Check Engine Light

Had a bit of a scare today. Had a Dr. appt and the hospital had recently installed a couple of Level 2 charging stations. As a bonus they are the only 2 shady parking spots and it was in the 90's today, so parked, plugged in, and walked across to the clinic. As usual the doc was late so I got about an hour and a half of free charging. Before leaving the clinic and walking back to the hospital I used ConnectedDrive to climatize the car. Got to the car and the AC was running and it was nice and cool inside. Unplugged the charging cord, climbed in, pushed the start button and got a "check engine" light. Tried to shift into drive, but no go. Hit start/stop to shut it off and tried again. Same thing. Messed around with it for a few minutes and got out to check something, got back in, and this time no check engine light and was able to shift into drive.

Got home and plugged in my Bluetooth OBD dongle and checked for codes. No codes. But on the way home my main iDrive screen went dark with orange letters saying "No Signal" (see my other thread). Don't know if this might have been related or not.

So, had my heart thumping for a few minutes, sitting with an i3 that wouldn't drive. Not sure what caused the check engine or what cleared it, but I'm sure happy that it cleared. Hope I don't see it again.

Fisher99 said:

Had a bit of a scare today. Had a Dr. appt and the hospital had recently installed a couple of Level 2 charging stations. As a bonus they are the only 2 shady parking spots and it was in the 90's today, so parked, plugged in, and walked across to the clinic. As usual the doc was late so I got about an hour and a half of free charging. Before leaving the clinic and walking back to the hospital I used ConnectedDrive to climatize the car. Got to the car and the AC was running and it was nice and cool inside. Unplugged the charging cord, climbed in, pushed the start button and got a "check engine" light. Tried to shift into drive, but no go. Hit start/stop to shut it off and tried again. Same thing. Messed around with it for a few minutes and got out to check something, got back in, and this time no check engine light and was able to shift into drive.

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I didn't have the screen failure, but I have seen the does-not-start/check-engine light problem maybe twice early on in my ownership of the car. (Curiously enough, once I was on the way to a doctor appointment . . . "your blood pressure is a little high," said the nurse.) I think I did something out of sequence in starting it that I just attribute to unfamiliarity. It hasn't repeated recently, and I can't make it happen on purpose (so far).

I've seen the blank display with "No Signal", twice on my 2014 Rex, in fact it happened just yesterday. Both times the system rebooted itself in about 30 seconds while I continued driving. It is interesting as I did have a check engine light which turned on yesterday sometime before the "No Signal" problem. It was gone today. Was interested in doing a scan for error codes but don't have a scanner. Perhaps they are related?

I've seen the blank display with "No Signal", twice on my 2014 Rex,

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How old is your 12v battery? All sorts of strange things start happening when the 12v is end-of-life.

In my case the 12v battery is brand new (see my previous thread "My i3 is Dead".

Fortunately I haven't seen either the check engine or "no signal" since my original post.

Fortunately I haven't seen either the check engine or "no signal" since my original post.

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Someone posted a similar screen crash in Europe, after charging at a public ChargePoint charge station - was attributed to back-end software for the charge station with a glitch in the code - sends code to the car to end charging and display a message on the screen. The bad code sometimes causes the system to choke, after which the car does a recovery reset.

MKH said:

Someone posted a similar screen crash in Europe, after charging at a public ChargePoint charge station - was attributed to back-end software for the charge station with a glitch in the code - sends code to the car to end charging and display a message on the screen. The bad code sometimes causes the system to choke, after which the car does a recovery reset.

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That is indeed interesting, since both of these issues started right after charging at that station (which I had never charged at before). Probably won't be charging there again for some time (no upcoming doctor appts, fortunately), but will definitely keep that in mind.

Question: Does disconnecting the 12v battery cause a reboot of the iDrive system? Would it reset the drive controller? Wondering if this is a way to reset things in case of another check engine light.

The computers in the car run off of the 12vdc circuit, so disconnecting the 12vdc battery would cause them to reboot when reapplied...but, no idea what information might have been kept in NVM. Way back when my 2014 was new, there were some issues with the cellular connection, and pulling its fuse and reinserting it often caused things to restart. THere's a list of fuse functions in the fuse box...wish it were also in the user manual, but it isn't. Might just be easier to pop the fuse out than much with the 12vdc battery.

Yes, pulling a fuse would definitely be easier than disconnecting the 12v battery, if that would trigger the re-boot. I wonder if disconnecting the main traction battery would trigger a re-boot when you reconnect it? That's even easier than pulling a fuse.