be some hope for us people who do not drive our X5's the way BMW recommends us to.

Since BMW has noticed a very large number of X5 owners experiencing this issue, BMW believes they have a fix to help reduce or help eliminate this problem. I was told the fix entails a new program which reduces the amount of time that the X5 says awake once the car has been turned off. The current software keeps the computer system(not accessories) powered for 30 min after the car is turned off to speed up the "boot process" for people getting in and starting there cars. Since the X5 has close to 60 computers, it consumes a great deal of power when the car is off. The simplest fix would be to change the charging parameter to have the alternator start to charge the battery at a higher level, but BMW has to keep the alternator use to a minimum to help meet federal fuel guidelines and they do not want to have lower the MPG ratings on the X5. Instead, they have now reduced the awake time from 30 min to 20 min. They say this has reduced the number of reported Excessive Battery drain issues by more than 1/2.

Once I get the X5 back from the dealer I will provide specifics form the work order and provide any SIB info which I can get. I will also keep people posted on if this fix works or not.

I am cross posting this on Bimmerfest

Nice, looking forward to your update!

Curious - how do programming updates work for those outside of the 4yr warranty period? Is it a set price for programming or is it a per hour charge? I imagine extended warranties would cover it too.

any update please and can this battery be programmed?

It's not the battery being programmed, but a setting that changes the timeout period from stupid 30 mins to 20. I believe it is FA +KVNK. Search e70at.000 for that and it'll give the code that ncsexpert/ncsdummy uses to change settings.
I learned about this a year ago from this site.
https://bmw-worldzz.blogspot.com/201...ed-due-to.html

Update with coding info in case you want to just do it by NCSDUMMY/NCSEXPERT instead of writing FA:
From e70at.000 file the code that this "short distance" uses
K KVNK NACH_KL_30G_Z //Nachruestung / Kodierpaket Standnutzer NICHT FUeR DEN E72 //NA 190190

Open ncsexpert and read your cas module.
Open ncsdummy, choose e70, click right of browse.. pick load FSW_PSW.MAN

It should load your CAS module version and show choices.
Hit CTRL+F to search, pick order option and paste this in:
NACH_KL_30G_Z
Hit find.
You will see wert_04 has the NACH_KL_30G_Z value as true and it is the setting for 20 minutes. Choose that one. Click export fsw/psw on the bottom.

Then you can use ncsexpert to do sg_codieren for cas and use this without having to write FA and code cas that way.