BMW has told CNETAsia that an electronic fault caused the problem, rather than a system crash of the car's Windows-based central computer, as other reports have speculated.
Suchart Jaovisidha, Thailand's finance minister, was on his way to address central bank officials from around the world when his state-assigned BMW stalled, the Associated Press reported.
"The engine stopped, the air conditioning shut down, the doors got locked and the windows wouldn't roll down," Suchart was quoted as saying.
"We couldn't breathe because there was no air," he added.
To draw attention, the minister and his driver waved frantically at passers-by. The incident ended only after a nearby security guard smashed the car's windows with a sledgehammer.
Even with the heavy-duty tool, Suchart said it took a long time to break the windows as the "glass proved to be very resistant".
The harrowing experience lasted about 10 minutes, he said.
Suchart returned home and took his personal vehicle, also a BMW, to the speech venue, the report said.
Reports have speculated that the famously glitchy BMW 745i car, and its Windows CE-powered iDrive car computer, may have been the vehicle in the incident.
But when contacted by CNETAsia, a spokeswoman from BMW Thailand said the car at fault was a 10-year old BMW 520i that had suffered a simple electronic failure. She declined to reveal if the firm received identical reports from other users in the country.
According to previous reports, BMW recalled 15,000 iDrive-equipped 7-series cars, one of its most luxurious sedans, globally last May and 286 more in Korea two months after. Linux proponents have said that BMW engineers may be turning to embedded Linux as an alternative operating system.
The Korea Times said a software problem in the electronic management unit of the car's fuel pump could make the engine stall.
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What? You mean the door won't unlock in an electric failure? This is a safety hazard. It is not very hard to cause an electric failure in a car. How is one supposed to get out of the vehicle after an accident? This could have been fatal.
Posted by Kurt on Thursday, May 15 2003 12:01 PM