Parking Brake Actuator Failure

Last week I got in my car and was met with a Drivetrain System Failure message. I couldn't put the car in gear or neutral. I called my recovery company who said they couldnt get a recovery truck on my drive and suggested I call BMW to see if they could send someone to release the car somehow so it could be moved.
I called the dealership and BMW Assist both of which were no help.
Eventually the recovery company sent a robot to recover it. Quite a piece of kit.

https://youtu.be/R0gEDsmc_uo

My dealership diagnosed it as a parking brake actuator. Sadly the car is out of warranty by 8 months so I had to bear the cost £750 incl. fitting. This is the second major issue outside of warranty and getting a bit tired of the unreliability of what is otherwise a great car. Mailed BMW but they couldn't give a sh*t given its out of warranty. They did at least understand my frustration...ffs

That is no good to hear about the parking brake failure, I have to admit that piece of towing equipment was pretty neat. I can see how that kind of thing would make it easy to pull cars out of garages and tight parking areas. Did they just strap them both down at the end and drive off?
-Tim

Roachaldo said:

This is the second major issue outside of warranty and getting a bit tired of the unreliability of what is otherwise a great car.

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The warranty on our 2014 BEV will expire in 1 month. So far, other than a couple of recall items, it has not required any warranty repairs. However, the i3 in general does not seem to be as reliable and is much more expensive to repair compared with our previous Hondas, so if we experience the sort of reliability out of warranty that you have, I would reluctantly look for a more reliable EV replacement. Good luck to you and to all of us out-of-warranty i3 owners!

Roachaldo said:

Eventually the recovery company sent a robot to recover it. Quite a piece of kit.

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Sorry to hear about your issues. However, that robot is the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. The engineering behind it is awesome. Especially the way it lifts the back wheels to get under the car to the front wheels. Genius!

Does anyone know if this is a common problem on ICE BWMs? Since I park on flat ground 99.9% of the time, I am thinking that I may start just using the transmission park setting on the steering column instead the of the electronic parking brake.

My GT had an intermittent parking brake switch out of the factory that was replaced under warranty once I got it back home to the USA. Other than that, since 2011, I've not had any issue with it. Sample of one is not much, though. That car has brake hold that activates (if enabled, which I regularly do) as soon as you come to a full stop. It keeps you rolling either forward or backwards unlike the i3, which doesn't actually use the brakes, but will prevent it from rolling only backwards. Maybe it's because it is used frequently (and I use the parking brake at stop lights on the i3 all of the time) that I've not had any issues.

tjburbach said:

I have to admit that piece of towing equipment was pretty neat. I can see how that kind of thing would make it easy to pull cars out of garages and tight parking areas.

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That's what would be needed to pull our i3 out of our tight apartment garage parking stall because any kind of tow truck would be too large. However, I've never seen anything like this in the U.S. While we were living half-time in Sweden during the past 9 years, I saw all sorts of clever machines like this as well as tractor and service truck attachments that were operated by wireless controllers. Heavy-duty U.S. trucks look so old and primitive in comparison.

Update

Had a number of conversations with BMW having given them a hard time on Twitter. The party line is its out of warranty so not prepared to help. I asked if the actuator had been designed to fail in year 4 and they said no and therefore I argued that it was faulty and they should contribute. The customer service agent just kept spouting policy at me so I suggested we end the call as we were never going to agree. They were very sorry, as you would expect but not sorry enough to put their hand in their pocket.

Thank you for keeping us informed. How much was the final repair cost?

I got this problem last week end. I had to have it towed. Fortunately, it was parked outside and there was a free space in front of the car. The towing slided his platform under the front wheels up to the rear wheels then he pull it and slide it on the platform. He brought it to the dealer in Laval, Qc.
1000$ can later its working as new. I have the habbit to put the parking brake all the time but I guess I will use it less often. This is bad I thought there would be almost no maintenance to do on this car...
My i3 is a 2014 no rex, 60000 km.

alohart said:

While we were living half-time in Sweden during the past 9 years, I saw all sorts of clever machines like this as well as tractor and service truck attachments that were operated by wireless controllers. Heavy-duty U.S. trucks look so old and primitive in comparison.

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...or perhaps the Euro zone is making things too complex? Up until a few years ago, I could have easily turned that car above around in the driveway with a set of these hydraulic wheel dollies:



Back in my racing days, we once rolled an abandoned station wagon (estate car) across a parking lot and out of harm's way using three hydraulic trolley jacks. I was ready to break out the trolley jacks last week when my i3 was trapped in the driveway by the failed charger plug solenoid.....