That was an excessive triple post, there is an edit button for a reason...

Anyway, when you lock the car, does that light go out? I'm not too sure if the car will still sleep fully when unlocked.

Keep in mind that the E60's are notorious for being battery sensitive, a tender isn't a bad idea.

 

I had this same problem. Battery kept dying over night but started fine during the day. The light by my shifter stays on for 30 mins after I lock the car (normal btw).

CHANGE YOUR BATTERY - this needs to be done. Your battery won't keep its "start" charge and needs replacing.

I replaced mine myself @ ?139 - check out the last post from my thread: https://5series.net/forums/topic/111...7#entry1320867

Now its like I've a new car

 

+2 Couldn't have said it better myself!!

 

I had a similar problem and would get the battery high discharge warning. This would often occur in the morning and usually after I had opened the doors a lot the night before and some times after sitting over the weekend. My battery was almost five years old so I replaced it and the problem went away. Could be that you have a weak battery. Do you know how old it is?

 

Well, I've seen BMW batteries barely last a good total of 6 years, and if this were to be a stock battery, it'd be 7-8 years old depending on the manufacturing date.

Your battery really should be replaced every 4-5 years, depending on how you treat it (Your type of travel, etc).

 

I just changed the battery two weeks ago and the problem still exist...I checked that light by the shifter and it stays on all night if i leave it plugged up... the car is not sleeping

 

Same thing happened to me. Come to find out, the problem stemmed from the comfort access control inside my driver door handle. It somehow went defective and kept continuously locking itself on its own. And it would drain the battery over night. I just had the dealer disconnect the comfort access on that door. The other 3 were okay. No more battery drainage. Its been a year now, and i never got it fixed. I got used to not having it.

 

I just bought an '08 550i this week and I initially had the same problem. I changed the battery out as it looked to be original and went with an AGM type battery(Duralast H8-AGM from Autozone, $155 to be exact) and started hooking up the Battery Tender, Jr from my sportbike to the car. I've been researching a bit and like someone stated, it'll probably come down to either a Comfort Access handle, the Telematics Control Unit (TCS) in your trunk, or the Nav/CD player constantly running. I sat in my car for about 30 minutes after putting it to sleep and I still heard a little hum from the Nav area, like the drive is still running or something. I heard all sorts of thumps and clunks about 10 minutes after shutting it down, but the humming persisted near the Nav area for the full 30 minutes.

You will need to find out what the draw is by using a multimeter across the battery posts to measure voltage as the car sleeps. Be sure all doors and hood/trunk are closed. You will need an extra long set of wires with aligator clamps. From there, you start pulling fuses one by one to figure out what it is. I plan on doing this this weekend.

Main reason I kept my 11 year old Honda Accord with 250K miles. Always....ALWAYS starts and never lets me down...

 

+1 the PO of my car had issues like this too. Replaced the battery and still had issues. The dealer then replaced the front door handles/sendors or? and the issues went away. My car has the comfort system.

I would like to turn it off the door handle feature since it doesn't have good range to make it useful, at least on my car.

 

I suggested that it may be the CA system, however the OP claims that his car does not have CA.