REx "quality" recall and s/w update

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SanSerif

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 5, 2013
Messages
175
Location
Southern UK, EU.
Just had BMW on the phone to book my car in for a non-safety recall - inspect the REx spline[1] and do a s/w update. It'll take 3 days! So some fairly major dismantling, I imagine.

Asked her about the KLE but she knew nothing about it.

Anyone else had this recall?

[1] I know nothing about how engines operate so have no idea if this is actually what she said and have absolutely no idea what it might mean. I vaguely remember spline curves from maths lessons, I think.
 
The KLE is being prioritised to territories where the KLE problem is most prevalent. BMW UK haven't been told anything about it yet.

I don't know whether this is related the REX quality issue or not but I had a check drive error a couple weeks ago and the following came back from technical:

The drive train warning light fault. The Range extender e-machine (REM) could have moisture inside it. After a long drive the moisture evapourates and then condenses in an area that can cause the vehicle electronics to incorrectly detect an isolation fault. At this moment in time BMW want us to perform a test run to try get rid of this moisture as a temporary fix. They are developing a new REM for a permanent fix but it isn’t available yet.

I am assuming by spline they mean this - http://www.etk.cc/bmw/EN/search/selectCar/I01/MCV/BMW+i3+Rex/ECE/11/11_5327/
 
I had my SWU last week. Took two months to arrange because of courtesy car shortage and although I was promised an i3, it did not materialise.
They had my car for 48 hours, I requested other issues to be resolved but they didn't.
On retrieving the car I noticed my settings were deleted, my BMW ONLINE and MESSAGES menu vanished. I informed the dealer and was told that they would get back to me but they didn't. Having chased them up they booked me in for next week but last night I found my solution on FB. Once in the connect drive menu I then had to press the option button and click on update service info...

Shame the I experts were not able to do this or tell me how to do it.
 
It seems like BMW was not really ready for this vehicle as far as the service department was concerned. It is almost as if they did not expect to have to make any fleetwide updates or recalls and thus do not have the trained staff in place. I see this in Los Angeles: ask any sort of technical question of the service department and you just get blank looks. The regular Service Advisor is useless and watching them try to locate their only iGenius is laughable. Once the guru arrives, you find out that he does not know what a KLE is......

It make you wonder if the actual technicians who will work on your car are fully trained either. This could explain why the software updates are taking so long and why they seem to be done so sloppily. My guess is that each dealer sent a couple of techs to a two week class taught by a trainer with even less actual hands on experience than them. Now it's on the job training learning as you go with customer cars as training aids.

The i3 and i8 are such a radical departure from conventional BMWs that there is very little carry over from a techs ICE experience. Powertrain issues are unique to the i-series and will be totally a new experience to the tech who has to troubleshoot and diagnose. I hope that BMW has made a large enough investment in their personnel as well as their parts department to keep up with the demand. Botching the support to such an important product rollout would be a disaster......

I am scheduled for repair of a few clunks and rattles, as well as a software update and fuel pressure sensor replacement next Monday, it will be interesting to see how it all goes.
 
SanSerif said:
Anyone else had this recall?
When my car was with my dealer about a month ago (having charging issue looked at for the n'th time) they mentioned this spline update was on the computer and that they'd do it at the same time. They rang me back later to say that they didn't have the tooling but would contact me when ready. I'm still waiting for the call and they've ignored my last two emails so who knows when it'll be done.

elptex said:
jackt said:
I am assuming by spline they mean this - http://www.etk.cc/bmw/EN/search/selectCar/I01/MCV/BMW+i3+Rex/ECE/11/11_5327/

Yes, definitely that.
Mind if I ask how do you know that elptex ?
 
@Woodland Hills:

I think the BMW training is not bad, really. When I was waiting for UK deliveries (and my order) to start, I happened to be staying in a hotel next to BMW's UK training academy. As well as watching them driving i3s around the place I also got to chat to a couple of the technicians being trained. It seemed a pretty swept up operation - from that admittedly very brief poking my nose in.
 
Hi guys,
according to our agent, they have to use the liftting platform also used for the removal of the battery to remove the REx engine. It is a rather large dealership but they have only one of these platforms. The platform was, they toid me, occupied for a whole day by my REx engine. This causes a mighty planning challenge for them, because no REx that needs to be modified may leave the premises (enforced by BMW) before having the spline (torque axle) replaced.
Regards, Steven

PS: my contact told me they had to remove a battery from another i3 the other day. Apparently it requires rather heavy safety precautions, like cordoning off part of the workshop...
 
Much of what has been posted here argues for stand alone iDealers with a dedicated service department with all the bells and whistles. And a fully trained staff which is not so easy.
I have seen technical training from both sides of the desk and imparting information that is both accurate and useful is harder than it sounds. My model specific "factory schools" from Bell, MBB, Aerospatiale and Pratt&Whitney were each several weeks long in fully equipped facilities, but once I encountered them in the field I realized that all they really presented was where and what each component was. Any tips on common troubleshooting matters, problem diagnosis, tips on the fastest way to do the job, etc. came from tribal knowledge not the school. OJT via an experienced co-worker is the way most real-world training gets done and there simply are no experienced people yet for i3's.
It is going to take a few years to build up a pool of experienced Ev techs who will be able to do more than just throw parts at a broken car until it works again. It may be easier to train kids with an electronics interest to be mechanics rather than teaching ICE mechanics about EVs.....
 
SanSerif said:
@Woodland Hills:

I think the BMW training is not bad, really. When I was waiting for UK deliveries (and my order) to start, I happened to be staying in a hotel next to BMW's UK training academy. As well as watching them driving i3s around the place I also got to chat to a couple of the technicians being trained. It seemed a pretty swept up operation - from that admittedly very brief poking my nose in.


And yet no one in the dealership knew how to restore my connect drive menu. As I mentioned above, the fix was to press the option button and proceed with a service restore, a solution I found on FB!
 
WoodlandHills said:
Much of what has been posted here argues for stand alone iDealers with a dedicated service department with all the bells and whistles.
Hi,
here, in Holland, there are, if I'm not mistaken, only 8 specialised BMW dealerships that may service the i3 beyond filling the windscreen washer. Not so in the US ?
Regards, Steven
 
Just like in Holland, not every dealer chose to carry the i-cars. Those that are certified had to make a large investment in parts, tooling and training to get approved. At least I hope they did... :roll:
 
When I had a s/w update done, the dealer told me that it was actually done via a remote connection from the BMW server in Germany. They had a connection issue, and it ended up taking longer than they'd hoped. Part of that was the time zone difference (the car being in the USA), and some of it MIGHT have been the initial learning curve. I do not know how that compares with tweaking the software on other models, but I had my GT in for a module replacement, and they needed to reprogram the entire car since something got corrupted...it took nearly a full day. In this manner, BMW could help control the software code since it wouldn't be sitting on thousands of dealers' computers. I do not know if that only applies to the i3, or all models, or whether it changes over time as things mature. It would seem like a good corporate security means, though. THere's many millions of Euros in development on that software, and it isn't nice to give it away so someone could reverse engineer it easily.
 
Each component is individual developed and versioned, when you go into for a software update you get a bundle of software for all components that brings your car to a notional System update.

For example you might just want a fix for an iDrive problem, but that fix might only be tested/certified against a certain ECU version, thus the whole car has to be updated. There is also another aspect to this, I am lead to believe that each update is specifically tailored to your car, so when its plugged into to diagnostics an update is requested, based on your cars current system version an appropriate bundle is generated and sent to the dealer - this also takes bit of time as there is some degree of automated testing involved here too.

Ultimately, I think much of the problem is a lack of appreciation by Service staff of just how different the i-series are, i.e. you patch a 5 series its still a 5 series, patch an i3 and things can change radically. The techs are almost certainly up-to-speed but the rest of the support staff not so much, many haven't even sat in an i3!

@BoMW the whole iDrive incident has been reported to HQ as a cluster*ck, the dealers didn't know what to tell you because they weren't told there was a problem to fix. I strongly suggest if you have the time or inclination to do so ring the UK i helpline, and let them know it was handled badly via the jungle telegraph, I already did this - and my dealer also communicated with someone up the chain to express the same.
 
My i3 is going in next week for 3 days for the recall. Interestingly the car stopped doing it's automatic monthly run up of the REX motor 3 months ago. I assume remote software updates occur.

Geoff
 
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