On my way home from Manhattan going up the West Side Highway, cruising in 7th gear, S5, and all of a sudden the gear selector goes dark. Dash and iDrive lit up with the shift lever icon, saying "Possible Selector Lever Fault, You can continue your journey, proceed with caution... etc."
First thought: not another god damn problem. Car just got back to me after a nightmare of engine issues 3 weeks ago.
Tried using the paddles, no response. The screen where it usually has the selected gear number is blank. Car is still in drive surprisingly, so I limp the rest of the way home. I pull in and try reverse, nothing. Neutral, nothing. Shut the car off, probably goes straight into park but after restarting minutes later, I now cant get it into ANY gear. 10 minutes go by and curious me decides to give it another restart, and I get an Service Engine Light and an engine icon on the dash (?!?!?), check the fault page and it says Increased Emissions (?!?!!?) This cant possibly be linked to the shift lever fault....
I have not a single clue as to why this is happening. My car was just in for engine warranty work (injector failure, leading to toasted plugs, contaminated oil with fuel, leading to a toasted VANOS solenoid, oil got into cylinders, leading to a bunch of oil being dumped into cats and exhaust).
Has anyone gotten this lever fault? It flat out wont work, like the entire mechanism is just off. Its obviously going to the dealer once again, but I couldnt find anything with the search.
Here are some pics I just took:
You can probably barely tell, but the LED's in the shift knob are off.
