Lost Memory Buttons For A Day; Does i3 Have Memory Mirrors?

Ok, this was weird, here;s what happened.

I visited a CCS charger yesterday. I doubt it's relevant, but there was another i3 there.

I got a 30 minute top up, and at 80-something percent, I disconnected and moved the car. Again, probably not relevant.

When I got back in the car with the family another 30 minutes later,
- first I noticed the radio was on a strange station
- then noticed both of my side mirrors were out of position, both dipped down quite a bit
- navigation defaulted to "fastest" rather than "eco plus," which is my default setting for nav routing
- finally, I noticed all my memory buttons were blanked out

My first thought was, hey somebody messed with my car! And then, hey the charger reset my car! Ooh, and also, uh-oh, my 12v battery is dying. Followed by, that other i3 driver got in my car by mistake and...

We speculated the car picked up my wife's key as primary, which is the most likely scenario (she hasn't driven MY car yet so hasn't configured anything). I had opened the passenger door first, to load the kids. Then she opened the drivers door, also to load the kids. But then we switched sides. So... probably.

But after getting home and a while later, I went to move the car, and the presets were all still blank.

This morning, everything was back to normal.

So lets go back to most obvious guess #1 -- that the car registered my wife's key as primary because she opened the drivers door. This means the i3 has memory mirrors? Just without buttons to access them?

I may be telling you something you already know, under the assumption the idrives are same from yours ti mine, but I have 4 driver profiles to choose from in the menu for selection (3 BMW drivers and 1 guest). I'm not sure how they relate/program to the fob, since there are usually only 2 fobs, but perhaps selection of a specific driver associated with the fob would initiate the mirror change too.

see https://www.mybmwi3.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4549

BMW Key Dependent Settings
https://www.youcanic.com/wiki/bmw-key-driver-profile-explained

Here is a list of various items that are stored for each key fob and get automatically changed when a specific key is used.

Unlocking and locking.
Lights.
Climate control.
Radio.
Instrument cluster.
Programmable memory buttons.
Volumes, tone.
Control Display.
Navigation.
Park Distance Control PDC.
Rearview camera
Side View.
Head-up Display.
Driving Dynamics Control.
Driver's seat position
*Exterior mirror position*
Steering wheel position.
Cruise control.
Intelligent Safety.
Active Blind Spot Detection

obviously not everything applies to i3

here was some other interesting info
https://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9451922&postcount=10
A cool feature is that if the passenger door is unlocked first the car will ignore the fob that unlocked it as far as switching profiles. The drivers door unlock will trigger the profile associated with the fob nearby when unlocked. Driver's fob sets the profile.

Oh, thanks!

I suppose this is sort of a "well, duh!" topic to post about, as I believe I have it sorted out, and I didn't take the obvious route by playing with my wife's key, which would have confirmed my assumption right off.

What's odd to me is that we own / have owned a number of vehicle with push button start / 2 (even 3) drive memory over the past seven years, and they all adjust various setting based on whose FOB is being used / who is driving vs. in the passenger seat, and not once do I recall this happening in the other vehicles. Yet here I am, not even a month in to i3 ownership, and assuming there was no memory function because there are no driver memory buttons, causing me to be all the more caught off guard.

So i just read through the driver profile section of the manual, when changing profiles via the idrive, it will reassign the profile to the active fob which is the one used to unlock the driver door.

only the guest account wont activate the fob change.

This all makes sense, thanks.

I found the three profilers in iDrive. They're all named (------) with no obvious ways to edit. But at least I know where they're stored.

eNate said:

I found the three profilers in iDrive. They're all named (------) with no obvious ways to edit. But at least I know where they're stored.

Click to expand...

Yeah, iDrive has such an intuitive user interface (NOT!). Whenever presented with a situation in which I think I should be able to do something but without an obvious answer, I press the "Options" button or rock the iDrive controller to the right hoping to find what I'm seeking. Profile names can be edited somehow.

eNate said:

This all makes sense, thanks.

I found the three profilers in iDrive. They're all named (------) with no obvious ways to edit. But at least I know where they're stored.

Click to expand...

all but guest should be renamable. there is a gear icon to the right that allows renaming. You could try reset all to default settings. Apparently its not uncommon for idrive to be reset when getting serviced so you can always export/import profiles by USB.