2022 SE missing rear parking sensors

Perhaps an update, but I found that online summary missing lots of detail. In the ordering/feature brochure I saw in April, PDC was not listed as standard on the base. It was std on sig+ . The 2022 pricing PDF someone posted awhile indicates 507 (park distance control rear) was standard across the board. ... and then we have that recent 270lb-ft in the spec thing

 

Wow - I'm looking at a 2022 Sig coming in, and the build sheet does not have 507 PDC present. It would be very nice to have, although the dealer is convinced that it will have it on entry and that my deposit, or ahem, my committment to buy, would be refunded if it did not. I do find them quite helpful, particularly in grocery parking lots where you can't see in the rear lateral areas. Especially in a car as small as a Mini!

 

Hi All - I know this is a slightly old post, but I purchased a 2022 MINI SE in May, Signature trim, and according to the website and build specs thought it should have come with a few safety features that appear to be missing (Rear Park Distance Control and Active Driving Assistant). It sounds like a few others have experienced this and gotten only vague answers or the runaround from your dealers.

I took mine in for service, thinking it was just a programming error, and was told the Signature trim level doesn't come with these features, but that does not seem correct based on the website. Is this the same missing rear sensor issue others have experienced? Has anyone had any luck solving this? Is it possible to have sensors installed after the fact? Why would the dealer not disclose if there was a change in feature availability? Has anyone at least gotten a refund? Really wanted these features for safety - thanks if anyone can shine a light on this!

 

Parking assistant (5DP) is std on the iconic trim and is available as an option otherwise (so called driver assistant package).

507 Park Distance Control (rear) is std across the board.

The little round sensors in the rear facia/bumpers is what was being discussed. If your mini is equipped with the sensors it has rear PDC. If not then yours were not installed due to parts shortages, and you would not have rear PDC.

 

Thanks. Yes I'm referring to the Park Distance Control, which should be standard but does not work on my vehicle. Also the Active Driving Assist (which includes a forward collision warning and lane departure warning) - none of these are activated on my vehicle, so I am now assuming I am missing the rear sensors. But I was not informed of this by the dealer when purchasing and am wondering what my recourse is. Would appreciate hearing others' experience with this same issue.

 

Did you pay for the active driver assistance package option? That is video camera based, I believe, not bumper sensor based.

 

As @ColdCase said, this is entirely camera based.

My signature has the active driver assistant and it was standard. The features are subtle though so you may not notice. The lane keep assist vibrates the steering wheel (like a rumble strip), it will read speed limit signs and display them next to the speedometer, and the forward collision warning will show a red car icon on the instrument cluster and beep at you if you're going to run in to someone.

The settings for it are found by clicking the button to the right of the hazard lights (looks like a car surrounded by a circle). If the circle is green, the features are active. If it's orange/red then some or all are turned off.

 

Yes I have the option to turn on and off the Rear Park Distance Control and Active Driving Assistant settings and have made sure they were activated, however the audio and tactile signals such as steering wheel vibration and sound when backing up too close to something do not work. I have the rear camera view but according to the feature descriptions (the MINI website states that the 2022 SE comes with Rear Park Distance Control and Active Driving Assistant), there should be more than a camera view.

For example, the Users Manual for Park Distance Control (PDC) states:
The PDC assists you when you back into a parking space. A signal tone tells you the current distance to an object behind your vehicle. To do this, four ultrasonic sensors in the rear bumper measure the distance to the nearest object.

The 2022 Mini Cooper (non-electric) loaner car the service department gave me has all these features, and there is an audible sound if there is an object behind the vehicle, and the lane departure warning vibrates the steering wheel. But these do not work on my vehicle and I am getting non-answers from the dealer and service department.

 

Update: the service department confirmed that while the MINI website states that the 2022 SE Signature trim includes Park Distance Control, it is not installed on my car (even though there is the option to check it under the dash settings on my car). They said the website is wrong and the dealer should have informed me of this error. The dealer never told me anything.

Anyone know if the Park Distance Control feature can be added retroactively? Thanks all.

 

Unfortunately, the rear Park Distance Control has been standard on the MINI Cooper SE for years. You're one of the first to be faced with this dilemma. Your clueless dealer should contact MINI to answer this question. The phrase "class-action lawsuit" should be mumbled at some point in your discussion.

Here's an ebay seller who claims to have the genuine MINI electronic parking sensor parts (for a mere $187.90), but you'd need the special wheel-well trim pieces that have the angled mounting holes for the sensors. The seller does not indicate if the sensors can be added to a car that never had them in the first place.

All MINI Cooper SEs were supposed to have the rear parking sensors as standard equipment. Because MINI raised the ground clearance of the SE 0.71 inches (18 mm) to "ensure the relevant ground clearance for the high-voltage battery installed in the vehicle floor," they made the SE's wheel-well trim pieces wider to avoid unattractively increasing the space between the tire and the trim. When it became clear to MINI that they would not be able to include the standard rear parking sensors, they must have started manufacturing the wider wheel-well trim pieces without the angled holes. How long did that take? It wasn't simply a matter of deleting the sensors--they had to start making new wheel-well trim parts, which incurs the additional expense of new tooling, new part numbers, documentation, parts-stocking, etc.

IMO, rather than making this feature omission a secret that owners had to discover after paying for that feature and finding it missing, MINI should have made plugs for the holes in the standard SE wheel-well trim pieces and promised a retrofit when the parts became available. It is obviously the right thing to do. I'd love to know the full story about why they simply omitted the feature and pretended it never existed--without bothering to tell MINI's website department.

In the case of the Harman/Kardon sound system that MINI could no longer supply, they offered a $550 discount on the Signature Plus and Iconic trim cars on which that sound system was listed as standard. No such discount was offered for the missing parking sensors.

The plot thickens when it comes to the cars ordered with MINI's Parking Assistant (standard on Iconic trim, optional on others). Those cars need both front and rear ultrasonic parking sensors (and the front camera, too, I believe). AFAIK, people who have ordered SEs with the Parking Assistant have not been denied the rear (or front) parking sensors because that would disable this expensive (and scary--I've tried it only once) feature. Apparently, those sensors are still available, but are being reserved for customers who spent more money.

Wow, I got a little carried away, but I'm very sympathetic with your plight because I love both the front and rear parking sensors on my Iconic SE. MINI did you wrong.

 

I thought the reason for the missing parking sensors was just that there was a chip shortage, not that the parking sensors didn't work because of the wider wheel-well trim pieces. My Signature Plus, which began production in early May and arrived at the dealer at the end of June, has the rear parking sensors, and I didn't order the Parking Assistant. So, at some point, they didn't have the sensors (for whatever reason), then they had them, then they didn't have them again.

 

Yeah, I think this has been talked about for awhile here, maybe earlier in this thread or another. So if you look at the rear bumper and do not see little round sensors, they didn't have them to install (chip shortage). So they used parts from cars used in markets where the sensors are not standard and shipped the mini without. I don't think they had to redesign anything except to perhaps modify a software parameter. Unlike the HK premium radio, I don't think Mini offered any compensation.

In the fine print, all manufactures state that they can make running changes at any time. Happens quite often. They should have told us the sensors are missing as of a certain build date, however, so you could reject the vehicle and get your deposit back. Dunno if this is a dealer or corporate communication issue.

 

What I was saying was that when MINI decided to omit the rear parking sensors they went to the extraordinary step of actually creating a NEW version of the SE's wider rear wheel-well trim that didn't include the holes for the sensors. Or did they? Now I'm wondering, did MINI simply stick some existing earlier sensor-less F56 rear wheel-well trim on the SE even though it looks bad on the lifted SE?

If MINI went to the trouble to create special sensor-less rear wheel-well trim specifically for the SE, it does not bode well for the sensors to return as standard equipment when the chip shortage is resolved.

 

I can confirm my sensor-less Signature does have the SEs wider/taller wheel well trim. The wheel well trim from the ICE coopers will not fit as there are subtle differences by the bumper joint



I agree with @ColdCase that MINI likely already had the sensor-less parts for another market. Manufacturing tooling can also be quite complex with removable inserts to make different versions of a component on the same tool.

 

Are you saying the 2021 Iconic SE has a front camera? I've never used the Parking Assistant but haven't seen any signs of a front camera. Not that I'd know where to look. Is it just on the passenger side (where the parking takes place)?

 

I thought it was built into the rear view mirror mount next to the rain sensor, but maybe that's not true.

 

My 2022 standard trim came with rear sensors and camera. I did have to enable the guidelines, etc via a menu item in the center console. It also has the button on the center console that turns on/off the safety suite (lane detection, collision warning, etc).

 

Did you order the parking assistant?

Just to clarify, you have small circular sensors on the rear bumper? The guidelines are separate from the parking sensors, the parking sensors mean the car beeps at you when you get too close to something.

 

I did not order any extra features, and yes the car has the sensors on the bumper. I was actually surprised the car came with them, I was expecting it to only have the camera.