PSA: Time Zone Detection/Synchronization Issue

[evanevery]

I'm not sure how many (or which) cars this effects but there appears to be an issue with time synchronization in the 2024 i7 M70. At least that's what I am being told...

The time never adjusted as I passed through time zones so I manually selected which time zone I was in. After I got a bit deeper into the new time zone, I switched it back to "AUTO" thinnking it should surely catch it now. The car would never properly pick up the time zone after that. It wouldn't switch zones and then it wouldn't even properly identify the one I was in. Not even close. I'm in CST and it put me in the French Maldives. I tried setting and resetting this over several days but it never resolved itself.

I mentioned this when bringing my car in for a steering issue (heavy, notchy, they ended up replacing the whole steering rack). My service center reloaded all the firmware but the problem still would not resolve itself. They also could not get it to work...

As I am told, BMW knows this is an issue and I would have to manually select my time zone until new firmware is released. "Auto detect time zone" is apparently broken, BMW knows it, and a firmware update will be needed to fix it...

You gotta figure they use the same "time" code in all their vehicles. Its not like they gotta write special "time" software for each different model. A clock is pretty much a clock (code-wise). How do they mess something like this up?

[AVandelay]

I've had issues with Auto Time Zone for years across many BMW models

It seems intermittent so I just gave up

Sometimes it worked great, when it didn't I just reset it manually and moved on

Thankfully I don't drive across time zones very often