Connected Drive and iOS App not updating UK

Is anyone else in the UK (or elsewhere for that matter!) having this problem? My app shows data that is now 0ver 50 hours out of date though it shows no indication that the data isn't fresh. The web interface login to connected drive shows the same out of date information but at least has the good grace, if you look carefully, to note the last update time - though you do have to look carefully beyond the cheery 'everything OK' headline...

Actually, I just checked it again: now the web interface doesn't recognise my login details though the app still has the same stale data.

I only took delivery of my car a week ago (an i3 REX) and it was a slightly used vehicle, but I did manage to get the Connected Drive login process completed on Tuesday and it worked for a few hours quite nicely. IMHO, without this feature being reliable, the car is a busted flush for me: my garage is a bit of a trot from my house and if I can't see the charge status or setup preconditioning (non of that remote stuff works either) then I'd rather go back to the pumps. I hear there have been some issues with the system but are they frequent and do they get fixed quickly?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice!

i have the same problem. It is in the shop today to see what the issue is.

Connected drive has been a bit flaky the last couple of days. Although it usual catches back up with updates for me.

Thank you for the replies - though I am surprised to hear that it's gone to the shop since I would have thought it was a server side issue. If it's 'client side' then that starts to get very boring, because one doesn't want to be a guinea pig! I'm also concerned if the service is going to be flaky in an ongoing way: for me, these aspects of the vehicle are integral to its appeal and usefulness...

If you didn't want to be a guinea pig then you might have picked the wrong car

Most problems with ConnectedDrive tend to be with the server end of things, when they are it effects all BMW's not just the i3.

I can't remember who it was, but I am pretty sure somebody on here had a problem with data not updating that was solved by resetting the ConnectedDrive controller.

On the whole its pretty reliable, and it getting better. I think some of the flakiness over the last couple of days has been down to server upgrades etc.

Well I asked them to reset it remotely from Germany which they have done, though they said it usually takes about an hour but can take 24 hours. That was six hours ago and no change yet...

When you say 'by resetting the ConnectedDrive controller' what did you mean? Can I do anything 'locally' to achieve this?

There's other weirdness too: some of the Connected Drive menu items have now disappeared from the menu, and one of them now says that there's no bluetooth phone connected even when there really is. It all feels very 'beta' and very not BMW to me.

The "reset" involved rummaging around under the back seats and disconnecting the modem and reconnecting it. (Not for the faint of heart)

Its also worth noting its not a constant connection, it will update when charging, after stopping and after issuing remote commands.

Not sure what you mean by the bluetooth, but that shouldn't have any effect on connected drive. I would just remove your phone and re-add it make sure you select all the profiles i.e. if you don't select audio profile it won't show up in audio etc.

tashley said:

It all feels very 'beta' and very not BMW to me.

Click to expand...

LOL....I have had Bluetooth issues off and on with practically every vehicle I have owned lately (Chevy, Kia, BMW, Mercedes).

As far as "beta"... your maybe right about that .. but I was totally expecting that possibility, considering what a different (and new) car it is.

In my experience (I have owned 7 BMWs), the "electronics" have never been the strong suit for BMW. If you want the best electronic gadgets, you better buy Japanese.

I think it's funny how things have changed. These days, people want to return their car, because it won't work perfectly with the internet. Bet you wouldn't have expected to hear that 10 years (or less) ago.

kevinb61 said:

tashley said:

It all feels very 'beta' and very not BMW to me.

Click to expand...

LOL....I have had Bluetooth issues off and on with practically every vehicle I have owned lately (Chevy, Kia, BMW, Mercedes).

As far as "beta"... your maybe right about that .. but I was totally expecting that possibility, considering what a different (and new) car it is.

In my experience (I have owned 7 BMWs), the "electronics" have never been the strong suit for BMW. If you want the best electronic gadgets, you better buy Japanese.

I think it's funny how things have changed. These days, people want to return their car, because it won't work perfectly with the internet. Bet you wouldn't have expected to hear that 10 years (or less) ago.

Click to expand...

Oddly the bluetooth works fine: I can make and receive calls and play music. It's just that when I try to use certain ConnectedDrive functions I get told that there is no BT phone connected - even if I am talking on it at the time!

The thing about the electrics is that they are a core part of the proposition: if preconditioning is important, and they say it is, then remote operation needs to work. And out of all the 'app controlled' devices I've owned, the i3 so far has been the buggiest by far! Were it a normal car I wouldn't care - but it is integral to the i3 and for it not to work reliably is not just sloppy, it is dangerous for their rep IMHO...

Are you sure its Bluetooth, the signal indicator changes to the internal modem when you switch to ConnectDrive. It could be your connected drive modem has poor signal and not your phone?

Quite sure: I go
ConnectedDrive>Mobile Care and the screen says " No telephone available. Pair telephone in Bluetooth menu"

However, my mobile phone is paired and functional. Also, yesterday's remote reset by BMW didn't work. My App, the vehicle itself and the web interface all show differing values for charge and REX range. It all feels rather amateur, I must say!

I'm have the same problem, do we know if BMW are doing anything about it?

I haven't had any problems apart from the two maintenance periods last week, if your having persistent problems your better off contacting your dealer so they can run appropriate diagnostics and reset as necessary.

A little update: after a failed morning of being on hold for various BMW help line numbers I gave up and called the dealer who sold it to me. He got some action out of BMW quickly, though it was very much in the form of 'oh take some screenshots for analysis in Germany' at which point I just took the car to the nearest dealership where a nice man looked at it for me. No problems with the plug in diagnostic computer but he said he was fairly sure it was a problem with the SIM card and that he wouldn't be able to look at it that day but that it was non-trivial to get at it because of it being in a sealed unit.

So following one of the suggestions above, I suggested we flip the back seat up and disconnect the modem to reboot it. He kindly did this and it seemed at first not to have worked but I believe this was because we didn't turn the entire car off afterwards because half an hour later, when I came out of the supermarket (having turned the car off and locked it, obviously) it started working perfectly. All the missing connected drive services were back, and both the app and the web interface to connected drive started reporting accurate data - also the remote lock/unlock etc all started working again.

Great. Except as of a few minutes ago, the web interface to connected drive has started to tell me that my username and password aren't recognised. I have double checked and the app still works perfectly, with exactly the same username and password. WTF as they say in teen land.

My conclusion: servicing is not yet fully trained, the vehicle is not faultlessly put together and the connected drive service is flaky. The helplines are poorly manned, their processes are unhelpful and so on and so on. Would I now prefer not to have made this purchase? Yes. Will I now try to make the most of it? Yes. But I could not suggest the i3 to anyone? Well, I had thought that other manufacturers' efforts over the past few years were the 'beta phase' and that BMW were releasing the first mature proposition. IMHO, not so. So I wouldn't recommend it to a friend.

Emblematic: when I got to the dealership today, all four charging spaces were being used as parking spaces for non-electric vehicles so I couldn't get on to charge. A lot of stuff needs to change before this will work mainstream I'm afraid!

... And as of today it's in the BMW workshop, having stopped working again.. It'll be a few days but I will report back on the diagnosis...

Update: regrettably I have had to ask for a full refund: the vehicle has been in the repair shop for two weeks now, which is 50% of the time since I purchased it, and not only have they not been able to repair it but are unable to say when that might happen, as a result of the unavailability of the part in the UK and the need to get it from Germany, a process which has proved thus far not to be possible - nor is there any indication of when the part might eventually filter through. I like the car, but BMW seem not to have got their ducks convincingly in a row yet.

I had an issue with the app not updating, nor being able to monitor or precondition my car that lasted for almost two weeks. At, I think, the same time as when I had a glitch that would not release the charging plug and I had to pull the emergency release cable, the car then would not respond to a precondition command, nor flash the lights or horn or update it's position to the app. The mileage reported to the app was stuck at the same value for about two weeks even with numerous trips in between. After multiple calls to the i3 team, and account resets, and data refresh requests manually pushed from the car, it still didn't work. I finally stopped at the dealer's and they unplugged then replugged in the telemetrics module (as some others have said) and it immediately began working again.

I've asked, but not heard back, to find out which fuse powers that module, which will be easier to remove and replace verses taking the rear seat off, fishing for the connector and making sure not to bend or break something removing and replacing.

The software seems to get stuck in an error loop if you have any problem, and can't recover.

So, it seems like there are at least two possible issues here: the server could be messed up, or the car itself isn't working, or possibly both! We need an easier way to 'reboot' that functionality in the vehicle, or they need a way to maybe force it to happen from their server, but in either case, would require an update to the vehicle.

Anyway, hopefully, it continues to work without issues like it did for the first nearly 3-months.