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Not as an extreme experience, but I have had my i4 since May 30 of this year, and have had it in the shop twice for intermittent messages:
"Drivetrain malfunction" and "high voltage battery". I am bringing it in for the 3rd time in early November to have a part replaced that they had to wait a couple of weeks to get from Germany. Car has worked fine, but the indicator lights and beeps every time I start the car are annoying...
 
That's all so horrible. I hope it gets fixed for all of you, and BMW produces cars in the future without that issue.
 
An update: car is still at the dealership, they can’t figure out what’s wrong with it. I guess there is also cosmetic damage to the rear of the vehicle. BMW didn’t tell me this.. instead I received a phone call from a damage mediation specialist inquiring about how the towing company picked up my vehicle. Apparently the tow truck driver is claiming that the damage was done by BMW during offloading, and BMW is blaming the towing company. I don’t care who is to blame, honestly. As of now I’m feeling like I don’t have a new car at all because what I am left with is a car that doesn’t run AND has been damaged cosmetically. What a joke. Anyone know how I should handle this? Do I start looking into lemon laws once my cars been there for a month? Would it be better to cut my losses?
 
Unfortunately seems like an all too common problem. Just took delivery 11/15/2022 of 23 e40 and 3 days later I’m stuck on the side of an on-ramp waiting for roadside assistance for 4 hours with no heat in 30* weather. “Drivetrain malfunction” and high voltage warning. Unable to drive or turn the car ‘on’ and slowly over the 4 hours of waiting more functions continued to fail. Eventually no lights, couldn’t open the tailgate, etc etc. Between the roadside assistance (or lack there of) and this malfunction. I am left with a very strong desire to get my money back and part ways, if even possible.
 
Unfortunately seems like an all too common problem. Just took delivery 11/15/2022 of 23 e40 and 3 days later I’m stuck on the side of an on-ramp waiting for roadside assistance for 4 hours with no heat in 30* weather. “Drivetrain malfunction” and high voltage warning. Unable to drive or turn the car ‘on’ and slowly over the 4 hours of waiting more functions continued to fail. Eventually no lights, couldn’t open the tailgate, etc etc. Between the roadside assistance (or lack there of) and this malfunction. I am left with a very strong desire to get my money back and part ways, if even possible.
Wow, how crazy that the exact same thing happened to you! Was this right after you charged as well? I hate to assume your situation will be like mine, but I am currently still without a car after 1 month. Every time I contact the service department they tell me they're waiting on a special cable or piece of test equipment specifically for my car. So there's been 0 resolution thus far. I just contacted BMW NA yesterday to start the process of buyback.. I'm not going to spend months without a car while still paying for it. Ugh.
 
Wow, how crazy that the exact same thing happened to you! Was this right after you charged as well? I hate to assume your situation will be like mine, but I am currently still without a car after 1 month. Every time I contact the service department they tell me they're waiting on a special cable or piece of test equipment specifically for my car. So there's been 0 resolution thus far. I just contacted BMW NA yesterday to start the process of buyback.. I'm not going to spend months without a car while still paying for it. Ugh.
I've ordered my car on June 2021. Car broke the day of the checkout with similar problem (drivertrain, power, high-voltage issues) 6 months ago. I've been through your same story: "we are waiting for parts", "we miss a tool", etc. They are still not able to repair it after 6 months.
I've forced them, with a lawyer, to re-build it. I do not want that crap anymore.
 
I've ordered my car on June 2021. Car broke the day of the checkout with similar problem (drivertrain, power, high-voltage issues) 6 months ago. I've been through your same story: "we are waiting for parts", "we miss a tool", etc. They are still not able to repair it after 6 months.
I've forced them, with a lawyer, to re-build it. I do not want that crap anymore.
They are telling me that it’s the AC compressor that short circuited. Waiting on parts from Germany…. I have a feeling that isn’t going to be the fix but we will see.
 
So i got the car back today as of a miracle from somewhere, so i asked them to explain it a bit closer to me what exactly the issue was and what was causing this, so the service guy came out of the back and explained to me and stay with me while i try to explain it, In the electric engine, there is this type of "Brushes" the same type of idea that you will find in a battery driven screwdriver, these brushes have some small "gaps" between them and they are very sensitive to short circuit, inside between this gaps thats were metallic was stuck that was causing a short circuit in the rear engine but the car was still drive able due to being an AWD version so it pretty much if i understood him right it "Cut off" the rear engine completely and let me drive it in FWD mode to the service centre witch is why it suddenly felt a bit "sluggish".

So all in all BMW knows about this issue so far its been only two vehicles that they are aware of and that was one m50 also with it and mine, more might show up in the near future but good to know that they know how to fix it.

Hope you guys wont suffer from this but good to have the car back and as a bonus they updated my software to the latest version that is 07/22, sense BMW seems to be real slow to drop this OTA updates to the cars.
The car doe NOT use the same sort of motor as your cordless drill does. It uses slip rings, not the same type of commutators as cheap simple DC motors. The brush does NOT have to pass over gaps, because there are no gaps. BMW have used this type of motors in all their EV and PHEV cars the last ten years with great success. The reliability is very high and there are other advantages as well, like reduced use of rare earth metals because of the absence, or reduced need of permanent magnets, higher energy efficiency, better regenerating efficiency and so on.
 
The car doe NOT use the same sort of motor as your cordless drill does. It uses slip rings, not the same type of commutators as cheap simple DC motors. The brush does NOT have to pass over gaps, because there are no gaps. BMW have used this type of motors in all their EV and PHEV cars the last ten years with great success. The reliability is very high and there are other advantages as well, like reduced use of rare earth metals because of the absence, or reduced need of permanent magnets, higher energy efficiency, better regenerating efficiency and so on.
Yes and if you would have seen that i wrote " Brushes " witch indicated more or less that it is some kind of version of that and thats how he explained it to me, a metal piece landed between some parts that should not touch each other and caused a short circuit in the rear engine. If you didn't like that explanation well i am sorry to hear that but thats how it was explained to me, so go tell that to the I technician at my service department who explained it in that way.

But that sucked and when that happend to my car that was the 2nd car in the world with this issue reported but there is probably many more with the same date that mine was made that has or will have this issue therefore no recall was made.
 
Yes and if you would have seen that i wrote " Brushes " witch indicated more or less that it is some kind of version of that and thats how he explained it to me, a metal piece landed between some parts that should not touch each other and caused a short circuit in the rear engine. If you didn't like that explanation well i am sorry to hear that but thats how it was explained to me, so go tell that to the I technician at my service department who explained it in that way.

But that sucked and when that happend to my car that was the 2nd car in the world with this issue reported but there is probably many more with the same date that mine was made that has or will have this issue therefore no recall was made.
I read what you wrote, and I am sorry you had bad luck with your car. That, or similar problems can happen to any car, not just BMW, and not just the i4.

As I said, I did read your post, and you actually said: "In the electric engine, there is this type of "Brushes" the same type of idea that you will find in a battery driven screwdriver"
...and that is why I wrote what I wrote. You compared the i4 motor with a cordless drill motor, which is nonsense. The technology is NOT the same at all. The cordless drill uses simple commutators with gaps between the rings, generating sparks and dust and wearing out fast. That's NOT the way the BMW motors work, they use slip rings without gaps in the rings, and as a result, there will be very little dust, no sparks and considerably less wear, which is why BMW dare using such short brushes. Also the service, in case needed, is really simple and fast. Of course, there are gaps BETWEEN the rings but not across, like in a cheap simple DC motor you compared it with.

This what the slip ring motor looks like in the car, in case you haven't seen it before. Schleifringmodule = Slip ring modul and you can clearly see the three brushes, how short they are and how easy it is to change, thogh I don't expect the need of chage during the lifetime of the car, or at least not for a very long time. Of course, if a metal piece somehow ends up in module, that will (may) short circuit the motor coils, but to be honest, that would cause a stop in ANY type of motor, because no motor would continue running with a lose metal piece in it, at least not for a very long time and definitely not at high speed.

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As I said, I am sorry for your trouble, but it's good that your car was the second in the world with that problem, confirming that there are no serious problems with the technology or the quality of work. Of course, statistics is one thing, but your car is the only one of a million, that is no comfort for you at all, which I perfectly understand, since I have a similar experience with another brand, a Mazda 6 I had before the current 330e. It broke down on the motorway in Slovakia, on my way to Hungary on it's premiere tour, after only about 900 km. The problem was the gearbox, the car got towed to Mazda, and they kept it. I can't even speak the language there and they couldn't speak any other language, so I had to take all discussion through the Swedish Mazda rep who called someone in Slovakia and so on... Anyway, the gear box was brand new for Mazda, there was not a single spare in Europe and it took 3 months to get one from Japan. The car got transported back to Sweden during that time, and then finally fixed here. I was globally the only one with that failure according to Mazda. True or not, I have no way to check it, but it is also of no importance, since I wished it was someone else's car, not mine. Pure bad luck, nothing else. After that, I drove the car three more years without any issues before trading in. My case was worst than yours, since I could not carry on driving with the car at all. You could drive slowly, which is for me surprising if there really was a short circuit, but in any case, it doesn't matter, your case is also horrible seen from your perspective.
 
Has anyone gotten this message?

Drivetrain malfunction.

You can continue driving. No roadside assistance required. Reduced engine performance. Have the problem checked by your service center.

hoping this is a minor thing and not serious. Ive had the i4 m50 for a little over a month. No issues otherwise. Drives fine. Just after i was leaving work yesterday and turned the car on from parked that message popped up. I have an appointment tuesday with bmw to look at it.
 
There are a few threads here on i4talk about this error. Sometimes minor, other times not so minor. I encourage a search on your part...
 
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That's not the "Drive Train Malfunction." That's a stop sale for motor issues.
 
Has anyone gotten this message?

Drivetrain malfunction.

You can continue driving. No roadside assistance required. Reduced engine performance. Have the problem checked by your service center.

hoping this is a minor thing and not serious. Ive had the i4 m50 for a little over a month. No issues otherwise. Drives fine. Just after i was leaving work yesterday and turned the car on from parked that message popped up. I have an appointment tuesday with bmw to look at it.
I had it about 2 weeks ago when get into the car. The message disappeared after I started it. No issues. assumed that it was a glitch.
 
I’ve a BMW I4, I just got below notification on the screen while driving. I hope this is something minor. Anyone receive the same?

Image

High-voltage system

You can continue driving. Please have the system checked by your nearest service center to prevent malfunctions and subsequent damage.


Thanks in advance.
 
If the car seems to be running OK, I'll take a guess there is something being detected by the Battery Management System (BMS).
 
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