[P.K.]

I put my i8 away for the winter as I did last year. Only difference is that this time I didn't lock it. If you lift the car, as I did last year to take load off the tires and suspension, the car sounds the alarm. Leaving it unlocked solved the problem. So I thought..... 6 weeks later, and my local BMW dealer having earned "I" status, I decided to take it in for warranty work on the turbo oil feed and drain tube seals. The car was possessed! - doors wouldn't close, windows returned open, big red car on the display, warning not to shut off engine or it couldn't be restarted- even though it wasn't running. After much fiddling, I somehow got it in neutral so that I could roll it out to be towed. All lights were on. It had to be dragged off the flat deck at the dealers. The next day, the diagnosis- 274 trouble codes, all different. 3 days later, after being plugged into the mother ship in Munich, determined complete failure of the hybrid drive! My car has the dubious honour of being the first known "I" car in North America to suffer this random cascading and total failure. Under warranty I am getting new everything associated with the hybrid system including the main battery, controller, ECU, and many other modules. The cause- unknown. The status of the car was safety lockdown as though it had been in a serious collision - the only safety action that wasn't taken was the airbags. The Hybrid drive fortunately has an 8 year warranty. My dealer is gathering the parts from wherever it can so that in theory I get the car back in late January. My question is about avoiding this in the future and what can my peers in these awesome cars do to avoid this - My car was in warm loving storage, plugged into a maintainer, covered and 5 feet up in the air on its own hoist. My 05 Smart diesel is doing the chores now.

[patsgarageonline]

Originally Posted by P.K.

My car was in warm loving storage, plugged into a maintainer

Wow, I'm sorry to hear this happened to you. This is very alarming.

I have one question. When you said that the car was plugged into a maintainer, what does that mean?

[P.K.]

I used a digital battery maintainer (CTEK ) plugged into the accessory receptacle to keep the 12 volt battery charged. Same as the year before. To avoid possible overcharging I had it plugged into a timer that cycled it 12 hours on 12 hours off. I sent the charger into the Dealer along with the car. They say it was a completely innocent bystander. I have since learned that the main battery charges the 12 volt battery so a maintainer is redundant. Last year the main battery went from 3/4 charge to 1/3 charge over a 4 month period. I could have used my main charger and did so before taking the car from storage.
While the situation is alarming for sure - I assume this is a rare situation and the hybrid system is warranted for 8 years- if it happens again at 7 1/2 years I will be a bit more alarmed.

[jcpca356]

i just plug it for a week and leave it out for another week. Been doing it for 5 winters now. no loss in range (not that it's long to begin with lol)