In a series of unfortunate events, my job moved me twice during my lease term (which made my commute 120+ miles round trip each time ) and I I’m now near the end of my lease and over my mileage allowance. I’m thinking about eating the cost now and getting out, but:
If I drive the car until my lease is up in October, the amount I’d pay in excess mileage then is about the same as the negative equity would be now (based on the best offer I’ve recieved relative to the current payoff quote), however…
After the first year, my i4 started exhibiting CCU/battery issues and would be considered a lemon if BMW would repair it. They’ve stonewalled me by clearing the CCU and temp faults as well as the whole HV system failure the car had and are insisting the car is functioning as intended so that they can avoid that case.
If I can get a repair and get the lemon case settled, best case is that could very well be classified as willful negligence and mean an additional 2x in civil penalties. This would be the ideal scenario but seems unlikely since BMW is aggressively litigious and highly incentivized to not fix the car.
At this point, I’m tired of commuting in an EV. It was fine when I was averaging a total of 10-30 miles per day and had a garage, but between having failures to charge at public stations, battery temperature faults, and the impending cost of mileage, I’m not sure if I just keep driving this thing until it has a failure BMW can’t ignore or just eat the negative equity and move on. Hell, I don’t even know what I’d lease next since seeing the vast difference in how my friend’s Audi lemon case and my BMW situation have been handled has made me averse to getting another BMW, or any EV that isn’t an Audi/Porsche.
TL;DR: I can sell my borderline lemon i4 to Carmax and pay about the same cost as the excess mileage at the end of my lease but lose any chance of recouping costs. I do not have a car queued up and don’t know where to start anymore. Do I eat the cost, just deal with it for a few months + wait until feeling burnt out fades, or do some secret third thing?
Thanks in advance for the advice/therapy/jokes at my expense. All are equally appreciated.
First of all, did you consult a lawyer to see if you have a lemon law case? Might be worth a couple of hundred dollars in consultation fees if you think you have a chance and send a lawyer notice to BMW.
Secondly, you said the negative equity now is equal to the mileage overage. Did you consider the monthly payment from now till the end of the lease? If I remember right, BMW also sells miles at a small discount towards the end of the lease. Might want to consider that. And also try to get quotes from as many places as you can to buyout your car.
BMW doesn’t let you transfer in the last 6 months of the lease so that is unfortunately not an option here.
It sounds like you are fed up with the car. Might be worth paying some money to get rid of it and get into something else that you will enjoy driving on your long commute.
You know that lemon law attorneys do not charge customers, they charge manufacturers, right? Just find a good LL attorney and hopefully this will come off your hands with no penalties and money back to you. Start with Adam Zolonz, David Zand or Jacob Kashani.
You somehow managed to pack a good advice and absolute silliness in there. Yes to LL, no to fees that they simply don’t charge. They either take a case on contingency or they don’t. Hope OPs car qualifies for the new CA LL rules (specifically it had to leased as either brand new car or a CPO demo or loaner).
I’ve been working the lemon issue since January 2025 (faults started in 11/2024 and got worse since, full HV system failure in August 2025 and that wasn’t enough) and since then I’ve tried a few lemon lawyers that all insist on a repair since them finding the faults. The car qualifies, it was leased new and the issue was identified at about 12k miles so even with the absurd mileage the majority was after the issue was first identified.
I was referred to Jacob since he’s a friend of one of my close friends, who’s in receipt of the double-digit number of repair orders that say “no fault found” but I’m not expecting a miracle here. 3 different attorneys prior to him have refused to pursue this because even though there are documented and established faults, they don’t want to go up against BMW without a documented repair.
Monthly payments and insurance amortized over the next ~3 months vs. the same payments on another lease… either way, that’s going to be a recurring expense, so I’m not factoring that in. Just mileage excess @ the steeply discounted rate of $0.23/mile vs. ~$5k out of pocket today.
Here’s the thing to hopefully make you feel better…you would have been paying for these miles any way you cook it…if you owned (in resale)…if you leased with the proper miles used (even tho would have been cheaper per mile but a higher payment)…etc.
So not really a penalty as you are just paying how you had to use the car. No real way around it!
Get it over with and have fun getting the next car! Tho here in SoCal insurance is sky rocketing on any car with any decent OOOMPHHH, was quoted 4K on an new X3 M50 we leased but luckily we have Geico for less than half that…so make sure you shop insurance too (if it matters to you)!
Yeah, I’ve accepted that the reality is the circumstances changed from when I initially signed the contract and the mileage was warranted for the promotion(s). The two real pain points are losing the potential of writing the car off as a lemon given the past almost 2 years of issues, and that even though I was thinking about an i5/i7/X550e or something I now have to look at BMW differently. Never been loyal to a “brand” or anything but this has been abysmal. Regardless, I’m going to have to be objective and just find the best bang for buck.
I’ve searched basically every existing forum post and there has only been some slight overlap. It’s looking like it’s either a cooling system issue, power cell issue, temp sensor issue, CCU issue, or combination of the above. This thing’s gone to 4 different dealerships 10+ different times and gone through TSARA. Ultimately, they just plug it on the in house level 2 charger and say it’s working as intended.
Also, I thought about going in as a pro se litigant but I doubt that’d help against lawyers that are notorious for fighting even well-documented and thoroughly-repaired lemon issues. BMW NA seems to have a reputation.
And try to emphasize that you do WANT TO STAY LOYAL to the brand but they need to stand behind their products if they want you stay a loyal customer. No need to tell them about LLAs turning you down, present it as you doing it yourself to resolve it amicably. Ask them to give you one of three choices:
Lemon - least favorable to them.
Cash and keep - ask for all your payments back but the car keeps clean title.
Collateral replacement with another i4 - highly unlikely but you got nothing to lose by asking and shows flexibility on your part.
First case went on for a few months before they closed it, second case went on for a few weeks before they said they can’t find any issues and to just keep taking it to the dealer, effectively wasting everyone’s time and the loaner car’s mileage.
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, Irvine BMW will eventually have a 2026 X3M50 loaner that I put ~400 miles on, which might help someone else. Circle of life.
Since it got flagged early, it’d be 2 full years of monthly payments, insurance, 2 sets of Michelin PS4S, registration, charging @ ~$60/week, blinker fluid, the whole 9 yards… That alone is a significant amount, let alone the potential of willful negligence making that a total 3x payout? I swear at this point I’m driving this thing hoping that it spontaneously combusts with or preferably without me in it.
Dang, I just got an M50 from Crevier since Irvine didn’t have what I wanted, both deals similar. Irvine has been good to me over any car bought/serviced with them tho.
