Cannot connect to BMW Connected Drive services

Anyone else having this issue? This started happening right after my Encore visit at the dealer where they activated the SOS and Sirius account. Right after I lost connection while at the dealer. As I was driving home things came back online then the next morning it lost connection for the last time. A call out to BMW's iTeam led to them confirming no issues with the account on their side so I should be able to connect from my remote app and receive traffic data. I also could not log into any of the BMW services or update my software from the car. Looks like something went bad so now I have a service appoint later this week to drop off the car for them to update the software and try to address the Connected Drive issues.

Over the 10-months I've had my i3, I've had two occasions when the car stopped talking to the servers - each time, it was more than a few days. No amount of resetting on the server side, reloading application, forcing an update of new data at the car resolved it. The car continually showed old, inaccurate data on the app and the mileage did not update. The first time, the dealer unplugged the telecommunication module (a crude forced reset) and it began working fine in a few minutes as it rebooted and reconnected to the server. The next time, I just removed the fuse powering the thing, and it began working again. It's fuse F115. Your call. Do not have the vehicle plugged into your EVSE when you remove the fuse, and it does take a few minutes to reboot and reconnect.

MFNATIK said:

Anyone else having this issue? This started happening right after my Encore visit at the dealer where they activated the SOS and Sirius account. Right after I lost connection while at the dealer. As I was driving home things came back online then the next morning it lost connection for the last time. A call out to BMW's iTeam led to them confirming no issues with the account on their side so I should be able to connect from my remote app and receive traffic data. I also could not log into any of the BMW services or update my software from the car. Looks like something went bad so now I have a service appoint later this week to drop off the car for them to update the software and try to address the Connected Drive issues.

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I had troubles connecting Monday evening, the servers were timing out trying to connect to the car... all seems fine now today.

I had to re-register my Connected drive account this morning, the servers have been updated apparently. What was poor from my perspective was the lack of any notification on the Connected Drive pages regarding the outage and any meaningful instructions as to what to do next. 3/10 could do better.

jadnashuanh said:

Over the 10-months I've had my i3, I've had two occasions when the car stopped talking to the servers - each time, it was more than a few days. No amount of resetting on the server side, reloading application, forcing an update of new data at the car resolved it. The car continually showed old, inaccurate data on the app and the mileage did not update. The first time, the dealer unplugged the telecommunication module (a crude forced reset) and it began working fine in a few minutes as it rebooted and reconnected to the server. The next time, I just removed the fuse powering the thing, and it began working again. It's fuse F115. Your call. Do not have the vehicle plugged into your EVSE when you remove the fuse, and it does take a few minutes to reboot and reconnect.

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Thanks for the tip and info. I will give that a try!

Pulling the fuse did reset the system and everything appears to be back online. It did take a while for things to come back, but they eventually did. Thanks for the tip!!!

I'd still report this to BMW, as there are some situations that appear to cause it to get caught in a loop, and never update that should be fixed. We don't expect to have to reboot our cars! Much of the stuff gets reset when we turn it off, but the phone circuit just stays on, giving it more opportunities to eventually mess up. May be something simple, but not from the user's standpoint!

Oh yes, I still have an appointment for the software update this week and have already mentioned this is an issue they need to look into. Maybe the update will fix it as well?

PluviaPlumbum said:

I had to re-register my Connected drive account this morning, the servers have been updated apparently. What was poor from my perspective was the lack of any notification on the Connected Drive pages regarding the outage and any meaningful instructions as to what to do next. 3/10 could do better.

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Could you clarify what site did you go to to re-register your connected drive account ? i am in the US and for the life of me i can't find the portal to look at my connected drive account. My story is i just bought a '14 i3 with Rex and i can't remotely perform any actions via iremote app and when i go to connected drive tab in settings in the car, it says service is not available. But I AM getting correct battery status and trip details from the iremote app. If it matters, i don't have the Tech package.

Any ideas? this is driving me nuts!

Press the SOS button in the car and have them do it for you. YOu should do this anyways with a new car to make sure they have the correct contact info for you and your 'emergency' word. Each country controls this in their own way...not sure if they USA allows you to do it yourself.

MFNATIK said:

jadnashuanh said:

Over the 10-months I've had my i3, I've had two occasions when the car stopped talking to the servers - each time, it was more than a few days. No amount of resetting on the server side, reloading application, forcing an update of new data at the car resolved it. The car continually showed old, inaccurate data on the app and the mileage did not update. The first time, the dealer unplugged the telecommunication module (a crude forced reset) and it began working fine in a few minutes as it rebooted and reconnected to the server. The next time, I just removed the fuse powering the thing, and it began working again. It's fuse F115. Your call. Do not have the vehicle plugged into your EVSE when you remove the fuse, and it does take a few minutes to reboot and reconnect.

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Thank you so much for sharing this tip, I fix my non connecting problem in 2 minutes

By the way, on my 2017 i3, the fuse panel is not locked anymore with 2 screws but with 2 butterfly like holders.

FWIW, I've not had to perform this forced reset in several years after a software update of the car. It may be that some markets are not offering these firmware updates, but if available to you, and the dealer will do it for free, I recommend you seek them out for this. Often, unless it's a safety issue, they won't do it for free unless you complain about an issue. Then, they look up to see if that has been addressed, and reflash the car. NOte, BMW used to tell the dealers what issues a particular software update addressed, but they don't make that info easily available to the dealers anymore, for whatever reason.

My i3 is farly new, I got it on May 2017, so I'm not sure if there is already a software update available. On the other hand I would need to "steal" the car from my wife to go to BMW dealer and check for any update but this is not going to be easy as she doesn't event think to drive my X3 in exchange

Let's say that if I won't have the same problem in the next months I not going to worry about the update. Othewise I'll manage to have the car checked.

Thanks again

Except when new software is deemed safety, or critical, BMW doesn't just arbitrarily apply new software to their cars unless you complain about an issue, and the newer software is designed to address it. IOW, unless you fall into certain situations, you cannot just go in and demand the latest software - there has to be a good reason. Some dealerships are better at working with you creatively to get it than others, but they have to convince corporate to do it...the dealership gets it pushed to them for a particular car by VIN...IOW, it's not generic and on-hand locally. The s/w is customized for each car as needed by corporate.

Let's say that I have a good relationship with a BMW dealer so a software update shupld be a major problem if I ask him. In the past he ran a major update on my X3 trying to fix a poor bluetooh audio quality in phone calls. As I said, unless I'm having another time the connection issue I'm not going to do anything.

Yesterday I learned something from BMW support that it may worth to share: I purchased the RTTI service but the i3 was not receiving the service. I tried everything including updating the maps and the strangest thing is that I already had the service working until 2 days before when the previous subscriprion expired. I aslo tried the "update" command for the BMW Online service service. Finally I called BMW and they explained to me that the correct procedure to refresh the services available is to highlight "BMW Online" in the menu WITHOUT selecting it by pushing the IDrive knob. Then, push the "options" button and select the update command. Only in this way the Online service is updated. And actually it worked.

Hopefully somebody in the future with the same problem won't waste a couple of days as I did ...

Thank you very much for your suggestion. I will give it a try. Happy holidays.

kermit68 said:

purchased the RTTI service but the i3 was not receiving the service.

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I just wish that BMW's RTTI was actually RT. I'm stuck in stop-and-go traffic yet RTTI indicates a green road, or I'm cruising along at the speed limit on a road that RTTI has painted red. I've been warned on several occasions of accidents ahead, but I have never seen an accident at the location indicated.

In my experience, RTTI provides old data for Honolulu, sometimes apparently hours old. I probably won't renew.

I updated our nav maps from 2014-2 to 2018-1 hoping that the routing suggestions had improved after almost 4 years, but there was no obvious improvement. Maybe routing suggestions are somewhat independent of the map version. Routing never includes the shortest, fastest route for the final mile to our apartment. It cannot even correctly route the final mile to the Honolulu International Airport suggesting a route through Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam which is several miles past the airport. The suggested route takes far longer than exiting at the main airport exit from the freeway which the nav route passes directly by. Not impressed!

I'm using RTTI service only since a month (actually mostly my wife is using it .. ) and I have to say that is fairly accurate for traffic jams in Rome even if it's reporting the traffic flow only for main roads. I'm not using it with the navigator to reroute my path as at least in my city there are too many local variables that the GPS (any GPS) won't be able to take into account. My usage is rather looking at the map to understand if I can take my usual and fastest route or if it's better to take some alternative routes.

It's (almost) like having Google map traffic on the i3 screen, not bad, especially if purchased with Xmas 30% discount.