Tail Light Switch problems of the 2011 BMW X3

The motherboard in the vehicles rear tail lights and reverse lights goes bad which will cause the led lights to go out. There is no way to replace the led lights without replacing the whole light assembly. This is an issue and it is known by BMW. Since owning my vehicle I have had to replace the lights 4 times. It is a known issue with the motherboard chip in the light.

All led taillights on the back of vehicle are not working. The car did not indicate that the lights were out like it does for other light failures. As a result, we found out about the taillight failure at night by a car speeding up behind us on the freeway. The car proceeded to flash their lights at us until we pulled over to inspect what was going on. We brought the car into a BMW repair shop and they indicated that there was another identical vehicle (2011 BMW X3) with exactly the same issue--all 4 led taillights failed. We then went to the BMW dealership to have them inspect what the issue is and they don't know what caused the taillight failure. Their remedy is to replace the lights at significant cost. Given that they can't identify the root cause and its a pervasive issue with other X3s affected, I believe this is a significant safety issue for this model of BMW and needs to be investigated immediately. We drive a black car and it's scary to think what could have happened if that other driver wasn't paying attention when our tail lights were out. . .

Tail lights will fail with no warning light or message displayed in dash board. X3's equipped with hid headlamps come with four led tail lamps. In each lamp, there is a circuit board that will fail due to poor quality control (the resistors and/or capacitors will get detached from circuit board) , therefore, the lamps will stop working. Usually, when lights burn out, the dash warns the driver, but not for this failure. The owner could be driving at night with no tail lamps, and it could lead to a rear end collision. The problem is not the bulb burning out due to wear and tear. The only problem is that led driver which should be replaced by BMW because it is faulty.

There are 4 led tail lights on this motor vehicle. 3 of the 4 have quit working. The first one BMW fixed; the second one I fixed out of my pocket. The third one to quit working is awaiting repair. This is a safety issue because all the tail lights need to be working, especially at night. If the outer tail light is not working conspicuity from the side is severely reduced, especially at night. BMW takes the position that this X3 is out of warranty and they have no further responsibility for it. I take the position that this is a design defect and product liability issue for which they are responsible. The led driver circuit board is defective, but BMW is not willing to acknowledge there is a problem. There have been hundreds of X3 2011-2016 with the f25 body that have this problem. The vehicle was stationary when I noticed the problem but was probably in motion when the tail light segment failed. For led tail light segments to have a 75% failure rate seems excessive and unacceptable. Would be happy to discuss this with you.

3 out of the 4 led tail lights have stop working. The car did not gave me any notice of the tail lights failing. While driving on a highway, I was stopped by a police officer and given a warning. On further research, there is a design flaw within the tail light system that will cause it to fail. It seems BMW already knows about this issue but only covers repair to cars under warranty. They have recognized their design flaw but have not taken steps to fix the problem to all affected customers. On the words of a police officer, this is a safety issue that should be taken care ASAP. . Read more...

There appears to be a chronic defect on BMW X3s (2011-2017 f-25 chassis) of let tail light failures due to defective led current regulator circuit boards. Our X3 has had 3 of the 4 led tail lights fail because of exactly the same defect. Some of the led current regulator boards were apparently poorly soldered and solder joint failure cause complete or partial loss of the tail lights. The "on-board" light monitoring system on the vehicle does not report the light failure, so the owner is usually not aware that the vehicel has no tail lights visable. On our X3 the led tail light failure was traced to the same component on all (3) lights. Teh circuit board (labeled valeo b 003809. 2) had a resistor (r750) that was not soldered properly. Re-soldering the component fixed the problem and restored correct led tail light operation. There are many on-line reports of BMW X3s having exactly this problem. This is not the well-known 3-series and 5-series tail light issue related to connector ground issues. The X3 tail light issue is due to poor circuit board manufacturing leading to early failures. It is especially oc concern because the owner may expect to be notified of the light failure by the BMW on-board monitor system (which will report headlight, turn signal or brake light failures but not the led tail lights loss. When the circuit board fails, the led lights are non-functional. It doesn't matter if the vehicle is running or parked with parking lights turned on. The tail lights are still dark. In my opinion, this constitutes a serious safety issue for all "f-25" BMW X3s and should be the basis for a recall. The (plug-in) circuit boards can be easily removed and replaced without replacement of the entire (expensive) (about $340 each) tail light assembly.