Quote:
Originally Posted by Downfourit
The car has the features, they are just not activated on some cars depending on who at the factory/dealer coded it. Had I asked the dealer to activate them they would have when I got the car. If the brake feature was not legal in the USA, BMW would not have been able to add it to the car and ship it to the states, I have seen some models that have it activated from the dealer. You are incorrect about it being under warranty, coding, and specifically requested firmware updates are not free in most cases because it is not required for the car to drive on the road, warranty covers something wrong with the vehicle. You can do things the way you do them, and other will do it differently. I appreciate your concern for us all but trust me when I say I know BMW and what they are ok with and what they are not, I have been financed by them for over 10 years now, we're all good!
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If the feature is in the manual and your car is supposed to have it, it is covered under warranty - no matter what. If a firmware update is required to make something work, then it is also covered. What is not covered is a firmware/coding update because you heard there was something cool in it. They used to do this way back in the early days of the E60 5-series. BMW would publish a list of the fixes/updates with the latest software release and people would take their cars in (each update of the software can take almost 8 hours). Subsequently, BMW stopped publishing what was touched/fixed in each release of software. So you have to ask very specifically
Long story short, if the manual says "here is how you activate launch control", you simply bring the car to your dealer and say "my launch control does not work" and they "fix it". You do NOT say "I want a new software version or some coding changed" - because that request does not work.
With regards to the brake light feature and other things you can have "coded" by a 3rd party. Let me be very clear - just because your car has a feature that can be turned on,
does not make it legal here.
BMW is very specific to what is coded by default on your car. There are some very cool things (as you know) that you can do including, allowing video in motion
which is illegal in most states that I am aware of. So just because there is a feature, if it is off, there may be a very good reason for it - including but not limited to, it being illegal
(ps - on my 19th year of owning/leasing a BMW -except for the 39 dark months of owning a....Lexus...ugh)