lee1224

My 08 550i SAT seem to lose the time and date when i let the car sit for a couple of days without driving it. The active steering also will not initiate. When you drive it for a little distance, the active steering will come back on. The time and date needed to be reentered when Idrive forgets. This is not a problem when i drive the car everyday. When this does happen, Idrive still works for entertainment, etc. Sometimes Idrive will not recognize where it left off on a usb song and switch to radio. Talked to TA, they told me to make sure to lock doors (car is an a garage, so i never lock it) when the car is not driven. This seem like a dumb suggestion, do i have to lock my car in my own heated garage. Anyways, anyone else experience this? Is it a software issue? Any suggestions is appreciated.

schwim

Yes, lock your doors and your clock will maintain proper time. Its a new safety feature designed to motivate you to lock the car when you're not using it... NOT.

What a dumb response from the SA/TA! (DA if you ask me )

Sounds to me like a loose battery cable or a bad battery.

kmslo530i

I've had the same problem....not quite that often, but I'm told it takes about 20 minutes of driving to really recharge the car's systems after not being driven......your car is like your body....it starts to shut down different systems in an effort to save itself....in your car's case, that's so it will start up! If you don't drive often, or leave the car for periods of time, I suggest doing what I was told to do...buy a BMW trickle, or smart charger.....about $70 from your dealer. I don't think you have any problems.....you just aren't driving your car enough.....WAIT a minute.....any of us NOT driving our cars enough must have a HUGE problem!! Good luck

JSpira

I didn?t drive my car for 18 days (I was busy getting the 535d and then the 550i in Europe) and it started up with no problem and had no loss of date.

It is important to lock the car because that allows the modules to go to sleep. So that was not bad advice although it may not be at the root of the problem.

Rudy

I have this exact problem and it happens with the car locked or unlocked. Going in for service next week to see if they can sort this one out...

My bet is that something is preventing the car from entering sleep mode. Once the car detects that something is keeping it from going to sleep, it starts to shut down individual electrical "consumers" based on a certain priority. On my car, for example, comfort access won't work until the car is awake (CA would be a low priority consumer.) I can wake it up by unlocking the car using the fob (or opening the door if it's unlocked) and then comfort access will work. Interestingly, if the car is in this state and you open the driver's door, the display between the speedometer and tachometer (the MID) will flash very quickly and sometimes the individual LED's on the switches for the seat heat/ventilation, PDC, and DSC will flash as well.

One thing to note is that when you have to reset the clock, take a look at the date. I'll bet you'll see that the date is displaying whatever date it was when you parked the car. For example, if you park the car on Friday in your garage and return to in on Monday, if the clock is showing all dashes, the date will be showing Friday's date.

Active steering reinitializes itself as soon as you drive off but until it's finished, the wheel is very hard to turn. Again, I think it's a result of some module being turned off instead of going into sleep mode. The increased battery discharge warning will also appear -- especially if the car sits for some time. Before I had this no sleep theory, I was posting some symptoms about this issue in the following thread: http://forums.e60.net/index.php?showtopic=46104

Finally, another sign that the car never went to sleep is that when I wake it up, the car remembers the seat heater or seat ventilation settings from before I turned it off (just like it does if you turn the car off and turn it back on within 15 minutes or so.)

IceBimmer

Rudy,

I thought my 04 545i has problem going to sleep. It takes an hour to hour and 15 minutes for the "P" parking light to go off. It seems the problem is still not fixed on the 08 model. Keep us posted on the out come.

Rudy

My '04 car did not have this issue but I do remember a bulletin about this a while back where something like a cell phone plugged into an accessory outlet would prevent the car from sleeping. Supposedly, that issue was resolved with a software update. (In my case on the 2008 car, this isn't what's happening though.)

I imagine there's something going on with a newer module or device on the LCI cars. It could also be some conflict with a couple of specific options on my car, etc. Sooner or later, this will be worked out -- I'm just glad to see a few other people reporting similar issues since that'll help BMW figure out what's going on, etc.

sixcard

I have heard that cell phone charger cables will drain a battery and since it is a power draw it may prevent a full power down if that is required for sleep.

Some of those chargers have an LED. Could that be the culprit? I didn't think an LED would draw enough juice to put in your eye.

At any rate I leave mine unplugged.

I never yet have had any of the sleep/awake problems discussed, but then again why would anyone ever let an Echo60 sit around? It needs to move!

Rudy

The cell phone charger was the culprit a while back when they issued the service bulletin. In theory, no matter what kind of current draw, the charger should be shut down when the car is turned off or goes to sleep. In the case of my LCI car, there's absolutely nothing plugged into the car either via an accessory outlet or the USB/iPod adapter and this issue still occurs...

mikeg7

After reading these forums for a while, it seems to me that there are an insane number of things that can go wrong with these cars, most of them very annoying but nothing that would prevent you from driving it, and all of them software-related.

Perhaps BMW should consider hiring better programmers?