F04 cruise control glitch

[epr73]

So I was driving on the highway, playing with the cruise control on my active hybrid 7 to follow the car in front of me since I dont have radar cruise. Its kind of fun playing with the little dial on the steering wheel and altering your speed one mph at a time. While I was playing with it, the car randomly popped up some malfunction and I was slowing losing speed like 1 mph per second and slamming on the accelerator deemed useless, I was going to come to a stop whether I liked it or not. So I pulled over to the shoulder and when I came to a stop, the car was shaking violently so I just turned off the engine and let it sit for a little and started it back up with everything back to normal.

Took a quick snap of the idrive screen with the cell phone when it happened

First warning that popped up


second warning that came right after


and to top it off, a few minutes later, a warning for low oil came up with less than 4k miles on the car...

I am sure this was some cruise control glitch that probably came up with me playing around with the dial so much? Not entirely sure, but ill be sticking with the gas pedal from now on.

[BMWrules7]

It sounds like the opposite.

To me, it looks like the cruise control
failed due to an engine or drivetrain malfunction.

The cruise control is more of an external process than an internal one when viewed against the engine management system.

This means the this cruise control's failure was due to the system receiving an error from the engine monitoring system. The engine monitoring system received an error due to engine or drivetrain malfunction.

When one system fails it is not unusual to be hit with a series of cascading errors like we have here.


I bet a lot more events were logged in the car's data log!

Finally, I would take it in to the dealer. You don't want this to happen again.

Make sure you show the SA your pictures and explain the behavior you described.

I would paint this as an urgent and critical error that increases the potential for an accident if it is not fixed.

[7erMOB]

epr73:

This is what happened to me exactly!

I was playing with cruise control changing the speed since I was in local traffic. To my mini count, I was changing the cruise speed about 5 times per 40 seconds plus putting it off and on button in between new set speeds.

I thought I can beat the system and constantly matching vehicle speeds ahead of me.

The car like u said slowing down on its own, it was damn scary........I was also in the fast lane too.

I pulled over, stop the car and bring it back on, nothing wrong with it. Didn't dare to use cruise control for 1 week. But everything works perfectly when I reuse cruise control. NEVER dare to change speeds or on/off at such rate again.

BMWrules7:
For an average car user like me, it feels it is the cruise control brain over heating and its very VERY confused in my case. So it sends signals to the engine to slow down and has a failure sign in my dashboard and iDrive screen.

IMO drivetrain malfunction is very unlikely, hey I could be wrong but at least that is how I felt after this experience.

Still enjoying the 7er everyday.

[BMWrules7]

Well anytime you get two incidents with similar characteristics it does make you think!

The problem is compounded when you factor that two complaints on this board might actually be 200 complaints that have happened but not reported.

I would let the dealership know as this could be a known issue!

Originally Posted by 7erMOB

epr73:

This is what happened to me exactly!

I was playing with cruise control changing the speed since I was in local traffic. To my mini count, I was changing the cruise speed about 5 times per 40 seconds plus putting it off and on button in between new set speeds.

I thought I can beat the system and constantly matching vehicle speeds ahead of me.

The car like u said slowing down on its own, it was damn scary........I was also in the fast lane too.

I pulled over, stop the car and bring it back on, nothing wrong with it. Didn't dare to use cruise control for 1 week. But everything works perfectly when I reuse cruise control. NEVER dare to change speeds or on/off at such rate again.

BMWrules7:
For an average car user like me, it feels it is the cruise control brain over heating and its very VERY confused in my case. So it sends signals to the engine to slow down and has a failure sign in my dashboard and iDrive screen.

IMO drivetrain malfunction is very unlikely, hey I could be wrong but at least that is how I felt after this experience.

Still enjoying the 7er everyday.

[epr73]

I am going to play with it again in the next few days and see if I can repeat the problem. Ill report it to my sa if I can repeat the problem indefinitely.