About a week ago I got in my car and started it up like normal only to find the instrument panel – the thing that displays important things like your speed and state of charge – dark. I wasn’t going very far so I just went to my destination and figured it would reboot after the car sat for a bit. It did not. Just as I was starting to worry I started the car again and it came back – hooray! My victory was short lived because it shut off a minute later.

Since then it has come back randomly (or partially) for a minute or two but it has stayed dead 90% of the time. Interestingly, it seems as though not only can I not see my speed, but the car actually doesn’t know my speed either because my average speed and efficiency are usually displayed in the infotainment system but are now blank. The time is also blank, so I think some important things are routed through the instrument panel to the infotainment system. However, aside from that the car drives and charges fine. I can check my state of charge in the app and once I dug out an old iPhone and connected Apple Carplay I was able to see my speed in the center console using Waze.

In the bit of looking I have done online it seems to be a not uncommon issue with these digital instrument panels and the only fix is to replace them. I am lucky that I’ve still got a few months left on the limited warranty so I have not tried to diagnose it myself and am just hoping that it won’t suddenly come back to life as soon as it gets to the dealership. I will update once I get it checked out.

Update: Fixed!

The issue is now fixed, and without too much trouble, but it got worse before it got better. Just after my first post I reached out to a service center. Since I was able to see my speed with Waze I didn’t feel rushed to resolve the issue so I took the first weekend appointment they had, which was several weeks away. It didn’t seem worth taking time off work to rush the car into service. However, shortly thereafter a cascade of additional functions started disappearing.

In the second week I think the instrument panel fully kicked the bucket. The turn signal indicators started flashing and never stopped. There were no more flashes of life like before, just a black panel with flashing hazards 24/7, even with the car turned off. Fortunately, the actual turn signals were not flashing so it was not drawing much power. A lot of features disappeared at this time. My turn signals still worked but they no longer made noise; the driver safety features (forward collision warning, lane departure warning, etc.) became unavailable; the infotainment screen brightness stopped adjusting, staying too dim in the day and too bright at night; the departure and charge time slots became unavailable; and the HVAC would start on the same setting every time the car was restarted.

The next phase that finally had me jump to take the car in sooner was when the app stopped connecting. Also the Max A/C button stopped working, which was less concerning and more weird. But with the app no longer updating I couldn’t reliably track SOC. This plus the steady shutdown of features had me worried about the car dying at any moment, so I took a morning off and dropped it at the dealer.

Fortunately, the dealer was quick to confirm that the problem was the instrument panel and that it would be replaced under warranty. As I expected, they had to order the part and it took about a week. The only hiccup came when they said the car was done. I did not receive notice from an actual person, but via automated message. After my last experience where I picked up my car only to find the service had not been completed I was wary. Granted, this was a different dealer but I still wanted some assurance before taking 3+ hours out of my day to pick it up, especially with all of the little issues that may or may not have been related/fixed just by installing a new cluster. Also, while my app was now updating, I was unable to send remote commands to the car, so it seemed like not everything had been fixed. Getting a real person to talk to me proved surprisingly hard. After two full days trying to get in touch with my service advisor I finally bullied someone else into talking to me. He was just going off the service notes but he reassured me that as far as he could see on their end everything was resolved and that I could get someone to look at it on the spot if I picked it up and found anything wrong.

With that I finally went and picked it up. To my chagrin, everything did seem to be fixed, down to the Max A/C button. I felt a little bad for making a fuss; however, a month or so later I am still not able to send climate commands to my car. I don’t think this is anything the dealership had control over. Apparently I need to contact BMW Genius or some such tech support they have. While I really miss being able to send climate commands to the car I haven’t yet cared enough to spend hours on the phone with tech support – I’m just happy to have my car back!