NHTSA complaint #11571458

Owner complaint summary

- As we were driving down a largely empty highway ([XXX] near Pollock Pines, CA), we heard an extremely loud bang. We looked back and the large rear sunroof (the non-moving one) had exploded - the glass was crazed with shatter fragments and continued to audibly crackle for several minutes. No significant sections of the glass had fallen out, but there were small splinters of glass (< 1mm in size) all over the cabin including on our 4 month old in the rear seat. - The vehicle is currently at the dealer service center awaiting service. It is available for inspection on request. As far as I know it has only been inspected by me and the dealer service representative. - The explosive sound caused a significant distraction while driving, and the glass fragments that rained into the cabin resulted in a minor injury to my hand and posed a risk of internal and external lacerations to all of us. - At no point were there any warnings prior to the explosion. Afterwards, there were also no warnings, though the problem was obvious. There are several nearly-simultaneous reports of this on new X5s: [XXX] INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)