Other electrical problem on the 2003 BMW 325I
1 crash 2 fires 1 injury 4 of the 21 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When other electrical problem gets reported
Owners of the 2003 BMW 325I report other electrical problem at a median of 60,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 30,000 miles and a quarter after 115,000 miles, from 16 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 85,000 miles. It is the 3rd most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 10,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 130,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 119,550 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
31% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10,450 miles | 30,000 miles | 61,500 miles | 115,500 miles | 130,000 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 1 a crash, 2 a fire and 1 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $250–$2,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 6 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2003, at a median of 60,000 miles, and latest on the 2001 at 115,000 miles.
By volume the 2006 carries the most reports, with 52; the 2003 has 21. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
The computer first failed on my 2003 bmw 325i on june 15, 2003, (three weeks after I picked it up from the dealership, bmw of manhattan), causing me to lose acceleration without warning. I was travelling at 60-65 miles per hour in the far left lane of the garden state parkway. I was barely able to manuever the car to the shoulder of the road and I was lucky that there happened to be a very small shoulder on the left side of the road, as I would have never been able to make it to the shoulder on the right hand side of the road and traffic was very heavy. This sudden loss of acceleration could have easily caused a fatal accident; particularly, because the cars behind me had no way to detect that my car was only coasting. The nj state troopers had to shut down northbound traffic in all 4 lanes of the garden state parkway in order to remove my car from the parkway. The car was towed to the dealership.the dealership was unable to successfully reprogram the computer, so they sent it to montvale, nj to be reprogrammed. The dealership returned the car to me on june 20, 2003. On june 25, 2003, the computer failed again, causing the car to…
I have a bmw 325i which I purchased brand new in nov. '02. In march '03, while driving on the njtpk at 60-65mph in the left lane, the car suddenly lost its acceleration. The clocks also went off and then reset itself to 12:00. Being that I was driving in the left lane of the nj turnpike, I consider myself very lucky that I was able to cross four lanes of traffic and come to the right shoulder (there was no left shoulder). I waited for a while, restarted the car, reset the clock and hit the road again. Shortly after that the electrical system in the car starting acting up... At one occasion, I was not able to unlock the car using the remote. At another, the windows would not roll up upon pulling on the knob. The light below the rear view mirror would not come on. Most of these problems would go away after I would shut down the car and restart it. I took the car into princeton bmw where I had purchased it. They had never heard of this issue before. They kept the car for a full day and did extensive testing on it. At the end of the day they were not able to find anything wrong with the car. For the next few months I did not have any…
I've had this car for only 2 years and the ignition coils have been replaced three times now. The events include the "service engine soon" light coming on and the car vibrating and idling rough. The car eventually stalls and cannot be driven and must be towed. Bmw is aware of this problem with the ignition coils because they have an internal service bulletin on the problem. Even after replacing all 6 coils the second time, the problem has happened again for the third time. There is a definite design issue with this car that bmw has refused to address.*ak
Also reported on the 2003 BMW 325I
Airbag inflator rupture
Tail light, brake light or signal failure
Other lighting problem
Other body or interior problem
Other powertrain problem
Headlight failure or clouding
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 21 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does other electrical problem happen on the 2003 BMW 325I?
Across 16 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 60,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 30,000 miles and a quarter after 115,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other electrical problem on the 2003 BMW 325I?
21 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed