BMW has confirmed to Autocar that it will recall just under 312,000 cars in Britain due to an electrical fault that can cause cars to completely cut out of power.
Affected cars include BMW 1 Series, 3 Series, Z4 and X1 petrol and diesel models produced between March 2007 and September 2011, which, according to BMW, “feature a design of wiring configuration that means vehicle vibrations could potentially cause frictional corrosion on the plug of the power distributor”.
Put simply, it means a vehicle’s battery could lose connection to the fuse box, rendering the car completely powerless and in danger of breaking down with no ability for the driver to switch its brake or hazard lights on.
Initially, BMW believed 36,410 UK cars built between December 2009 and August 2011 were affected, but it has since said more are involved and so has extended the recall.
A spokesman for the brand said that the UK’s Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has been informed of this extension, and that “customers of affected cars should wait for a letter, which is likely to arrive in about three weeks”.
The reason for the wait is because it usually takes around two weeks for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s registration data to come through.
BMW is issuing a parts change free of charge to fix the issue. The work is said to take under two hours.
The issue has been thrust into the limelight recently because it was linked to a fatal incident that took place in Britain on Christmas Day in 2016. Last week, an inquest said that Narayan Gurung, a 66-year-old former serviceman, was killed after he swerved his Ford Fiesta into a tree to avoid a broken-down BMW that had no lights on in the dark because it was without power.
The inquest revealed that BMW had received complaints of this electrical issue as early as 2011. Around 370,000 cars were thought to be involved at that time, but the manufacturer fixed only around five under warranty.
The UK’s Driving & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) asked BMW to ensure its cars were safe in February 2016, with the government body’s lead engineer, Andrew Tudor, stating that “we do not want a fatality”.
BMW supplier quality engineer Mark Hill said back then that the company believed the issue was not “critical” because it didn’t prevent the car’s steering or brakes from working. He said: “It is not a safety defect because a prior warning is given to the user in the majority of cases.”
BMW proceeded to recall 500,000 cars in the US in 2013, as well as smaller recalls in Australia, Canada and South Africa, to address the problem, leaving questions as to why it did not recall cars in Britain until after Gurung’s fatal accident.
BMW has since said that there was no further UK recall because there are technical differences between the UK’s cars and each other market’s, as well as differences in technical layouts due to left and right-hand drive versions. It said that each vehicle type is being investigated, taking into account the different climatic and environmental conditions of each region.
But the lawyer for Gurung’s case argued that BMW’s response fell short of what was asked of it several years ago. He said “The lead engineer from the DVSA has said to you in light of the concern, ‘we do not want a fatality’. In other words, the risk that had been identified was a risk of death. If someone’s vehicle suffers a total electrical failure on a motorway or on an A-road, they lose the ability to use their brake lights or hazard lights and that gives rise to serious injury or death. No lights is the biggest concern. Another road user cannot see the powerless car.”
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