BMW fined for swapping ECUs

Prosecutors in the Bavarian capital of Munich have hit BMW with an €8.5 million fine for fitting almost 8000 cars with the wrong engine management software.

The fine relates to an admission by BMW that it had inadvertently fitted a diesel-engine software upgrade for the X5 and X6 into 5 Series and 7 Series electronic control units (ECUs).

Oddly, though, BMW admitted there were 11,400 cars involved, but the fine related to 7965 cars on the basis that the error could have led to higher emissions.

Prosecutors accepted that BMW had done nothing intentional, but was guilty of “oversight lapses”.

BMW volunteered in March last year that it had incorrectly swapped the software code, only to be raided by more than 100 prosecutors, police and lawyers on the morning of its annual accounts conference.

The Bavarian authorities only found out about the mix up, which saw X5 software slotted into the 750d and the M550d, because BMW asked German Transport authorities to allow it to launch a recall to fix the problem.

“This was clearly an erroneous fitment of the software from one model to another, rather than anything else,” BMW Group’s senior vice-president, corporate and government affairs, Maximilian Schöberl, admitted at the time.

“BMW brought this error to the attention of authorities voluntarily and asked for a recall to correct it. This was nothing intentional.”

While the penalty is a stain on its reputation, BMW has never been implicated in diesel emissions cheating, unlike Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche, or in loophole-snatching schemes like Daimler’s thermal switches.

Its diesels have consistently performed well in independent tests, including the University of West Virginia test that uncovered Volkswagen’s Dieselgate cheat.