NHTSA complaint #11545997

Owner complaint summary

A portion on the Airbag system was/is disabled due to an issue, known to BMW, with the wiring harness connected to the passenger seat. It is available for inspection if requested. Normal movement of the electric seat in turn pulls a wiring harness that failed by being "chaffed". This flaw results in a "Restraint System Error", passenger side - a significant problem since this harness controls an integral safety system of the vehicle and ultimately disables part of the airbag system until repaired. During inspection at the dealer's service center, the car was connected to a fault reader that reported a wiring harness/module failure due to "chaffing". This chaffing caused a short that triggered the warning light and deactivated a key air bag safety feature. I was told that normal movement of the passenger seat moves the wires and causes the system failure. After consulting with my Service Advisor, the repair was explained as "installation of a new, modified (longer) wiring harness that allows for rerouting of the wires so that the condition is corrected" What alarmed me as a consumer was when I asked if they were sure this would fix the problem, the dealer told me they see it quite often and 99% of the time it is a problem with the original design and routing of the harness. From my perspective, this indicates BMW acknowledges this is a known problem impacting the safe operation of the vehicle. The repair requires removal of the entire center console and replacing and rerouting a newly designed wiring harness. The estimate for repair to the consumer is almost $1300 - making it likely that many consumers would delay this important repair. In my opinion, this engineering flaw should be the subject of a voluntary recall at the least.