BMW Warns 29,919 Hybrid Owners: Keep Your Car Out of the Garage

BMW is telling nearly 30,000 plug-in hybrid owners to park their cars far from the house. The luxury automaker has issued a recall for 29,119 vehicles over a short-circuit risk that could lead to fires. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the problem involves a starter relay that can corrode and overheat, potentially causing a thermal event even when the car is off.

The recall covers several older hybrid models: the 2016-2018 330e iPerformance, the 2017-2019 740Le xDrive iPerformance, and the 2018-2020 530e iPerformance along with its all-wheel-drive version. Water can seep into the starter's electrical relay and trigger corrosion, which may cause starting trouble, short circuits, or in extreme cases, a fire while driving or parked with the ignition off.

This follows a larger 2025 recall covering 196,355 vehicles, some of which had caught fire. That campaign didn't include plug-in hybrids, but ongoing investigations, spurred by field reports and about 150 starter examinations, led BMW to launch this voluntary recall voluntarily.

Dealers will replace the starter with a redesigned part. Owner notifications go out in late August, so expect to keep that car out of the garage for a while.