BMW, I am so breaking up with you

I want to be clear from the beginning. I was never enthusiastic of the car. I have a hand-mi-down volvo in the history of driving that there is a hole in the floorboards and a series of practical vehicles with a VW Golf and a Mazda SUV where I have given my family around 12 years. Then I leased an BMW I4 Electronic car.

What did me pull me toward i4? Unlike other electric vehicles, BMWs do not show anything outside Jetson; I like that they shortens the cars that occur as electronic. I liked that they were much less common than other EVs in North California. Also, I4 with a dozen colors with “Brooklyn Gray” that I know I know ridiculous – I made me delighted that Tesla’s handful of options never could. I can read online that there are software problems that are the beginning of the adoption, but with my soft new BMW dance visit, I conveniently filed that information away. These first few drives also seemed pleasant. The car was beautiful, the journey was smooth and I thought we were going to the places.

About two years later, I am doing something that I never thought I would do: With interest is waiting to finish the lease in a luxurious car because its software is a catastrophe that looks like my rust-out Volvo’s paragon in reliability.

A love story has gone bad

Starts with the most preliminary function: let me count how this relationship was wrong in my own car. On multiple occasions, I stand in the parking lot, the BMW digital key is unable to unlock its door with my phone despite being specially designed for this purpose. It looks like you are trying to steal your own car until you wake up the grocery grocery unless you wake up.

The digital key issues have become so widespread that BMW owners have occasionally shared broad Multiplication Read the instructions for bomb disarmament: “1. Open the BMW app on your phone and use it to unlock the door. 2 sign in with your BMW ID to Idrive.

The user profile system is another practice of useless. I was unable to create a guest profile without being down the user’s classification. In reality what does it mean if someone else drives my car – even once – the car will catch their phone and playlist the moment they are in the Bluetooth range. BMW has made their profile system an additional engineer at a point where it requires obvious linking steps that must really happen automatically.

The car’s carplay integration from the poor to actively dangerous. Software updates regularly break the carplay functionality, requiring complete reboots of the Idrive Infotting system. The opposite camera issue is especially crazy; Put the car contrast while using the carple and when you go back to the drive, you are thrown on the home screen instead of returning to you.

The backup camera itself is virtually unclean and the screen is often hot in less light situations.

There is then LightThe If I don’t think about locking manually after the car is moving away, I will sometimes notice that the external light on my driveway is still shining. I thought it could be a human error for the first time. For the third time, I realized that this is a “feature” where I4 enters a “seodo-sleep mode” that keeps the lights and other systems running indefinitely. Multiple owners have reported the same problem: park the car, move away, their car shines like a beacon and come back later to sew the battery.

There is legitimate security concern beyond the emotions on the basis of the car that has amnesia. 2022 I4 Subject to six reconsisment in the first year, BMW owners told owners that their cars were at risk of fire when they parked their cars and advised them to “stop running this car immediately.” Since then, Recollection of other The battery control unit includes which can cause sudden electricity damage.

BMW publishes software updates for I4 in almost a few months, but the process is full of problems. Updates break regularly connected services, which can lose access to traffic data, weather data, remote parking functions and even MYBMW app connections.

The over-the air update system itself is incredible, the owners report updates that get stuck for several days, forcing dealers to trip for manual installations.

Especially the glory is that BMW is the premium product of these vehicles. If you bought instead of leasing I4 $ 50,000 starts, well -equipped models stress $ 70,000 or more. Meanwhile, the owners of less expensive vehicles, including hundis and lexus models, report on bulletproof connection and unparalleled user experience.

I’m not saying that the company has taken these cars to the market without adequate examination of their digital ecosystem, then decide to consider their customers as a beta tester without taking into account their welfare, but I too Not I’m not saying this.

I really wanted to work this relationship. I4 is gorgeous, drives neatly and represents what I think in the electric vehicle. But I cannot continue any relationship where the most initial tasks – unlock the door, attaching my phone, finding direction – requires patience to a sadhak. (I have no patience of any sadhak.)

Even my technology-intellectual husband, who usually suggests the first user error, recently derived from the car after a particularly frustrating software melldown and declared that “she needs to meditate for a while.”

The ownership of the vehicle should not be a constant source of growing. I don’t have to maintain a mental database of work for the features that should be done only. My software updates should not be afraid because they could break something (mostly) effective.

So BMW, I got it. You made a spectacular car, then it was so ridiculous that it was so ridiculous with such intriguing software. I thought we would drive at sunset together. Instead, as soon as my lease is over, I am giving back my i4K dealership. I was surprised to say I can’t wait.