Can't get 2014 I3 Rex into Drive

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jashines

Member
Joined
Sep 20, 2020
Messages
5
I have replaced and registered the battery, but I cannot get the car out of park. Even if I could get it into neutral so I could push it to a place where a tow truck could get to it!
 
According to the break-down guide for the i3:
• To bring the vehicle out of a danger zone, you may pull it extremely slowly over a short distance
of no more than 500 m. If possible, make it rollable first by switching the selector lever to N.

You may need to find a towing company that has wheel dollies. They are used to roll cars out of tight parking spaces and parking garages that tow trucks can't easily get into.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaMJB88XWnI

Have you let it sit overnight plugged in to charge? The car's computers sometimes needs time to reset after a battery swap. On a lot of the tools used for battery registration you can look for error notices, and reset them, which can help 'wake up' the car as well.
 
Bought the Vgate Icar OBD II dongle and when I cleared the charging related errors everything resolved itself.
 
Glad to hear you got batter replacement resolved. BMW i3 is very picky when it comes to low voltage on the 12V battery. I went through a 36 hour process to get mine out of park too!

My suggestion to anyone with a 2014-2015 i3, replace your 12V now. Don't wait until you have symptoms, as it can take time to make sure the replacement 12V is fully charged and clearing out codes.
 
It's not a bad idea on any battery replacement to charge it up prior to installation. While they might have a nearly full charge coming out of the factory, and an AGM battery is pretty good about self-discharge, it never hurts to charge it up first and might solve some problems getting going again.
 
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