I had a 3G to 4G TCU upgrade to prove a point.

[djbrh]

What we really need is someone to do the CAN bus hacking necessary to be able to lock/unlock and acclimatize from a 3rd party device. Then there’d be nothing stopping someone from creating a fairly cheap box that could do this with a 3rd party app and a device to talk to it. That could be an MMI Prime box with some kind of USB or wifi hotspot, potentially.


—Donnie

[eNate]

Traffic days has been communicated by a variety of different modes.

Initially it was transmitted over the pager network. That early mode probably transitioned to the pre 2G cell network, and in that space FM and XM/Sirius were also providers.

I think with the current state of high capacity cellular data networks and our cars all with the capability to be always connected, that's the preferred method that most everything has transitioned to.

Of course here is the perfect example of when that system falls to pieces.

[alohart]

Basic traffic information is transmitted via FM. My 2009 E90 still shows traffic alerts in the nav system even though all telematics functions went dark five years ago.

Since I chose not to renew RTTI due to its being too outdated where I live to be of any value, the nav system hasn't displayed any traffic information. So a U.S. i3 must not get any traffic info via FM, or maybe it's not broadcast in Honolulu.

[djbrh]

Well, I don’t think it’s been posted here, but AgentMi, the guy who has posted here in the past about a potential battery upgrade solution for us, is working on a TCU. Says hardware goes to production in a week or two that would give us wifi and cell connectivity in a new piggyback TCU (so you don’t even remove your old one). Claims to have already hacked the CAN bus and can control everything we care about, just needs to move from prototype hardware to manufactured hardware. Will also be doing a new mobile app that will link through the cloud. Cost should be very reasonable.

Will be interesting to see if/when this happens. It may not be trivial to install, however, as it sounds like it’s gonna require a new cell antenna be retrofitted somewhere, but otherwise shouldn’t be too bad.


—Donnie

[MKH]

Will be interesting to see if/when this happens. It may not be trivial to install, however, as it sounds like it’s gonna require a new cell antenna be retrofitted somewhere, but otherwise shouldn’t be too bad.

Well, that would take care of remote preconditioning, etc. Wonder the cost, though. The hardware is only 1/3 of the equation. BMW gets a deal from ATT for cell/data service. Individually that would run $10 to $30 a month, depending on the data plan. If you add some form of crash detection/emergency services notification, another $15 a month, and that still doesn't connect you to BMW for any of the BMW Connected Drive services. Might end up being price-prohibitive for value provided..

[djbrh]

Will be interesting to see if/when this happens. It may not be trivial to install, however, as it sounds like it’s gonna require a new cell antenna be retrofitted somewhere, but otherwise shouldn’t be too bad.

Well, that would take care of remote preconditioning, etc. Wonder the cost, though. The hardware is only 1/3 of the equation. BMW gets a deal from ATT for cell/data service. Individually that would run $10 to $30 a month, depending on the data plan. If you add some form of crash detection/emergency services notification, another $15 a month, and that still doesn't connect you to BMW for any of the BMW Connected Drive services. Might end up being price-prohibitive for value provided..

Nah, trust me, it can be done cheaply enough. There are IoT applications like this already that don’t take much monthly data so the cost for the SIM is really low. Covering the cloud services charge is also low, and it SEEMS like AgentMi isn’t trying to make money on this side of it, either. We’ll see, but I think it’ll be a handful of bucks per month at most. AgentMi is also working on letting this stuff work ONLY via wifi for folks who don’t want/need the cloud side, too, so some folks can get the features they need for nothing per month.


—Donnie

[airman2482]

The BMW dealer replaced the 3G Telematics unit in my 2017 Rex (under BMW warranty until end of Feb 2022) with a new 4G telematics unit. Remote services work great. More reliable.

It works more reliably in remote areas where 3G is spotty.

Now if I could install an NBT-EVO / ATM telematics module pair and get the dealer to get BMW to switch the ICC/IMEI in their database from this new 4G telematics unit to an ATM.

I called customer service and renewed for another year.

[3pete]

The BMW dealer replaced the 3G Telematics unit in my 2017 Rex (under BMW warranty until end of Feb 2022) with a new 4G telematics unit.

Did they do the replacement out of goodwill or did you pay for the upgrade? If you don't mind sharing, were your prices similar to the OP's, about $900 for the TCU and $500 for install + ISTA programming?

Was there any hesitation from the dealer on doing this work?

[djbrh]

The BMW dealer replaced the 3G Telematics unit in my 2017 Rex (under BMW warranty until end of Feb 2022) with a new 4G telematics unit.

Did they do the replacement out of goodwill or did you pay for the upgrade? If you don't mind sharing, were your prices similar to the OP's, about $900 for the TCU and $500 for install + ISTA programming?

Was there any hesitation from the dealer on doing this work?

I don’t mean to put words in someone else’s mouth, but he does say “under BMW warranty”, so I think it’s safe to assume he didn’t pay for it and doesn’t know what they would have charged, either. Sounds like he has a 2017 with an extended or CPO warranty, so they had no choice but to do it for him.

But as near as I can tell, that’s probably the ONLY way any dealer is going to do it. They’ve been told not to. They probably stand to get in trouble for trying to activate 4G boxes on the cars that are blackballed now, probably because they don’t have many left and want to save the boxes they have for the cars that need it under warranty. The have washed their hands of the rest of us.


—Donnie

[eNate]

The telematics box has commonality with a number of vehicles in the BMW lineup, so it's not as if they're facing a limited inventory of spare i3 parts sitting on a shelf in a warehouse. This box remains in production so the only supply shortage could be the temporary log jams felt by all in the automotive sector at the moment, and the unknown factor of exactly how many owners would pony up the necessary cash to make this conversion.