Agent24

As the previous poster said, the steering LOCKS, plain and simple. Forget all that stuff about being able to steer. My car stalled, the I-Drive warning came on and the car locked up.

kscarrol

Well now, either we have two folks trying to "embellish" their stories or there are indeed cases, seemingly relatively rare, where some failure either of or starting with the AS can cause the system to fail all together, not just revert back to non-AS steering. Should be interesting to see the responses to this....

Evenflow545

It (at least at times) has the capability to lock, gentlemen; and that's the bottom line. And, If it's not an active steering problem, why did the "active steering" warning come on right before it happened? Further, if it's a more "sophisticated problem" where the car shuts the engine off, what's the difference? You still have a 63% (no, I'm not a licensed statistician) chance of getting smashed.

That, in my opinion, makes it inherently dangerous. If it happens once, that's too many times.

Please note that if I were trying to embellish a story on the Internet, I'd most certainly write to the Penthouse Forum, and not to the e60 Forums.

Finally, active steering was made an option, in my opinion, to pacify car magazine journalists who, across the board, don't enjoy it either.

All that being said, I continue to think that the 545 is a great car. However, if you're going to have this much technology esentially driving the automobile for you, it'd be nice if it worked.

Hormazd

Guys,
Lets stop bashing each other. Although it has not happened to me, I would hate to go through what Evenflo did. The malfunction in AS is regretful and the fact that your car stopped is what was dangerous. AS alone would be dangerous if you lost steering control completely (i.e. Steering wheel turns but car keeps going straight) which I do not think was the case. BMW has built in safety measures for every computer module that might fail. E.G. if your lighting system module fails, you will not be able to signal and the dashboard will be dark, but as a safety measure the headlights will be forced on.

Evenflow545

We're not bashing each other, Hormazd, just discussing problems. We all like the cars; however, if you can't have a heated discussion, what's the use of a Forum?

I'd simply like to know who else has this problem, and the remedy, instead of folks saying that I'm "making up" some story so that I can get attention and gain fame on the e60 Forum. But, hell. Who really cares anyway?

Hormazd

Well I for one cannot imagine that you would make up a story like that. Questioning your credibility is a bash IMO.

Guest

Your reasoning is flawed -- whatever problem you are having that causes the steering to "lock" and your engine to shut off (and perhaps even your brakes to be applied) is in ADDITION to the active steering fault. To simply say that because you received an active steering fault before the steering locked, your engine stalled and the brakes were applied, ergo it must be an active steering problem is akin to saying that if you had a blowout just after an active steering fault, then the active steering fault was the cause of the blowout (which is obviously not the case, but merely coincidental).

Thus, both Evenflow545 and Agent24 should have your cars serviced to determine what actually caused your steering to lock while simultaneously stalling out your engine and applying the brakes. This has not happened in the majority of active steering malfunctioned explained so far and, from an engineering design perspective, the addition of the mechanical components for planetary gearing to the steering column cannot cause your engine to stall or the application of the brakes (although, if poorly designed, may cause a steering lockup -- however, in my case as with others, no steering lockup has occured so this is a very interesting symptom).

More importantly, it is probably possible for BMW to download various parameters and measurements from all of the onboard computers to determine the state of the vehicle when this occured (engine, brakes, steering, etc.). These parameters and measurements will help to identify what caused the lockup, engine stalling and application of brakes.

Guest

If we combine this with Evenflow545's symptoms, they appear to be consistent with a cascading overall failure of the electrical system in the car. The AS fails just before the entire electrical system fails (that's why you get the AS fault), which causes the engine to stall out, the brakes to be applied (say from a current surge to the ABS just before electrical failure) and the steering to feel like it's locked (since the brakes have been applied, the simultaneous loss of momentum and power assist would make the steering feel like it has been locked). The steering lock is the most puzzling since it would appear that the only way to lock the steering is by removing the ignition key and turning the wheel to its lock point.

More data is needed for BMW to ascertain the cause of these symptoms.

Guest

If you really believe this, then I've got some land I'd like to sell you....

Seriously, BMW, like all well run market leading companies, does NOT take input from intellectually challenged (e.g., iDrive is too complicated to use) windbags who work for newspapers or magazines. Helmut Panke recently noted that, despite the terrible press that the latest 7 series design got as well as iDrive, BMW has sold more of this 7 series generation than any other prior generation, which vindicates the BMW board's decision to proceed with the new design and iDrive. Similarly, if BMW listened to all of the self appointed "aficionados" of the prior 5 series who continue to open proclaim how ugly and terrible the e60 is, they would have never introduced or sold a single vehicle (the current e60 sales are doing better than the final years of the obsolete design). Even today, you can't open up any of those auto rags where there isn't some letter from an old 5 series owner complaining bitterly about how s/he was abandoned with the new e60 and M5 and how they would rather buy an American car than give BMW another $ for the e60.

In business, $$ talks and BS walks.... BMW is getting the $$ to maintain its market leadership because it does not knee-jerk everytime some windbag (who probably never built or sold anything in his/her entire life) from an auto rag criticizes its design, technology or some other aspect of its products.

Hormazd

Thats what leaders are about. I have posted elsewhere on this board my renewed respect for the I-drive design after spending a couple hours in a 05 Acura RL. The Japanese are supposed to do this stuff better, but I was disappointed. They have tried to copy the puck concept, made it harder to reach with a second wheel behind the puck for rotating. The puck only slides. Their Bluetooth implementation is terrible. A seperate phone book for the car that can only be programmed using Voice commands. Yes its more stable but I can safely say that they copied and tried (in vain) to learn from BMW.

P.S. I love AS. I would pay for it as an option and think the steering issues, tramlining and stability are more the crappy Dunlop RFs then AS. Many of us here have exceeded 145mph in our cars and have not experienced a lack of stability.