Windows rolled down

[ted99]

My wife came out to our i3 from a shopping stop and found both front windows fully retracted. She locked the car when leaving, with windows up. Nothing taken. Anyone have an idea what happened here?

[i3an]

Welcome to the Wonderful World of BMW! Press and hold the "lock" button on your remote and after a few seconds the windows roll down, wonderful on a hot day when returning to the car. Not so wonderful when you drop the remote into your purse and it gets depressed as you walk away.....

[jadnashuanh]

I had that happen a few times and solved it by buying the fob cover. Since the fob is symmetrical, and I have comfort access, I put the cover on the fob with the buttons covered. If you use the little slot to put it on a chain, you'd have to make a new hole in the cover, but I don't, so have not. You can still press the buttons, if you want to, with the cover on, but you have to press a bit harder. IMHO, the unlock button is too close to the edge on that remote. And, I think you'll find it's the unlock button you have to hold for the windows to go down.

[FrancisJeffries]

I'm pretty certain that this is NOT caused by accidentally holding the unlock button down for a longish time. It's happened to me three or four times, and twice when it was pouring with rain!
I was pretty certain that the car was still locked on those occasions, but I was more interested in getting them shut than doing thorough diagnostics.
However, the last time it happened it was DEFINITELY still locked and the windows, as on previous occasions, were only half-way down.
I tried the fob cover on backwards and as normal (as suggested by jadnashuanh), but it didn't stop the problem occurring again.
I asked the BMW people to disable the window wind-down facility and they said they could do so by reprogramming the car, but when they tried it wasn't disabled.

[Lincsat]

I've had this happen once, when locking the doors with the fob, the windows rolled down. It turned out that one of the doors was not closed properly. I unlocked, closed the offending door and relocked.

[jadnashuanh]

The default setting in idrive on the i3 is to relock the doors if they are not opened after a delay. SO, it is still highly likely that the windows went down by pressing the unlock button on the remote. The end result would be windows down, but after a delay (a minute or two), the doors locked.

[FrancisJeffries]

The default setting in idrive on the i3 is to relock the doors if they are not opened after a delay. So, it is still highly likely that the windows went down by pressing the unlock button on the remote. The end result would be windows down, but after a delay (a minute or two), the doors locked.

That's a very good point - I hadn't thought of it. But I still wish BMW could disable the FOB-driven windows down for me!

[Mastedon]

Our 2015 i3 has the same problem. Two times now we have come out in the morning and both windows are fully down with the car locked. One other time, both windows have been partially open at the same level with the doors locked. Reading the above comments, we'll have to monitor the use of the FOB. And getting a protective cover.

With all the built in artificial intelligence in the electronics of the BMW, one would think the car could not be locked with both windows fully retracted.

These oddities drive us crazy with the BMW silence on these electrical issues.

[jadnashuanh]

As I said earlier...BMW did think about the locking...it made the assumption that if it was unlocked, but you didn't open a door, it was a 'mistake', and after a delay, will relock them. There's no easy assessment of whether you wanted the windows down or not as instead of a single, short press, to get them to go down, you have to hold the button for awhile. Now, I've found that that is fairly easy do do, depending on what else you may have in your pocket or purse. The force to press the button isn't all that much especially if your pants are tight and you sit.

The same logic applies to at least some of their other model lines, but the design of the fob generally doesn't have the unlock button so close to the edge, which, I think, is the real error in their design.