Over the course of the past week, my 2008 535i has been displaying the following messages on the idrive.

-start off assistance inactive
-active steering initializing
-drive control system drive moderately

Sometimes I am able to reset the active steering by turning the wheel back and forth, but it does not consistently work.

My first thought was a battery issue as my car has 52k miles. However, my battery was replaced under warranty at 33k miles 2.5 years ago.

Any ideas before I take the car in? I would rather avoid having to remove the jb4 and pay the $250 deductible on my 3rd party extended warranty.

Also in case I wasn't clear, the messages are intermittent and sometimes appear everyday, or won't appear for 3-4 days and then reappear.

Thank you!

 

I had the same problem a month ago. It was the steering angle sensor (szl). Cost was close to $1k to replace.