Hello all,
My wife has a 2025 BMW iX which I leased thanks to the education on this forum. In May, she used the auto park feature to park in the driveway. To park, you have to back in, line up, manually open the gate, and drive straight back about 10-12 feet. There is a black, non-reflective fence on the driver’s side and the yard on the passenger. She thought this would be the ideal situation to test this feature. She selected auto park and had her hands on the wheel. The car went a foot back, accelerated and jerked to the wheel to the left. By the time she could react, the car had hit the fence. None of the alerts went off, there was no red on the image, and definitely no sound–just shock. She immediately called insurance and BMW–whose response after running the VIN was, “that shouldn’t have happened.” They recommended taking to the dealer and running special diagnostics. The bumper was hanging off the back, so I specifically asked if we should take it to the dealer first or to the bodyshop (have this in an email). The BMW specialist said that having the bumper repaired wouldn’t interfere with the necessary diagnostics. We took it to the bodyshop, then immediately to the dealer. At that time, there was a cursory inspection and they told us to bring it back for a more specialized technical inspection. They also mentioned that they had seen this before. For the next visit to the dealer, the car remained at the dealer for 2 weeks. When we picked it up, they mentioned that the car’s history was wiped as the bumper had been replaced first and they couldn’t assess the cause of the incident. I asked for the service manager and explained to him my conversation with BMW. He told me there was an extra technical evaluation that could review the software and recommended that I contact BMW directly. BMW said they were not aware of anything else that could be done. He proceeded to spend 25 minutes telling me how sensitive and delicate these cars are and that, “these things happen.”
I am not sure how to proceed. Would this be a Lemon Law incident? We are out our deductible, will see an insurance increase, the value of the car has decreased, and have to spend $1000 to fix the fence. I know my wife well, she is meticulous, there is no possibility that she is misrepresenting the accident. We have been tracking the car and it has done some odd things: stopped in the middle of the street when there were no cars/people around. Just yesterday, as we were driving down our 2 way street, it yelled at us as a car was passing, then proceeded to yell for another 30 seconds when there was nothing there. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!
