BMW cupholders ‘not designed to hold cups filled with liquid,’ according to class action lawsuit

(CN) — A new class action lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Orange County, alleges that the cupholders in the BMW X7, and possibly other BMWs, contain a design flaw: Namely, they cannot get wet.

According to the complaint: the "cup holders are defective and are not properly designed to hold cups filled with liquid — the very thing cup holders are intended to do — which impairs" the safety and reliability of the vehicles.

The complaint goes on to read: "When liquid spills into the cup holder, the wires for the SRS (airbag) control module, which sits directly underneath cup holder, get wet and are damaged, causing damage to the air bags. As a result, the air bags can inadvertently deploy."

One plaintiff is named in the lawsuit: BrightK Consulting, Inc. The plaintiff's attorney, Hovanes Margarian, said he expects the class of plaintiffs to number in the "thousands."

"We believe there are thousands of vehicles which have this same design, which is defective," Margarian said. "The way it is arranged the cars are prone to malfunction when either there is a spill in the cupholder or condensation on the cup."

There's no account of anyone being hurt by the defect, though the suit points to numerous stories, posted online, of minor cupholder spills leading to $2,000 repair bills, with BMW refusing to cover the costs even if the car is under warranty.

One such comment, from March 2021, reads: "Placed a soft drink in Cup Holders of a 2020 BMW X7. The lid was not on well and some of the soda spilled onto the gearshift center console. Not much, the cup did not come out of the Cup Holders or anything like that just some spilled as driving….the soda was still 95% full in the cup. But…car goes into emergency stop in the left lane of highway and unable to drive. Goes into Park and won't shift into drive or reverse and dash says bring to dealer immediately. Car gets towed to BMW and tech tells me the liquid damaged a part under the gear shift…cost to fix $2900.00 and not covered by warranty.”

In a 2011 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Ludwig Willisch, then-CEO of BMW of North America said, "Cup holders have been a huge issue in the company. This has been a 20-year debate within the company. This is really about taking into account customer needs, and obviously at a certain point in time the engineers did not believe that this was an issue."

BMW of North America could not be immediately reached for comment.

Follow @hillelaron

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