I got 7 years and almost 99,000 km of battery life on my first battery. That is indeed very impressive!
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New Battery, and a Drive to Kerala
It has been a couple of months since I drove this car for any real long drive. In the last couple of months, I did a few drives in my Thar, and also did a trip to Kashmir (by flight). In all that, the BMW was lying a bit underused.
One of the issues I was noticing lately was a delayed start on occasion. One specific problem I had was the car sometimes refused to start specifically on “hot start” (trying to start the car immediately after shutting down the engine, when the car had already ran for about 2-3 hours and the engine was hot). It would start again if I cool it down for a few minutes, but instant hot start was a problem. BTW, this I faced even in my long drives in last six months or so, and this is not related to the recent under-utilization of the car.
While I discussed this with the service center and also discussed the battery health as a possible issue, we always ruled it out because of two reasons: 1. The car would start absolutely fine on cold start even after a week or so, and 2: The iDrive is supposed to indicate when the battery goes weak and needs replacement. It supposedly gives plenty of advanced warning. I had not received even one such warning in iDrive or any fault code related to battery. Further, the battery was also tested at the service center last time I complained about the hot start, and it was again shown to be fine!
Thus, prima facie it looked like battery was fine and it was not the problem. However, given that the battery was now 7 years old, and I had ran the car for more than 98,000km on this battery already, I thought I had already extracted good battery life, and it was better to change the battery proactively anyways. After all, there is no point in waiting till the battery shows any real problems and I get stranded somewhere because of a bad battery. No point in waiting till that iDrive warning comes up.
So with that thought, still without any warning sign or any other telltale signs of a poor battery, I went ahead and proactively got a new battery installed at my usual service center, KUN BMW. The cost of the new BMW OEM battery, including the installation and programming (BMW needs some minor programming to register the new battery, which is quite simple actually), came to ₹40k. The exact odometer when I got this new battery was 98,840km.
As always, I got excellent service at KUN BMW and the overall service center experience remains 10/10 for me!
Overall I am very impressed with the BMW OEM battery life (it is a Verta AGM battery actually, rebranded as BMW battery). I got 7 years and almost 99,000km of battery life on my first battery, and even then it had some more life left. That is indeed very impressive!
With the new battery, I instantly realized that the engine starts much better now, immediately on the start button push and with a crisp crank. There is a noticeable improvement in engine cranking even on cold start now, and now I realized that I had a slow, a bit delayed start even on cold start earlier. So definitely the new battery is helping and a battery change was indeed good, even though the iDrive did not show any warning sign yet.
And most importantly, the hot start problem also disappeared after this battery replacement. With the new battery, I purposefully tried the instant hot start multiple times just to test it, and the car started absolutely fine every single time, even on hot start! Overall, I am glad I went ahead and proactively changed the battery.
Drive to a Beach in Kerala
After the new battery, I had to have a long drive in this car. Was really missing the drives in a nice sedan after a few recent drives in my Thar.
So I decided to make a quick trip to a lovely beach resort in the northern parts of Kerala, called Kanan Beach Resort. This is located on a serene beach near Neeleshwar, Kerala, around 400km from Bangalore.
The drive to this place is beautiful. The routes goes through beautiful forests roads, followed by the scenic district highways in Kerala.
Somewhere on the scenic routes:
On one of the many bridges I crossed: 
Bridge and the scenic roads: 
Parting shot on the bridge: 
The resort, Kanan Beach Resort, turned out to be a fantastic place! It is a small and quiet place, with a few independent cottages scattered around the beach side areas. Each cottage is a proper independent villa with a large living room, a kitchenette area, a bedroom, and a large patio with deck chairs. And it had a nice restaurant with sea views! Overall a perfect place for relaxing in quiet and serene ambiance without any hustle and bustle and noise! I loved this place.
My “Sea Facing Cottage” at Kanan Beach Resort: 
The living room in my cottage: 
Another view of the living room, where you can see kitchenette area complete with a refrigerator and counter top:
Spacious bedroom (this also had a french door opening to the beach area): 
The lovely deck with deck chairs, outside the living room: 
The sea was right in front of the deck, and I could hear the sea waves all the time while sitting here: 
In fact, the cottage was so close to the sea that all night I could hear the sound of the sea from my cottage, and it was amazing to wake up in the morning hearing the sounds of the sea waves!
The hammocks outside my cottage: 
The restaurant with sea views: 
This restaurant was great! The food was awesome, and more importantly, the service staff and their hospitality was great too. Absolutely polite and 5-star service experience here from the service staff. They used to come to my room with a menu card and politely ask me what I want, and then cook it to order and to perfection, and then call me to the restaurant when it was ready!
For lunch, I had this amazing vegetarian Kerala meal, called “On purpose” : 
After the delicious lunch and some rest, I stepped out on the beach in the evening. I spent next 2-3 hours walking around on the beach and enjoying the beautiful views of the sunset and the colorful sky from there. It was a very quiet, peaceful and idyllic evening experience!
Beach chairs to spend the evening on: 
Vantage view points to enjoy the sunset views: 
The beach was clean, not crowded at all, and beautiful: 
The beach was clean and beautiful, the weather was perfect, and the sunset light and clouds were all amazing. I had a plenty of free time to just sit there and enjoy the scene, and I also had a camera in hand. Unfortunately there wasn’t any prominent foreground subject for photography, but I did a workaround with my camera and tried to find some compositions just with the sea and the clouds, and nothing else!
The water patterns on the sand: 
The colors through the clouds, the colors on the water, and a boat far away on the horizon: 
Coconut trees offered some framing for an otherwise subject-less composition: 
The amazing colors in the sky: 
The footmarks of the beach walkers, in the golden light of the last moments of the sunset, became my subjects to form such compositions: 
After spending a few memorable hours enjoying the mesmerizing sunset scenes, I had a good night sleep and drove back to Bangalore the next day.
Morning walk on the beach, and this tree looked worth a photograph: 
My good friend and fellow BHPian @PrideRed was in a nearby area (Puttur, KA), and we decided to meet on the way, in my return journey. It was very nice of him to drive from Puttur to Sulia where we met. It was great meeting him there and chit chatting about the local areas, the travels and the locations there, and the local cultures and festivals. He drove his Hilux to come to meet me, and I got to see his Hilux too.
With Hilux of @PrideRed: 
Many thanks to @PrideRed for driving to this CCD to meet me, and for the nice coffee and the meet: 
So that is it from this quick drive to a lovely beach in Kerala.
That is all for now. The car is now nearing 100,000km mark, and in ship shape now with new battery, and everything else in top condition! Looking forward to the next drive now in which I would cross the 100,000km mark!
That is all for now. Thank you very much for reading!
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