Starter motor failure on my 3.5 year old BMW X3

A car sparingly used propping up a potential starter motor failure. I had the service people come in and check and they confirmed the news.

BHPian Arvind_555 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Hello everyone,

I am facing a rather unsettling issue that has cropped up in a relatively new X3 (G01, June 2018, 16k kms on the ODO, single user). Due to the pandemic, my car has been in a fully covered and rat proofed parking lot for the last 1.5 years. To keep the battery in shape, I keep the battery topped up using a dedicated AGM charger and once in a week move the vehicle around to prevent patches on the tyre. Of late, I had 2 or 3 instances of a weird message popping up on my display (Don't have a picture but a ref image here, the essence of which reads that the starter system has failed!! But I give it time and start again, it used to come up and I noticed this 3 times and finally a week ago, it completely gave up. No message, no cranking, no engine check light - Nothing. I tried jump starting - but to nothing. I generally check and maintain all my cars well but this is pretty weird. A car sparingly used propping up a potential starter motor failure. I had the service people come in and check and they confirmed the news. So I am about to get my vehicle towed and hopefully get it sorted. The vehicle has full BSI and BRI coverage, but what is concerning is why this problem. Has anyone faced it here? Is it common (I am sure not at this low mileage). Even in different BMW forums, I hardly see one or two similar failures, and even if they fail, its after 100k or 150k miles! Would be good to get opinion from forum members here.

BMW X3 - G01 - x20d Luxury Line. April 2018 make, delivered June 2018. Bangalore; 16,000 kms on the odo.

Here's what GTO had to say on the matter:

The vehicle has full BSI and BRI coverage

This is the part I was looking for . The maximum extended warranty is a must with premium cars for peace-of-the-mind ownershipDo keep us updated on what is replaced & what the actual issue was.

BMW's reliability is very good for the most part, but sometimes, problems do come up. On a related note, I must add that I keep hearing of a few more issues with the X3 than say, the 3 or 5-Series range. Wonder why that is.

Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.