2016 M3 Electronics

[jttBimmer]

I took PCD delivery on 8/28 and me and my g/f stopped in Savannah, GA on the way back to FL.

As we were driving out of Savannah I had a weird experience with the electronics. Only a few hundred miles on the ticker. There was a malfunction in the nav where it was telling us to make a left when the screen was clearly showing to take a right. Right around that time I started experiencing the digital part of the instrument cluster blinking cycling through different images it showed.

Of course concerned I started looking for a spot to safely pull off to the side of the road to try turning the car on/off. Right about the time I could have it stopped happening and never happened again for the rest of the drive home with multiple starts/stops in between.

With so much of these cars controlled by computers and electronics these days it obviously had me concerned. I was thinking unless it happens again I would wait until my 1200 mile service (half-way there already) and have them run some diagnostics.

Thoughts? Has anyone had this happen to them? Would it be more prudent to get it checked out right away?

[gearboxtrouble]

As you said the software can be enormously complex and sometimes a simple reboot fixes everything. If it doesn't happen again I'd just put it down to some sort of harmless bug. If it keeps happening you might want to ask the dealer to test your battery. I had this happen on my e92 m3 and it was related to a battery problem. They replaced the battery and it never happened again.

[afadeev]

Originally Posted by jttBimmer

I took PCD delivery on 8/28 and me and my g/f stopped in Savannah, GA on the way back to FL.

As we were driving out of Savannah I had a weird experience with the electronics. Only a few hundred miles on the ticker. There was a malfunction in the nav where it was telling us to make a left when the screen was clearly showing to take a right. Right around that time I started experiencing the digital part of the instrument cluster blinking cycling through different images it showed.

Of course concerned I started looking for a spot to safely pull off to the side of the road to try turning the car on/off. Right about the time I could have it stopped happening and never happened again for the rest of the drive home with multiple starts/stops in between.

With so much of these cars controlled by computers and electronics these days it obviously had me concerned. I was thinking unless it happens again I would wait until my 1200 mile service (half-way there already) and have them run some diagnostics.

Thoughts? Has anyone had this happen to them? Would it be more prudent to get it checked out right away?

Nav sending your the wrong way is not a bug, it's a feature.
Half the time I double check the rout with Google maps anyway, and always take BMW Nav directions with a grain of salt.

w.r.t. "instrument cluster blinking cycling through different images it showed" - I'm not entirely sure what that means. But if you can't reproduce the problem on demand, neither will the dealer. And you will likely waste your time trying to convince them that you weren't seeing things (BTDT attempting to get them to address a speaker rattle - they could not "hear" it, so I fixed it myself).

If you are still worried about it a few days later, take it to the dealer just to feel better. Or wait until your 1200 mile break-in service.

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[Bmwguy11]

This only happens when they change something in the matrix.

[jttBimmer]

wrt the nav - I've leased a 335i in the past and currently also have an X5 and I know the BMW nav directions aren't always the greatest... but I've never seen (or I guess heard) the voice directions give conflicting directions compared to the screen. Maybe coincidence these things happened at about the same time.

wrt the cluster - the digital portions of the cluster were blinking on and off at a slow speed (maybe on for a second, off for a second) with other indicators on the cluster intermittently showing during the blinks back on. The tachometer was also bouncing between 0 and around 2000 RPM during this period though I know the actual RPMs weren't actually physically doing that.

I didn't figure a dealer would be able to reproduce but maybe be able to plug in and view some logs to see if anything abnormal was recorded.

[TTO898]

Weird. Always recommend trying to quickly pull over and take a video, or have the passenger start recording so you can reference for the dealership. Glad it's all good though.