This data is from the NHTSA — the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints are spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem.
So how do you find out what problems are occurring? For this NHTSA complaint data, the only way is to read through the comments below. Any duplicates or errors? It's not us.
The steering becomes sluggish, hard to turn back to center. Seems as though I had a flat front tire. This was not the case. I restarted car then no longer had the problem. This has happened twice. Once to my wife and then myself.
Sometimes while driving highway speeds steering feels hard to turn. Seems like steering want to remain centered or overly turns suddenly at low speed. Very random. I looked online and many people reported the same issue. I believe it needs a software update. No warning lights or codes stored in vehicle.
While pulling onto the road my car started pulling strongly towards the left and was very hard to steer. It had very heavy difficult steering. It felt absolutely different than anything I've felt in the two years of ownership. I pulled into a parking lot and 'googled' I3 difficult steering and came across multiple forum posts and discussion of this issue. It appears the I3 power steering can randomly stop working and then returns with an ignition cycle. I locked the car, went in a store for 5 minutes, and normal steering resumed when I drove away. One becomes used to the way their car drives when they drive it every day. When all of a sudden the steering changes drastically it seems it can be an alarming and potentially dangerous situation.
Intermittently, the power steering does not come on when the car is turned on. Steering is heavy and slow. Turning the car off and back on generally corrects this fault. It has happened several times over the past year. I documented below approximately the date of the first event.
Temporary loss of power assist. From a stop, the assist will function correctly until 30mph. From then on, there will be no power assist until coming to a full stop. The pattern repeats itself for the remainder of the trip. Once the vehicle is turned off, it could take days or months for this to happen again. BMW states they "can not reproduce". this situation makes the vehicle very unstable and dangerous.
- Blaine, WA, USA
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I was driving the car and the steering suddenly became heavy - no longer self-centering. The car would still go where I pointed it, but the wheel wouldn't return to center like usual. It felt very stiff. After shutting the car off for a few minutes, it returned to normal.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
- Marina, CA, USA