Recently, more than a hundred BMW owners issued a joint statement on the Internet, saying that the 2020 BMW 5 Series, 630i, 20-21 X3 supporting the car machine system lacks the remote upgrade and voice control functions described in the owner's manual, and there is also deliberate concealment in the sales process, violating the consumer protection law, requiring BMW to give the owner a reasonable answer. On this issue, several BMW models, led by the BMW 5 Series, quickly climbed to the top of the major complaint rankings.
The whole thing is actually very simple, BMW previously sold the 2020 5 series (including imports and new energy), 2020-2021 X3, 2020 6 series GT, 2020 X4 models whether online or offline communication is advertised with iDrive 7.0 system.
iDrive 7.0 is BMW's seventh-generation human-computer interaction system, launched in 2018, more intelligent than the previous sixth-generation system, the biggest upgrade is iDrive 7.0 has an OTA upgrade, BMW officially called RUS (Remote Software Upgrade).
At the end of 2020, BMW announced that it will upgrade 500,000 cars equipped with the seventh-generation iDrive system worldwide, and will start to push updates on December 16, and some of them have purchased the 2020 5 series (including imports and new energy), 2020-2021 X3, 2020 6 series GT, 2020 X4 owners who are waiting for upgrades, but they have not waited, but they have found that their cars not only do not have OTA upgrade functions. There are also many missing smart features, such as voice control, remote control, etc., for which the owners also listed a table.
What is even more outrageous is that the owner's manual in black and white states that the vehicle has intelligent interconnection functions such as OTA upgrade and voice control, and the version displayed by the car machine system is also the ID7 version, why is there actually no ID7 function?
The owners of the unknown truth then reacted to the dealers and BMW officials, and finally concluded that the number of cars produced before July 2020 did not have OTA upgrade functions and belonged to the castrated version of the car.
It is worth noting that the owners found a very popular BMW Group internal training material on the foreign website in the process of rights protection, the material shows that as early as August 2019, BMW has conducted detailed training on the difference between the castrated version and the complete version of the machine, that is to say, BMW's internal car sales are very clear about the difference between the castrated version of the machine and the full version of the car machine, in the sale of the 2020 BMW 5 Series, 630i, produced in July 2020, The 20-21 X3 model was deliberately concealed.
SP18 is the full version SP15 is a castrated version
It is worth noting that the models involved in the castrated version of the car machine system are all 2020-2021 models, and the current models have been discontinued, if the owners want to protect their rights, they should have already begun to protect their rights, why did they start to protect their rights in 2022?
Coincidentally, there is a 2020 BMW X3 owner in the friend department of the travel bureau, unfortunately, the car machine is also an emasculated version of the iDrive 7.0 system, on the above questions, I got the answer from the owner's colleague.
Colleagues said that in fact, the owners of the BMW car machine system castration problem have long been seeking a solution, and have complained through a variety of channels, but bmw officials have always refused to admit the existence of a castrated version of iDrive 7.0, has not given any reasonable solution, but let the dealer privately appease the owners to delay, some do not care about this problem of the owners after getting a small amount of compensation chose to give up, which brought a certain resistance to the owners' rights protection actions.
Now, approaching the 3.15 Consumer Rights Day, some car owners have chosen to collectively create momentum at this point in time to protect their rights and interests, and put pressure on BMW officials, hoping to take this opportunity to let BMW officials face the problem and give car owners a reasonable solution.
At present, car owners have given two solutions, the former is to ask BMW to publicly recognize the difference between the castrated version of iDrive 7.0 and the normal version of iDrive 7.0, apologize to all castrated version of iDrive 7.0 consumers, and recall the vehicle, adjust the vehicle to the normal version of the iDrive 7.0 car machine system, and have all the functions.
The second option would require BMW to recycle a vehicle equipped with an emasculated version of the iDrive 7.0 system at the sale price. In the view of the travel bureau, the second plan is obviously unrealistic, and the first plan also requires a lot of money, it is estimated that BMW will not accept, if the owners can not take this opportunity to let bmw cars on the 3.15 party, it is bound to start a protracted tug-of-war with BMW.
Whether it is the 2020 BMW 5 Series or two other models, the starting price alone reached about 400,000, this group of owners is the backbone of the construction of BMW sales, I believe that they choose BMW because they believe that the BMW brand has good quality and reliable credibility, but BMW is using concealment of sales to betray the trust of BMW owners, it is really chilling.
Luxury brands attach the most importance to word of mouth, and now BMW's "tricks" have been exposed, losing not only this batch of BMW owners, I believe it will also lose a lot of potential consumers of BMW. Relying on core technologies such as engines and gearboxes, BMW does have the capital of pride and contempt for consumers in the era of internal combustion engines, but the era of internal combustion engines is about to pass, the era of electrification is accelerating, and BMW, which has been difficult to make progress in electric vehicles, is time to put away its arrogant head and face itself well.