BMW 5 Series

"With the wireless carplay, most of the time it will connect, and then other times it will not connect at all."

"Poorly integrated with BMW’s own system, leaving some BMW system features unavailable Frequently says CarPlay features do not exist (which DO exist). Often won’t connect to phone. Worst BMW wants to charge $80 per year. Will not renew. Note: have had CarPlay in rental vehicles which seemed to work better."

"There are two issues, one being minor and the other very major. The minor issue relates to the display of information from a Bluetooth source--it does not always work correctly. The very major problem is that this car is a hybrid. After not driving the car for two weeks while on a cruise, the hybrid system would not work. There were confusing messages on the data screen, one said to not drive the car, but contact BMW, and when you cleared this, the next message said it was okay to drive the car, but it would have reduced power. This latter message was also displayed on the dashboard. Based on this I drove the car. After about 10-12 miles, the car quit on me, completely black. No display of any type. Would not restart. Fortunately, the emergency flashers did still work. So the car was towed to the BMW dealer. The short answer is that a glitch in the software portion that controls the big hybrid battery (controls the opening and closing of contacts for the different battery cells, or so I was told) allowed the contacts to open close when they should not. The BMW system keeps track of this and when it reached a limit, it shut down the hybrid system completely. This car, I was told, has no conventional alternator to charge the 12 volt system that supplies power to the car accessories, lights and even to the ignition. The 12 volt system gets charged from a bleed down from the 350 volt hybrid system, since the hybrid motor is located in the toque converter spot in the transmission. So normally, the 12 volt system would get charged as needed; however, when the hybrid system shut down, the only power the car had for lights, accessories and the car's gasoline engine ignition system was the power residing in the 12 volt battery. Since it was not getting charged, it ran out and the car just died, completely. The local BMW dealer got all its instructions on repairing the car from BMW central /main office in US. I am told that the software issue is fixed and all the software for the entire car has been reloaded (this has led to the MP3 interface working more erratically than before). However, my confidence in the car has been shaken. Just last summer I was driving in nowhere-ville in nothern Wyoming, where the nearest BMW dealer would have been several hundred miles away. To BMW's credit, they replace the entire hybrid system: drive motor, cables, big battery, control units--supposedly all of it. Since the car has been returned to me almost a month ago, I have not experienced any issues, except the MP3 interface display being more erratic---sometimes only part of the information is displayed. The car always seemed to struggle with interfacing smoothly by Bluetooth (worse than my 2011 Lexus did)."

"Fuel gauge displayed incorrect fuel level right out of the showroom. Took 3 days and many calls to have it taken back. Turned out to be simple re-calibration issue."

"The headlights worked fine when driving, so not a safety issue. However, the sensor for the automatic feature that turns on the lights when it gets dark went bad. When I would be parked with the accessories still on, or parked idling, the headlights would turn off and on as if they were trying to decide if it was dark enough to turn on or not. This would happen even if the car was just under a carport area during the day, and also happened when pulling into my garage at night (once the car stopped). This started after about a year of leasing the car. The dealer fixed it at no charge."

"Loose spoiler on trunk. Loose weatherstripping on driver door."

"Twice the driver side door has needed replacement because it has come loose"