i3 Motor/gearbox failure... help!

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I3boy

New member
Joined
Jun 22, 2021
Messages
4
Help!
BMW have advised that the EME motor and possibly the gearbox needs replacing on my 2015 i3 with 89k miles on the clock. £5k and £3K respectively. No goodwill available due to mileage and BMW UK tell me that the design life of the car is 90K miles (150k kms). 8 years warranty on the battery in not much good if you have to pay £8k+ to replace the drivetrain every five years

Anyone know of an independent who will put in a salvaged motor/gearbox?

I am shocked that BMW can produce an environmentally friendly vehicle with such a low design lifetime and make it so unreliable. Any manufacturer that claims to produce an ECO friendly car and that car needs a drivetrain replacement every five years is a fraud.

regards

i3boy
 
First off, that BMW rep telling you the design life of the car is 90K miles is total BS. You need to email or write the Managing Director of BMW UK with this info, as that person should be fired on the spot for making up cr@p like that while representing BMW. BMW has had media releases showing i3's on the road with 200k plus miles, and I have seen many owners posting their high-mileage i3s with over 200k, even 300k miles on them, still going strong. Think about it. If the this were the case, this and other i3 boards would be so full of dying i3 complaints you would see nothing else. Of course that is small consolation if you happen to own that 1 car in 10,000 that ends up with an expensive failure needing repair.

That said, this is a scenario I thought about before buying, and deciding on not taking an (very expensive) extended warranty. I will transpose my logic on to your situation. With the mileage on your 2014, if you were to go looking to buy that retail at a dealer, you'd be paying around $9,000 pounds. Trade-in/wholesale would be around $6,000 pounds. Salvage value on the car should be around $5,000 to $6000 pounds (the battery pack alone is worth $4k for home solar system backup). You have to ask yourself (as I would) does it make economic sense to spend as much as $8,000 pounds to repair a car (if you can't find an independent mechanic to work on it) that will end up still only being worth $6,000 pounds after the repair? With the i3 already discontinued in the USA this month, and will be discontinued in the Europe in a year or so, for me, I'd be taking my lumps, selling my car as salvage, and moving on. There are several 'scrappers' in and around the EU buying salvage i3's and parting them out - one in Lithuania in particular I see on eBay frequently, selling used i3 parts. Copart UK aslo auctions off salvage cars.

You might also post on the i3 FaceBook page, if you are on FB. Lots of UK owners there, who might have advice. https://www.facebook.com/groups/BMWi3
 
There are many reports of gearbox/motor failures, most are fixed under warranty, so make sure you get a warranty. Of course some cars will do more than 100K although I doubt that many 64ah BEV's will have, given the poor range.

The BMW lifecycle cost model is based on 150K Kilometres/90K Miles and they don't provide warranty for cars beyond 90k.....Google it. BMW offer the lowest warranties possible with "optional" extensions so customers can take three year or longer leases. Warranties from other manufacturers are way better than BMW. Avoid!
 
I3boy said:
There are many reports of gearbox/motor failures, most are fixed under warranty, so make sure you get a warranty.
I've been a member of this forum and the Facebook Worldwide BMW i3 group for ~7 years. I've read very few reports of motor or gearbox failures, certainly many fewer than A/C compressor failures, for example. I felt no urgency to buy an expensive extended warranty when our included warranty expired because the percentage of i3 owners who had experienced expensive failures seemed very small.
 
I'm with Art on this. There's probably more that can go wrong with just the engine in many ICE vehicles than there is on this entire car. I said no to the extended warranty too, especially with my 2021 being a BEV and not a REX.
 
New, immature technology has new (and interesting :)) failure modes. Batteries were a big concern - hence the 8 year warranty on the battery -- but the battery warranty is not much use if the motor/gearbox/EME fails after five years and 90K miles.

Quite a bit of EV related electric motor bearing wear research out there :

Paper: Electrical bearing failures in electric vehicles Feng HE, Guoxin XIE*, Jianbin LUO* State Key Laboratory of Tribology,
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China Received: 08 September 2019 / Revised: 26 November 2019 / Accepted: 17 December 2019 © The author(s) 2019.

Abstract: In modern electric equipment, especially electric vehicles, inverter control systems can lead to complex shaft voltages and bearing currents. Within an electric motor, many parts have electrical failure problems, and among which bearings are the most sensitive and vulnerable components. In recent years, electrical failures in bearing have been frequently reported in electric vehicles, and the electrical failure of bearings has become a key issue that restricts the lifetime of all-electric motor-based power systems in a broader sense. The purpose of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the bearing premature failure in the mechanical systems exposed in an electrical environment represented by electric vehicles. The electrical environments in which bearing works including the different components and the origins of the shaft voltages and bearing currents, as well as the typical modes of electrical bearing failure including various topographical damages and lubrication failures, have been discussed. The fundamental influence mechanisms of voltage/current on the friction/ lubrication properties have been summarized and analyzed, and corresponding countermeasures have been proposed. Finally, a brief introduction to the key technical flaws in the current researches will be made and the future outlook of frontier directions will be discussed.

All that current flowing around when you max the throttle could take out the motor bearings. This failure mode doesn't exit in ICEs.

If you go into your dealership with bearing noise from the back end, the first thing they will tell you is .... Sorry to say motor/gearbox failure does happen and if not covered by the warranty that'll be 9k ... thank you.
 
I3boy said:
There are many reports of gearbox/motor failures, most are fixed under warranty, so make sure you get a warranty. Of course some cars will do more than 100K although I doubt that many 64ah BEV's will have, given the poor range.

The BMW lifecycle cost model is based on 150K Kilometres/90K Miles and they don't provide warranty for cars beyond 90k.....Google it. BMW offer the lowest warranties possible with "optional" extensions so customers can take three year or longer leases. Warranties from other manufacturers are way better than BMW. Avoid!

Are there any tell-tail signs of this happening before it happens? Or is it a sudden onset?
 
We had motor failure with our i3 MY2015 and around 71,000km on the clock.
Last week the car started to make some metallic noise when driving around 40-50km/h, at first it was not so loud but quickly came louder. It was easier to get noise if the torque was little higher when accelerating and after that coasting between 40-50km/h.

Went to BMW service on monday, after few hours service guy confirmed the noise and said that the car is not safe to drive and needs to stay in service cneter.. Yesterday I got the answer from BMW service what's really wrong with the car and they told the motor is broken and needs to be replaced with new one (5400eur for the motor and around 1700eur for the work)
The sad thing is that we bought the car about two weeks ago :D
 
JTY said:
...
The sad thing is that we bought the car about two weeks ago :D

Doh!

Private party purchase, I presume? That's terrible!
 
eNate said:
JTY said:
...
The sad thing is that we bought the car about two weeks ago :D

Doh!

Private party purchase, I presume? That's terrible!

It was bought from used car dealer. Today BMW Finland told that they don't give any goodwill and the car dealer don't want to pay for the new motor.
They are trying to push for a used motor LOL :)
 
I wouldn't necessarily object to a used motor if I could verify year and mileage of the donor vehicle, and was paying out of pocket. But if the used car dealer is on the hook to pay for repairs, may as well push for new. Though I suspect if they are obligated to repair the vehicle, they are also allowed to cancel the sale and refund your money?
 
Car is still at service, we decied to take the offer for used motor and they are installing it currently.
Let's see if that cures the noice and how long the motor will last, motor was from a i3 that had been driven for 10,500km.
 
Just received the car from service and the sound is gone.
Here's video before service:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH-GDeoh3F8
 
JTY –

Glad to hear that the motor swap cured your problem!

I watched most of the video and I didn't hear anything unusual – can you recommend a good time in the clip where the noise happens?
 
frictioncircle said:
JTY –

Glad to hear that the motor swap cured your problem!

I watched most of the video and I didn't hear anything unusual – can you recommend a good time in the clip where the noise happens?

It's pretty obvious at the beginning... it's a definite whine that shouldn't be there.
 
It's clearly audible on the beginning and later in the video. It starts when coasting and then pressing accelrator lightly.
You need good speakers or headphones to hear it as the frequency for the sound is little special, but the sound is more whirring than pure whining.
 
Not much help, but I bought an I3S from new. It's done 11k miles and I just had a new gearbox fitted under warranty. The car still drove but there was a clicking sound, like there was something stuck in the tyre. I have no idea how much it would cost if it wasn't under warranty. But I think the rule for all BMWs is only ever have one under warranty. They're too expensive when they go wrong, and they go wrong a lot. Good luck, I really hope you get some help from BMW.
 
But I think the rule for all BMWs is only ever have one under warranty. They're too expensive when they go wrong, and they go wrong a lot.

Most of us have BMW i3's out of warranty, without any issues. For every one post of major repair, are thousands who could post they have had no out of warranty repairs at all (like my 2015). The i3 is quite reliable - otherwise the i3 boards would be filled with flaming posts about failed cars and expensive repairs - they aren't.

JD Power rates the i3 at 83/100 in reliability, which puts it in the top 10%. of cars. JD Power also rates BMW i3 as #2 in the Best Small Premium Used Car category. BMW as a manufacturer actually rates eighth overall in dependability, well above the industry average, and above the likes of Honda which is often looked on as the 'gold standard' in vehicle dependability.

That said - yes they are expensive to repair if something goes wrong - as are most modern cars these days, which are pretty much a collection of rolling linked computer and complex integrated mechanical systems, where what was once 'repair' the faulty part', is now 'replace the faulty system'.
 
MKH said:
But I think the rule for all BMWs is only ever have one under warranty. They're too expensive when they go wrong, and they go wrong a lot.

Most of us have BMW i3's out of warranty, without any issues. For every one post of major repair, are thousands who could post they have had no out of warranty repairs at all (like my 2015). The i3 is quite reliable - otherwise the i3 boards would be filled with flaming posts about failed cars and expensive repairs - they aren't.

JD Power rates the i3 at 83/100 in reliability, which puts it in the top 10%. of cars. JD Power also rates BMW i3 as #2 in the Best Small Premium Used Car category. BMW as a manufacturer actually rates eighth overall in dependability, well above the industry average, and above the likes of Honda which is often looked on as the 'gold standard' in vehicle dependability.

That said - yes they are expensive to repair if something goes wrong - as are most modern cars these days, which are pretty much a collection of rolling linked computer and complex integrated mechanical systems, where what was once 'repair' the faulty part', is now 'replace the faulty system'.

My take is if anyone plans to keep this car long term, put aside a couple of hundred dollars a month aside for future repairs, tires, etc. That's what I'm doing. I know eventually my 2018 BEV will need work...but until then, I'm building a nest egg for it. And if I don't use it, even better.
 
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