Has anyone ever noticed or understood why after a period of time with your keys left in the ignition and the car unoccupied that the parking lights and demon lights come on? I know you're not supposed to leave you're keys in the ignition but I tend to do this from time to time with my car in a locked garage.

This one has me confused since I can never re-duplicate the condition. The timing always seems to be different. Is this the cars way of saying the keys were left in the ignition?

Thanks for any help.

 

May not want to do this with todays cars. With the key in the igniton many functions continue to run to full capacity and can potentially be damaging to the battery. Plus, with the world today, you someone may break into your locked garage and you'll make it easy for them to steal your beautiful car.

 

It'll not harm the battery (the e60's power system is way to intelligent), but I won't do this because of someone braking in, or the kids (if you have kids) might want to play with the car...

 

If I have the switch in Auto, pull up, park, cut off the car and remove the keys, the Angel Eyes, Park lights, and inside power stay on until a door is opened.

This is standard operation IIRC....

 

I think Skier is referring to a bug I reported back in April (might have been on RF).

My scenario (as good as I can remember):

Fact: Car is sleeping with key in ignition, headlight switch set to "auto".
Result: Open a driver's side (US spec) door and headlights will come on. Close the door and the headlights go out but parking lights stay on (or something like this).

Fact: Car is sleeping with key in ignition, headlight switch set to "auto".
Result: Open a passenger side (US spec) door and headlights will come on. Close the door and the headlights stay on. Headlights will not go off if the car is never started, etc. In other words, if you simply open then close a passenger door, the lights will stay on until the battery dies. Trust me about that one, I know from experience!

Because of this "feature" (that I'm sure is a bug), I don't leave my lights in the auto position at all.

Side note: Watch closely the green LED's on the pro nav buttons that control the AC compressor, the automatic mode, and the fresh air recirculation. They will flash when you open a door too!