[416O]

I am new to this Forum but wanted to share my story hoping to prevent you from experiencing the same issue.

Last Sunday I drove my 2019 X7 40i for shopping (60 miles away from home) with my family and got "software upgrade is ready, install now" message when I was at a parking lot for Lunch. I thought it would be an easy one so I clicked OK. One more message showed up asking me if the car was parked in a safe place and I pushed OK (or Yes). 20-30min process ended with a message that read, "Software upgrade failed". I didn't notice any issues at the time, so I thought just do it later, but I soon found out that I couldn't turn on the engine!! "Vehicle not ready-to-operate. Please call Roadside Assistance." This message showed up on the console. I called roadside assistance (which had a long wait time until it connected) and was told that the car requires towing. What the fxxk!? It seems BMW forgot to add a function to revert a change back to the original state if something wrong happened. To make this worse, the first tow truck guy and I found out that there was no way to put the car into neutral gear. Wow. So the guy with flatbed needed to exchange the truck to a one with wheel-lift. Why couldn't BMW explain to the towing company at the beginning that the car can't be put into neutral and ask them to bring the wheel-lift truck!? It cost me 6 hours, just to get my car towed!! This is not just an issue with the upgrade, but it's a car system that turned a nice Sunday to a day filled with stress and headaches.

I would strongly recommend you not to running the software upgrade by yourself, unless BMW comes up with a better upgrade system.

[huskerdoc2020]

Yeah, I won't be upgrading at home. Sorry to hear and thanks.

[jmciver]

You are the second X7 owner to report this issue on this forum a few weeks ago. The other person with this issue has a thread not too far down the page and had a similar situation as you - out shopping and had a failed software upgrade attempt. At least the tow truck guy knew to use dollies to get your X7 up on a flatbed properly. The other guy had his X7 dragged up on the flatbed.

I am sure there are other models that have experienced this issue, not just the X7. One issue is an isolated incident, two is a trend... Most BMW owners are not on enthusiast forums so this issue is probably more prevalent that what we are seeing here (and the X7 community is already pretty small anyway compared to other models). It would not surprise me if BMW pulls the plug on OTA pretty soon for a while....

[Crimsonboz]

Originally Posted by jmciver

You are the second X7 owner to report this issue on this forum a few weeks ago. The other person with this issue has a thread not too far down the page and had a similar situation as you - out shopping and had a failed software upgrade attempt. At least the tow truck guy knew to use dollies to get your X7 up on a flatbed properly. The other guy had his X7 dragged up on the flatbed.

I am sure there are other models that have experienced this issue, not just the X7. One issue is an isolated incident, two is a trend... Most BMW owners are not on enthusiast forums so this issue is probably more prevalent that what we are seeing here (and the X7 community is already pretty small anyway compared to other models). It would not surprise me if BMW pulls the plug on OTA pretty soon for a while....

Yeah the other gent had the exact same thing. They need to make the process bulletproof or get rid of it until they can. Someone could potentially be stranded in a not so good situation because of this. I did my update recently at home during business hours (BMW) is close by and had no issues. I got to thinking had I clicked the button while on my vacation I could have been stranded, glad I read the forum prior.

[Heimdall]

Three things here and in quoting another user. For the first one.

1) Do the OTA updates in your dealers parking lot 🤦🏻*♂️

2) I'm pretty sure there's a way to put the gear into neutral, I've done it before in 5 series.

3) have you tried 🆘 button in your car, I'm sure they can do remote start without even having a key, that also I've done before.

Side note that I've done these in a different country. But nevertheless the tech is in the vehicle since the early 2000's

[jmciver]

Originally Posted by Heimdall

Three things here and in quoting another user. For the first one.

1) Do the OTA updates in your dealers parking lot 🤦🏻*♂️

2) I'm pretty sure there's a way to put the gear into neutral, I've done it before in 5 series.

3) have you tried 🆘 button in your car, I'm sure they can do remote start without even having a key, that also I've done before.

Side note that I've done these in a different country. But nevertheless the tech is in the vehicle since the early 2000's

I posted the two factory procedures of how to put the G07 into neutral in the other thread. One is a mechanical method that requires going under the car (and removing an under panel). The second involves pushing the start button and a few other buttons in the car in a specific sequence - but this method is dependent on how much power/control you have in the vehicle. Neither method would be familiar to your typical road side assistance tow truck driver.

BMW no longer offers the previous mechanical method to get an automatic into neutral, which was a latch and/or key located close to the shifter. Apparently, it was a cost saving measure.