Worldwide recall: vehicle fire in Mini Cooper SE not ruled out
Owners of a Mini Cooper SE should visit their service workshop as soon as possible. The housing of your high-voltage battery may be leaking.
(Image: GĂĽnter Schmied)
In vehicles of the first generation of the Mini Cooper SE electric car, the housing of the high-voltage (HV) battery can leak, allowing moisture to penetrate. This is the result of quality tests, a BMW Group spokesperson told heise online. The company, which owns Mini, has therefore issued a worldwide recall for the Mini Cooper SE (F56 BEV), which were built from November 2018 to January 2024. This means that 39,000 vehicles are affected in Germany and an estimated 150,000 worldwide.
If a fault triggered by this problem occurs, it is indicated by a check control message in the vehicle. It reads: "Continuation of journey possible. Have the high-voltage system checked by your service partner." The HV battery could also switch off while driving and the vehicle could slowly coast to a stop. "A vehicle fire, even when the vehicle is parked, cannot be ruled out", BMW told heise online.
Quickly to the workshop
The company is writing to buyers of the affected vehicles or they will receive a message in their car to visit a service workshop or Mini branch as soon as possible; the battery will be checked there. If a leaking HV battery housing is the cause of the malfunction, the fault will be rectified free of charge.
In addition, all affected cars will receive a software update. It contains a diagnostic function that is designed to detect a fault in the HV battery. If the diagnostics detect such a fault, the battery is discharged to below 30 percent. According to BMW, this procedure is intended to rule out a vehicle fire. No accidents or injuries have been reported in this context.
This also corresponds to the entry in the recall list of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) (PDF); 12,535 vehicles of the model are affected. The entry also states that BMW first became aware of a "thermal incident" in the USA in October 2023 and in Germany in January of this year. The Federal Motor Transport Authority's recall database contains an entry dated May 28, 2024, according to which 652 Mini Cooper SE cars were affected by a possible moisture ingress into the HV battery at that time.
(anw)