[NiallG]

We have had our iX xDrive40 for a couple of weeks now.

Yesterday after starting car when leaving a car park the car suddenly flashed up the 'Check Control Messages' section and showed 2 x messages that Driver Assistance was 'Restricted' and 'Front Collision' detection was disabled. There was only an 'OK' option on those messages - no actions that could be taken other than to contact service. There wasn't any accident/collision that caused this but we weren't on a regular road at that point (in car park).

Now when I try to go into driver assistance mode (when back on regular road) I can only select one of the first 2 x modes (Speed Limiter or Distance Control) - but not the full Driver assistance mode (and doing so flashes up the 'Driver Assistance Restricted' info message).

Has anyone had this issue before / any ideas on how to reset it back to normal?

[Dethsupp0rt]

Originally Posted by NiallG

Has anyone had this issue before / any ideas on how to reset it back to normal?

Are the front sensors in/near the grille blocked in some way? Might be some schmutz on one of them blocking their operation.

[NiallG]

It seems to have fixed itself up now - but took about 3 days. We actually washed the car right after it had stopped working, so no further cleaning of sensors etc were required.

I saw this happen a couple of weeks ago when we were temporarily off main road (on small dirt track for a park), but then it corrected itself about 10 minutes later once we were back on the main road.

I suspect the new iDrive8 maybe needs a little more refinement for this. It was a bit frustrating that I couldn't just go into a menu and manually force it to recheck everything was OK for Driver Assistance - waiting 3 days for it to do it by itself a bit annoying. Hopefully a future update will address that.

[NiallG]

We are still having a lot of issues with this - not sure how others are going with it?

Every few days it seems to randomly come up with the driving assistance restricted issue and fixes itself up a few hours later or next day. Sometimes it's just full DA mode other times it's also the distance control mode too.

The 3 x things it complains about (sometimes just 2 of these) are :
- Lane Changing Assistant
- Front Collision Assistant
- Distance Control

We had thought maybe it's related to rain or going through a car wash but that's not been a factor for a few of times it's happened.

We have it booked in for a service check tomorrow at our BMW dealer/service center - hoping they can figure out whatever is causing it.

[ggalanis]

Originally Posted by Dethsupp0rt

Are the front sensors in/near the grille blocked in some way? Might be some schmutz on one of them blocking their operation.

this has been my experience with the X5 so far as well... when the front of the car gets too dirty or covered in snow, we get similar warnings.

In your case NiallG maybe a loose connection or faulty hardware so hopefully your dealer can find what's wrong and correct it for you. Let us know what they find.

[NiallG]

Originally Posted by ggalanis

this has been my experience with the X5 so far as well... when the front of the car gets too dirty or covered in snow, we get similar warnings.

In your case NiallG maybe a loose connection or faulty hardware so hopefully your dealer can find what's wrong and correct it for you. Let us know what they find.

Hoping it's something simple like this. A few weeks ago I was able to push open one of the little panels and behind it was a wire/sensor just dangling then - didn't seem to be fixed to anything or have any weather/water proofing enclosure at all which seemed strange.
I suspect they just missed a proper QC check and not installed properly. We are in middle of a hot summer here with almost no rain - would think it shouldn't be having any of these issues.

I'll update this thread once I find out more from the service center.

[NiallG]

Car is being looked at now - apparently the 'expert' won't be in until tomorrow though.

We have been given an 2022 iX3 loaner car - wow even though it's also 'new' it seems so last decade and old tech. Physical buttons everywhere and it's just so busy and unstylish compared to the iX. So happy we didn't go for that car - was on our shortlist when we were figuring out which car to get.

[The BOB]

G’day. Curious what the outcome was, has the issue been fixed? I was supposed to pick up my iX40 today, it’s been delayed as the dealer encountered the same issue when prepping the car.

B

[NiallG]

Originally Posted by The BOB

G’day. Curious what the outcome was, has the issue been fixed? I was supposed to pick up my iX40 today, it’s been delayed as the dealer encountered the same issue when prepping the car.

B

Not good at all.. Picked it up weekend before last & I think they'd put some interim/beta version of iDrive on there. It basically kept going haywire every time I went into Assisted drive mode - throwing up sensor errors every few seconds, even once decided to set my speed to 30km/h and had to stop the car as it wouldn't let me override it. No idea how BMW would have signed off on that version, just didn't seem to have been tested at all.

It's back at the dealer again (since Friday) & we have the IX30 loaner again. I asked them to put the earlier version back on if they could (as it was mostly working except for occasional issue every few days) & not to put any beta software on as what they did was potentially dangerous. Still waiting to hear back/get our car back.

[hugo_nz]

Originally Posted by NiallG

Not good at all.. Picked it up weekend before last & I think they'd put some interim/beta version of iDrive on there. It basically kept going haywire every time I went into Assisted drive mode - throwing up sensor errors every few seconds, even once decided to set my speed to 30km/h and had to stop the car as it wouldn't let me override it. No idea how BMW would have signed off on that version, just didn't seem to have been tested at all.

It's back at the dealer again (since Friday) & we have the IX30 loaner again. I asked them to put the earlier version back on if they could (as it was mostly working except for occasional issue every few days) & not to put any beta software on as what they did was potentially dangerous. Still waiting to hear back/get our car back.

That’s unfortunate. I know a fair bit about BMW hardware modules and software and can say that it’s highly unlikely that unapproved/beta software would made it on to a customer car. While iDrive is you interface with the car there are a host of other hardware modules that all interface with each other. My money would be on the modules related to distance and speed control. What is odd though is that they have not told you what the diagnostic scan showed. I’d insist on a copy of the fault memory readout.

[The BOB]

Sorry to hear they haven't fixed it yet. My car is still with the dealer - despite multiple attempts at reprogramming the module causing the error. Should hear today if they need to order a new part. Not sure I'll take delivery if that's the case.

[NiallG]

Originally Posted by hugo_nz

That’s unfortunate. I know a fair bit about BMW hardware modules and software and can say that it’s highly unlikely that unapproved/beta software would made it on to a customer car. While iDrive is you interface with the car there are a host of other hardware modules that all interface with each other. My money would be on the modules related to distance and speed control. What is odd though is that they have not told you what the diagnostic scan showed. I’d insist on a copy of the fault memory readout.

They were supposed to send me the report from when they did the first upgrade, never received it. They did say there were no hardware faults and they only did a iDrive update.

Car is still at dealer (nearly a week now) - getting the 'we are still running tests' thing - not particularly impressed with this service.

From my limited understanding it does sound like the sensors (not sure if these are the hardware modules you mean) either playing up or the iDrive software isn't interfacing with them correctly. The huge decrease in stability of Assisted Drive post a software only upgrade seems to likely point to a very buggy software version.

[hugo_nz]

Originally Posted by NiallG

They were supposed to send me the report from when they did the first upgrade, never received it. They did say there were no hardware faults and they only did a iDrive update.

Car is still at dealer (nearly a week now) - getting the 'we are still running tests' thing - not particularly impressed with this service.

From my limited understanding it does sound like the sensors (not sure if these are the hardware modules you mean) either playing up or the iDrive software isn't interfacing with them correctly. The huge decrease in stability of Assisted Drive post a software only upgrade seems to likely point to a very buggy software version.

In my experience there’s no such thing as “no faults”. The software has a set of parameters and when something happens that’s outside of those parameters the system will log a fault. This could be the dealer trying to hide their ineptitude or BMW trying to save face. As for the sensors, they feed their signals into a central control unit that relays the info to other units on the network. Details on the iX architecture is scant at the mo, but on most modern BMWs the radar cruise and windscreen cameras relay their signals to the BDC (body domain controller) and that module is responsible for interpreting the data. Unless the actual sensor modules are faulty the BDC would be the culprit. T o complicate matters even further the ACC module, for instance, has no diagnostic capabilities in itself and instead has all diagnostics performed by the SAS module (again, using a G05 X5 as the example). I’d personally pressure the dealer for answers.

[NiallG]

Still haven't received my car back - service manager at dealer keeps needing to be chased to & doesn't call when promised - very non plussed by this.
Latest update I received on Thursday : apparently there is 2 cameras around the windscreen area which provide vision for a lot of the assisted driving related features and apparently they are returning blurred imagery, and likely the cause of the errors.
Hopefully it's something that's fixable soon & we can get our car back. I'm still suspicious that the issues were made substantially worse by the iDrive upgrade they did, if they could just roll it back (as I requested) I'm sure it would at least give us a mostly working car until they could replace whatever is faulty. I imagine if parts need replacing like this we might be waiting some time given supply chain issues.

[NiallG]

More news: BMW Australia & Germany have decided the Driver Assistance camera module is faulty on my car - glad at least they've finally figured out what the problem was.
A new one has been ordered (from Germany), will get the car back for a week or so while it's being shipped (will just have to avoid Driver Assistance functions) & then hopefully the replacement will sort things out.

[hugo_nz]

Originally Posted by NiallG

More news: BMW Australia & Germany have decided the Driver Assistance camera module is faulty on my car - glad at least they've finally figured out what the problem was.
A new one has been ordered (from Germany), will get the car back for a week or so while it's being shipped (will just have to avoid Driver Assistance functions) & then hopefully the replacement will sort things out.

Glad they finally got to the root cause for you mate. I had an iX for 24 hours (and have done a fair bit of driving in the iX otherwise) over the weekend and did not have any issues at all. Do you know the production date of your car?

[NiallG]

Originally Posted by hugo_nz

Glad they finally got to the root cause for you mate. I had an iX for 24 hours (and have done a fair bit of driving in the iX otherwise) over the weekend and did not have any issues at all. Do you know the production date of your car?

Thanks - hopefully they have got it right this time. It all worked fine for a few weeks when we got it - started playing up after then.

Production date - really not too sure about that, we got it super early (end of December) - was delivered to us 6 months ahead of schedule due to a spare unit in the country with matching specs. So didn't need to track the order. I can check when it comes back tomorrow - any idea where to find that information (is it in iDrive console or on a plate somewhere)?

[The BOB]

Originally Posted by NiallG

Thanks - hopefully they have got it right this time. It all worked fine for a few weeks when we got it - started playing up after then.

Production date - really not too sure about that, we got it super early (end of December) - was delivered to us 6 months ahead of schedule due to a spare unit in the country with matching specs. So didn't need to track the order. I can check when it comes back tomorrow - any idea where to find that information (is it in iDrive console or on a plate somewhere)?

You'll find a manufacture date sticker on the driver's side b pillar

[NiallG]

Ok - production date is SEP 2021.

[cruzer666]

Originally Posted by hugo_nz

In my experience there's no such thing as "no faults"..

It does happen, as advanced as BMW's are to have something failing without a fault showing up. I just had my HUD fail without any faults, errors, history of anything.

I've had issues with driving assistance when:
1) sensors were dirty. But the car clearly told me to clean them haha
2) one of the short range radar sensors was not fully popped inside it's mounting socket, and kept asking for recalibration

Things happen! This is going to be more and more common, electronic components failing , sometimes without any explanation.

[icylava]

Originally Posted by NiallG

Thanks - hopefully they have got it right this time. It all worked fine for a few weeks when we got it - started playing up after then.

Production date - really not too sure about that, we got it super early (end of December) - was delivered to us 6 months ahead of schedule due to a spare unit in the country with matching specs. So didn't need to track the order. I can check when it comes back tomorrow - any idea where to find that information (is it in iDrive console or on a plate somewhere)?

Does the camera replacement solve the issue?

It seems to me BMW's assisted driving is not robustly tested. I started to have this issue on my new iX3 on the collection day... Initially, I thought it was the weather as it was indeed raining heavily, but the assisted driving gets restricted almost every day even on perfectly clear days...

The most annoying thing is that after the assisted driving is restricted, you are not even able to activate the speed only cruise control... It is going backward in terms of long distance driving

[icylava]

Hi NiallG, I wonder if the "Driver Assistance Restricted" issue has been resolved after the camera module is replaced?

It seems to me this is a rare issue that you and I unfortunately got hit..