[HN Gopher] BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expen...
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BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive
Author : mikelabatt
Score : 412 points
Date : 2025-12-05 01:05 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (evclinic.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (evclinic.eu)
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| This is exactly why I'm so uninterested in driving en EV. I
| usually word it as "I don't want to drive a computer", but the
| reality is that I don't want to be on the wrong end of the power
| imbalance that comes from this amount of complexity.
| jkterhune wrote:
| PHEV in the title is plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Different
| from a pure EV.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Does that make a difference in this regard? If so, how, and
| is it an unavoidable penalty for PHEVs? I can see PHEVs
| having a complexity penalty from having an IC engine over and
| above the EV components, but that does not seem to be the
| source of the problems here.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I would say so for this particular failure.
|
| The issue in this case has everything to do with the
| electronics design and close to nothing to do with
| propulsion.
|
| The issue described is happening because German car makers
| love to put generic parts inside proprietary modules that
| cannot be repaired, and require extensive OEM tooling to
| replace. This kind of dumb shit happens on ICE cars and EVs
| that follow this design paradigm.
|
| As described int the article the actual failed piece is
| ~$50 if you can replace just that pyrofuse. BMW doesn't
| allow tha though. So you have to replace the entire module
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Well designed PHEVs can actually be simpler than pure ICs
| (at least on the hardware side. To build a combustion only
| car well, you need to balance efficiency, power, and
| responsiveness. This means you need all sorts of
| complicated tech, like correctly sized turbos, variable
| valve lift, variable valve duration, etc. In a PHEV, otoh,
| you have an electric engine (which can also steal power
| from the driveshaft), which means you don't need to worry
| about responsiveness of the combustion engine. You can fill
| half a second of turbo lag with the motor, and optimize for
| narrower RPM ranges since you can charge/discharge the
| battery to keep the engine running in its happy place. You
| also no longer need fancy and complicated brakes because
| you can do 99% of your braking with regen.
|
| All of this does come with more complex software, but the
| hardware can end up with significant simplification.
| GMoromisato wrote:
| This is true. EVs are much simpler than ICE, and PHEV
| basically have all the complexity of EV+ICE.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Plus more. My Volt had a component fail that was
| responsible for switching the cabin heater between the
| battery and the motor, so if I placed the vehicle in pure
| EV mode then I couldn't heat the cabin, oops!
| jgilias wrote:
| PHEV means a lot of things. Toyota PHEVs with e-CVT are
| simpler than a normal ICE. VW PHEVs where there's an
| electric motor tucked into their DSG gearbox - not so much.
| spockz wrote:
| And then the kicker. VW doesn't allow the dsg with
| electric motor to be repaired by dealers. If something is
| wrong it needs to be replaced completely. At the cost of
| EUR15k (NL, 2021). The only serviceable thing is the
| clutch and the mechatronic.
|
| IMHO this is something that should be regulated away as
| consumer unfriendly and environment unfriendly. (Not to
| say hostile.)
|
| In the end I got a DSG specialist fix the problem in two
| hours by replacing two simple components physically. The
| car then spend an hour retraining the dsg.
| rswail wrote:
| PHEVs mean that half the time your using your battery to
| drag around an ICE, the other half the ICE is dragging
| around a battery.
|
| A very temporary phenomenon in the evolution from ICE to
| EV.
| torginus wrote:
| Your phrasing implies this causes extra weight gain -
| just to illustrate, the new Prius is about 1.4t (while
| having decent PHEV range), while the ID4 (a similar sized
| EV) is 2t.
| ansgri wrote:
| Probably the one type of PHEV that should survive is
| basically a BEV with builtin backup generator. One that's
| not necessarily powerful enough to drive you directly at
| full speed, but enough to basically eliminate range
| limitation of a (cheaper and smaller) battery by
| continuously charging it when needed. Maybe this 'backup
| generator' can even be made as a removable option.
|
| I'm thinking of a semi-rural use case, when your typical
| daily trip is 20-50 km, but the charging infrastructure
| is poor and occasionally you do need to drive 200-300 km
| in winter.
| fyrn_ wrote:
| Many modern ford cars have 6 CAN buses. ICE cars are not
| simpler. The tech _has_ been beaten with the hammer of
| incremental improvement for a long time, but ICE cars are not
| less computer controlled. If anything ice engines require many
| more "computers" and sensors to be efficient
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| My Hybrid F-150 is so freaking complex. They basically seem
| to have swapped many components over to electrical drive
| (like the F-150 Lightning), but they still have to slap all
| of the ICE components in there as well.
| fHr wrote:
| Absolutely, also I'm not stupid rich and most are not but I
| witness how much they spend more on services and repair that I
| can very very easily do on my "stupid" gasoline car myself. I
| buy my used cars for 5k and a used ev is like 20k-25k where I
| live so I on purchase save the first 20k. The gas cost I save
| with lower insurance and service/repair costs easily. So it's
| juat a waste of money in my opinion and a bit of an itelligence
| test.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| EVs are not complicated.
|
| Modern carmakers might make them complicated, and you're well
| within your right to avoid those, but in general electronic
| propulsion is pretty simple. The problem is car manufacturing
| is a very expensive industry that's extremely difficult to
| disrupt, so incumbents aren't really worried about staying
| ahead of hungry competitors.
|
| Go look at small-scale PEVs - ebikes, scooters, unicycles, etc.
| A huge, huge range of players making every possible variation
| under the sun, with simple designs and extremely low costs.
| This is what the car space is missing out on, because of
| regulations etc owing to their larger size and much higher
| danger levels that entails. I suspect many places have
| regulations that largely exclude smaller, simpler cars from
| being viable as well.
| pandaman wrote:
| EV is indeed easy. Safe and reliable EV is hard. Vehicle
| environment is hostile to electric components, where they are
| exposed to vibration, dirt, and moisture. Even if you get
| "safe" chemistry in the battery cells of an Alibaba e-bike,
| it only means the cells themselves are less likely to explode
| in a chemical fire. It still has enough current to melt
| metall and set off a regular fire. And in the best case it
| will just stop working and good luck repairing some random
| components, which might have been from a short production run
| and there are no spares in the existence.
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| > EVs are not complicated.
|
| > Modern carmakers might make them complicated
|
| OP did not say they would not travel on electric trains or
| unicycles or elevators or electric forklifts or electric
| container ships. They said they don't want an EV. The things
| that modern carmakers make complicated.
| Rohansi wrote:
| > _They said they don 't want an EV. The things that modern
| carmakers make complicated._
|
| It's probably more of a sign of what's coming in the
| future. There is no need to make EVs difficult/expensive to
| repair. The change in technology is just an excuse to lock
| everything down and rake in more money for repairs/new
| vehicles. They could do the same for ICE vehicles too.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > electronic propulsion is pretty simple
|
| So simple that it's usually called electric propulsion.
| 0manrho wrote:
| > EVs are not complicated.
|
| In the well established auto context we're talking about in
| this thread they are.
|
| > Go look at small-scale PEV
|
| Not relevant to the discussion at hand.
|
| You're right that they shouldn't be, and don't have to be.
| That doesn't mean that the ones that actually exist in the
| automotive world actually are, and it's rather egregious to
| claim that they aren't. Doubly so when you try to
| substantiate that with devices that regardless of propulsion
| are drastically simpler, cheaper, and different devices. It's
| like trying to claim airplanes aren't complicated because a
| gliders are simple.
|
| Not all of them are as bad as the BMW in the OP, but very few
| (if any) road legal mass produced EV's are truly simple.
| 8note wrote:
| EV and "driving a computer" are orthogonal
|
| chances are that you are driving an ICE computer, with all the
| problems driving a computer comes with.
|
| the EV itself is simpler than ICE is. fewer moving parts, and
| short supply chains once you actually have the thing.
|
| how much complexity goes into making and supplying your gas?
| nomel wrote:
| Yeah, modern ICE is a massively complex control system
| problem, requiring so much more compute than EV, just to meet
| regulations.
|
| Here's a funny example: the fuel vapor recovery system. It
| stores fuel vapors from the gas tank, that otherwise would
| have leaked into the air, in a canister of activated carbon.
| When under appropriate driving/environmental conditions, it
| opens valves and feeds the vapor into the intake stream, so
| it's burned.
|
| [1] https://www.motor.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/07/Evap_0319-1...
|
| Article: https://www.motor.com/magazine-summary/vapor-tales-
| understan...
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| However when you advertise your car as eco friendly, you
| should be forbidden to create a non-repairable apple phone on
| wheels
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| In principle and EV car should be much simpler than an ICE car.
| It seems they are adding a lot of extra stuff that's not really
| necessary.
| teo_zero wrote:
| I think you are referring to BEV cars. The definition of EV
| includes hybrid and plug-hybrid (which the fine article is
| about, by the way).
| aetherspawn wrote:
| Teslas are dead simple, to the point where people are putting
| Tesla anything in virtually anything you can think of - classic
| cars, random sedans, you name it.
|
| There's also that guy on YouTube who updated the electricals in
| his original Model S with electricals from a 10 years later
| Model 3 Highland just by buying spare parts, and it was pretty
| doable with fairly basic and limited tools/public information.
|
| So the complexity in this article is just a BMW/PHEV thing, not
| an EV thing.
| rconti wrote:
| As they point out, the Tesla pyro fuse (at least on a Model
| S) is a cheap part. However, in some model years it's on
| _top_ of the pack, which means you have to drop the pack to
| get to it. And, from memory, it 's a 10 year lifespan part.
| However, on other Model S cars, it's easily accessible from
| the bottom.
|
| I wonder how we can make automakers make more repairable
| cars. Obviously, right-to-repair and allowing access to
| documentation and tools for independent shops is a a
| necessary but not sufficient step.
|
| I shudder to think at some of the other possibilities --
| heavy-handed attempts to regulate how much specific repairs
| can cost.
|
| Maybe mandating the sale of manufacturer-provided extended
| warranties for no more than x% the cost of the vehicle
| purchase price would be an incentive to keep repair cost in
| check?
| radium3d wrote:
| The majority of their cars (Y/3 models) have the penthouse
| (top) of battery pack super easily accessible from under
| the back seat, no need to drop a pack.
|
| Not to mention Tesla has the best service mode system in
| their computer of any brand of all time. They also have the
| best free to owners assembly/disassembly manuals in the
| service portal https://service.tesla.com/. They have taken
| self-service literally to the next level compared to
| anything I've ever driven ICE, Hybrid or EV and I've owned
| all of them.
| mrexroad wrote:
| +1 for the Tesla service manuals. My wife's was making a
| clunk from front suspension. Before my assistant (my kid)
| had finished taking off the wheel, I found the up-to-date
| official torque specs on service site. Usually it takes
| me a while to find torque values and cross check with
| another source. It was beyond refreshing to see Tesla
| buck the trend of selling service-manuals-as-a-service.
|
| Service documentation / manufacturer software required
| for cars I currently wrench:
|
| - Early 20's: Bookmarked URL to the official online
| documentation (Tesla). With that said, I haven't had need
| beyond checking mechanical connections, flushing brakes,
| and replacing filters.
|
| - Early 10's: VM containing a mid-00's version of windows
| that runs a cracked copy of the long defunct manufacturer
| software service manual. Also runs software to interface
| with car, but simply painful to use. Beginning of era
| where tasks like replacing the 12v battery require
| manufacturer software to interface (though simple things
| still had undocumented secret Contra-like button
| sequences to do so).
|
| - Early 10's car: folders of screenshots and pdf exports
| collected over a decade for various procedures I needed
| to do. OBD-2 dongle + generic app handled basic things.
| Not much different than decade prior vehicle.
|
| - Early 00's: PDF of a seemingly printed-and-scanned copy
| of a digital version of the service manual. Off by a
| model year, surprising number of inconsistencies given
| its German. Computer and K+DCAN connection required for
| re-coding new parts, flashing, etc. Some fancier OBD-2
| scanners could do majority of service related functions
| (cycle abs, reset airbag light, etc).
|
| - Late 80's: PDF scans of the dozen+ service books (still
| trying to luck into a physical copy of the set without
| paying an absurd sum). Most mechanically complex vehicle
| I own. No computer necessary, but soldering required.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| Early 70s: Haynes hardcopy with oil stains, "...
| Reassembly is the reverse procedure thereof."
| sgt wrote:
| Reading in reverse is surprisingly hard
| rconti wrote:
| Thanks for the detail -- mine comment was just lazy, from
| memory, from a friend's car and videos I've seen online.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " I wonder how we can make automakers make more repairable
| cars."
|
| This is what insurance companies are supposed to do if they
| price things properly.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > I wonder how we can make automakers make more repairable
| cars
|
| Mandate longer warranty durations?
|
| I mean, may not help with damage due to collisions, but
| there are plenty of other reasons why a car may need
| reparing..
| RGamma wrote:
| > I wonder how we can make automakers make more repairable
| cars.
|
| New mandatory test suite: Have executives/leading personnel
| do common repairs and time it. Publish min/max/avg time
| next to fuel efficiency and safety rating.
|
| Repairability would be top priority overnight.
| uticus wrote:
| > I wonder how we can make automakers make more repairable
| cars...Maybe mandating...
|
| No, mandating / regulations are not the answer, unless
| you're looking to artificially enforce something that the
| consumer doesn't want.
| moogly wrote:
| On the Model 3, you have to drop the HV battery pack to
| replace the brake lines that prematurely rust in wintery
| climates, so Tesla is not fully immune either.
|
| And check some videos of what you have to do to swap the
| door-actuating motor (which gets guaranteed water ingress) in
| the front doors (yes, not the gullwings) of a Model X.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Battery drop in Tesla is 30 min job tho.
| dangus wrote:
| The article points out that it's specificity BMW making this
| hard and expensive.
|
| That shouldn't surprise anyone.
|
| If you own a BMW you'll be dropping $5k on a repair someday.
| It's a matter of when not if. That's why most people lease them
| and move on to the next one.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| This seems like more of a BMW issue than EV. On my E46 and E39
| there's a pyrotechnic fuse on the negative battery terminal.
| It's somewhere around $400 in _parts_ to replace. It 's only
| gotten more expensive and more complex with their newer ICE
| cars.
|
| Back in the 80s and 90s Ford's solution was a reusable inertia
| switch.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| You're blaming the wrong thing. EVs are ultimately much, much
| simpler than ICE cars, it's just that certain manufacturers are
| taking this opportunity to turn their cars into elaborate
| scams.
|
| Everything is a computer these days, but that doesn't mean that
| they have to be needlessly complicated. I think EVs are great,
| but I won't be buying one until they start selling cheap,
| simple ones.
| floxy wrote:
| What are the biggest overcomplicating issues with something
| like the Nissan Leaf? Especially on something like a
| 2018-2025 S trim?
| CalRobert wrote:
| I am, perhaps naively, hoping the Slate pickup can be better
| about this.
| teiferer wrote:
| None of the issues in the article are specific to electric
| cars. This isn't even one, it's a plug-in hybrid. A modern ICE
| car will have the same issues of having too much electronics
| inside.
| jandrese wrote:
| One would expect a plug in hybrid to be the most complex of
| all the vehicle types. It has all of the complexity of an EV
| combined with all of the complexity of a gas burner.
| bob1029 wrote:
| The complexity here is partially a consequence of the energy
| storage mechanism and may be essential.
|
| It is not possible for an entire tank of gasoline to
| spontaneously detonate in the same way that an EV battery can.
| If a mechanic fucks up a procedure and drills a hole through
| fuel tank, it's not fantastic but you can usually detect and
| recover from this before it gets to be catastrophic. If you
| accidentally puncture an EV battery or drop something across
| the terminals it can instantly kill everyone working on the
| car. These are not the same kind of risk profile.
|
| I would not want work on anything with a high voltage system.
| Especially if it had been involved in an accident or was poorly
| maintained. These fuses and interlocks can only help up to a
| certain point. Energy is energy and it's in there somewhere.
| You can have 40kW for an entire hour or 100MW for 2 seconds.
| Gasoline cars usually throw a rod or something before getting
| much beyond 2x their rated power output.
| a2128 wrote:
| EVs are not intrinsically complicated as some sibling
| commenters say, but the issue is that EVs are new and mostly
| made after the point when automakers started building cars as
| computers. And it's also a good excuse to put even more
| computers inside because an EV has to look modern with big
| screens and cool chimes right?
|
| I think this genuinely hampers EV adoption and governments
| should take some sort of action if they want to transition the
| market to EVs. Not that the average consumer chooses cars based
| on how many computers are inside it, but this builds a general
| impression of fragility and creates such negative stories. We
| need simple, reliable, serviceable EVs, but the incumbents are
| not going to build it on their own. (Government excessive
| regulations for safety, backup cameras, speed limiters, etc
| arguably created this problem in the first place)
| Tade0 wrote:
| In terms of (unnecessary) complexity of modern ICE cars the Car
| Wizard has a few words that might interest you:
|
| Title of the clip: Why does it cost over $4K to replace a
| simple $50 gasket?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJMWvyDP3j8
|
| It's not an EV issue. It's a modern car issue.
| brikym wrote:
| Are ICE cars really any better with BMW? The used values
| indicate they are very expensive to maintain.
| boudin wrote:
| The problem of repairability and independent garages to have
| access to the tools, software and training to repair cars is
| not specific to electric cars. The level of electronic and
| automation is related to safety norms which applies to any car.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| PHEVs are particularly complicated because they have to support
| two drive trains. Just EV's are very simple outside of the
| battery management. It's power from the battery going to a
| motor.
| Beijinger wrote:
| " power imbalance that comes from this amount of complexity."
|
| Look what happened in Russia:
|
| https://www.autoblog.com/news/all-of-russias-porsches-were-b...
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Is this an issue with all BMW PHEVs or just one model from one
| year?
| bri3d wrote:
| Manufacturer locked crash resets for BMS are a common theme
| amongst EVs, especially European ones. Exclusive to neither
| this model year nor BMW, although some other makes have less
| arcane procedures than the ISTA one.
| lisbbb wrote:
| There are tons of used BMWs on the used market here in the
| states. They don't hold their value because everyone knows that
| some stupid thing is wrong with them that either can't be fixed
| or is so ludicrously costly to fix that it would be more than the
| whole entire car is worth. BMW is a shit company, doesn't matter
| if it is ICE or EV or whatever it is, they're intentionally made
| to be impossible to repair cheaply. It would be so easy to build
| "open" hardware and have onboard diagnostics built into the cars,
| but no.
| linkage wrote:
| The Ultimate Leasing Machine, as it were
| samarthr1 wrote:
| This makes me feel that peak car was 2010 ish, when, when engines
| were powerful, cheap, and not too polluting, but also not overly
| complex.
|
| Spare parts were small, cheap, and easily accessible too (atleast
| for my toyota)
|
| I dread being forced to upgrade, not out of disdain for the
| environment, but the fact that I will spend more money, on a less
| reliable, less "mine" car, and more something big daddy
| government wants.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I have never owned or wanted a pickup, but now I'm wondering
| about getting a basic one (if that's still an option.) It is
| annoying and depressing.
| eddieroger wrote:
| I've felt similarly recently, and I think those days are
| fleeting if not gone. Ford recently talked about
| replatforming their entire range, which would include basic
| trucks at more reasonable prices, but there's not really a
| market for work trucks in the way there used to be, and
| they're gone in favor of the luxury ones with small beds. It
| is annoying. There is an interesting startup that I can't
| remember the name of that touts an 8 foot bed (which is
| great) in the chassis footprint of a Mini Cooper. I don't
| think I saw pricing, but I would snatch one of those up.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Slate?
| pickledish wrote:
| They're talking about this I'm pretty sure!
|
| https://www.telotrucks.com/
| eddieroger wrote:
| Yes, those. Thank you!
| ridgeguy wrote:
| You might consider acquiring a used model that meets your
| needs, then spend $ to zero-time the important stuff. In
| 2023, I decided not to buy a new car, but to re-engine (and
| other stuff) my 1999 4Runner. Really happy I did.
|
| I would like a pickup (spouse -> serious gardener), have
| decided to get something simple & used, then put another
| $20K into it.
| amluto wrote:
| > there's not really a market for work trucks in the way
| there used to be
|
| I find this to be a strange assertion. I've only asked a
| small number of contractors, but every one I've asked
| wished they could buy a smaller, lower, practical work
| truck with decent capacity.
| toast0 wrote:
| There's no market for new small work trucks because
| nobody is willing to sell them. Not because nobody is
| willing to buy them.
|
| People who need work trucks end up getting f-150 or
| similar, work vans, or buying used. There was a used car
| lot in my old neighborhood that specialized in work
| trucks. It would be 75% white single cab trucks, 20%
| white panel vans, and then 5% work trucks and vans in
| colors.
| generic92034 wrote:
| That must be the invisible hand of the free market at
| work. ;)
| toast0 wrote:
| Well CAFE standards say don't bother making small
| vehicles. And manufacturers say oh darn, we have to make
| the vehicles with lots of profits? Well sorry small truck
| buyers, we're out.
| eddieroger wrote:
| If there was a market for those vehicles, they'd exist.
| The folks you asked either didn't buy them when they had
| the chance or don't make up enough of the market to
| justify the truck.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > I've only asked a small number of contractors, but
| every one I've asked wished they could buy a smaller,
| lower, practical work truck with decent capacity
|
| And if you ask Reddit, everyone _says_ they want to buy a
| brown NA station wagon with a manual... yet nobody
| _actually_ buys those cars when dealers stock them. This
| is what economists call "stated" vs. "revealed"
| preference.
|
| Nissan discontinued the last small long bed, small-cab
| compact pickup last year. Now you can only get it as a
| two row. They had a monopoly on this supposedly lucrative
| market segment that contractors claim to want... yet it
| was discontinued because nobody was _actually purchasing_
| that configuration.
|
| Even for full-size pickups, GM revealed less than 10% of
| the product mix is single-row long bed.
|
| It's not some conspiracy. People. Aren't. Buying. Them.
| zdragnar wrote:
| CAFE standards have made that pretty hard. The trucks got
| bigger to hold more complex engine setups to boost mileage,
| coinciding with preferences shifting to super crew cabs
| because buying a new truck is basically the same price as
| buying a luxury vehicle.
|
| I did own a 1994 Dodge ram up until a few years ago, but it
| needed new brake lines and there was so much rust coming off
| the frame I honestly wasn't sure I trusted it anymore, and
| the cost of the brake lines was probably more than it was
| worth at that point.
| eszed wrote:
| Frame damage apart, brake lines (in general, though I
| haven't worked specifically on a Dodge) are a reasonably
| straightforward DIY job. Not at all saying you made the
| wrong decision abandoning that particular car, just
| encouraging others reading this to evaluate the cost of a
| brake system replacement more, um... creatively, and least
| do some research. Basic car repair is an immanently nerdy
| pastime, and can save one an immense amount of money -
| especially on that particular era of automobiles, which are
| typically pretty satisfying to wrench on.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Maybe Slate? https://www.slate.auto/
|
| A new 1980's mini truck would be awesome. If only...
| toast0 wrote:
| Nobody is currently selling new, small pickups. Maybe if the
| Slate materializes, that'll prove the market and we'll see
| them again.
|
| In the meantime, 200x Ford Ranger or 200x Chevy S-10 are the
| last of the small pickups where you can get a 6 foot bed and
| a single row of seats. (Afaik)
|
| I sold my small white pickup once, and ended up with a
| different small white pickup a few years later. I do enough
| (small) truck things that having a truck on hand just in case
| is worth it for me; but even with minimal miles per year
| there's certainly added expense from maintenance some of
| which ends up being time based, registration fees, and
| incremental costs for liability insurance on another vehicle.
| For quite a while, my family vehicles were a 4-door car/wagon
| and a small pickup, but that doesn't work for everyone; I
| feel better served with a minivan, a 4-door phev, and a
| pickup (and a silly old rear engined vw van with only the
| front seats, mostly for midlife crisis, but also handy for
| picking up large items that don't want to be inside for
| transport)
| gkanai wrote:
| I would argue peak car was a little earlier, maybe the
| 2000-2010 decade. Fewer screens to fail, analog buttons and
| dials. Airbags, and ABS for safety but without the additional
| computers/screens.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| 4th gen 4Runner w/ a 2UZ-FE
| soramimo wrote:
| Still got my E46!
| eszed wrote:
| Entirely agree, although I think it varies by make / model.
| Roughly look for whenever a particular car got OBDII, which
| makes diagnostics way easier (and was kinda the perfect level
| of digitization, again in my opinion), through (as you say)
| whenever they started digitizing the cockpit and/or (which
| oddly - maybe? - coincide, in my experience) manufacturers
| stopped considering ease of maintenance in engineering
| decisions. In general late-1990s through 2005-2010. Cars
| since that decade (or so) are more sophisticated, at the
| expense of far, far shorter useful lifespans.
| threetonesun wrote:
| Mid 2008s saw a lot of cost cutting after the financial
| crisis, and then some very weird engineering decisions to
| deal with increased efficiency laws that made for much more
| complicated engines and transmissions even in smaller cars,
| if the smaller cars even continued to exist.
|
| Early 2000s JDM coupes will always hold a soft spot in my
| heart, even though they've mostly rotted away at this
| point. I used to say I was into cars but these days there's
| nothing that inspires me at all, I'd be happy just to have
| a reliable electric box with 4 wheels.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Depending on the make, rust-protection wasn't _quite_ there
| yet.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| The sad part is that the plastics from around that time are
| starting to fail.
|
| That E92 M3 LCI is now a 14 year old car.
| jesse__ wrote:
| I've got a supercharged E92 M3. I'll own that thing till I
| die, funnest car ever.
| jfoster wrote:
| I think it continues to be under-appreciated how much of a lead
| Tesla still has in EVs. Even BMW can't make something that is
| practical.
|
| First people said "competition is coming" for about a decade. Now
| the competition has finally half arrived, but it's still so far
| behind. Perhaps the closest is BYD, but most BYD drivers would
| prefer to be driving a Tesla.
| alephnerd wrote:
| I wouldn't understate BYD, but Tesla did play a massive role in
| helping build China's domestic EV ecosystem because Tesla also
| worked on building a supplier ecosystem in China, which also
| helped incubate much of the Chinese ecosystem.
|
| That said, BYD is outcompeting most other Chinese players as
| well, and it can be argued that this is due to the fact that
| BYD is _also_ a private sector player unlike most of it 's
| domestic competitors.
|
| The only competitor in China that can compete against BYD is
| SAIC - an SOE owned by Shanghai's government.
|
| That said, the EV glut has become a significant headache from a
| local government fiscal perspective - the majority of Chinese
| automotive companies are owned by state and local governments -
| a large number of whom ended up spending eye bleeding amounts
| of yuan on EVs despite _no_ competitive advantage, and it 's
| these state and local governments that are now increasingly
| holding the bag - which Chinese market regulators have
| increasingly raised red flags about [0] (and I myself
| foreshadowed on HN a couple times [1][2]).
|
| [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/terminal/T3V4AWMB2SJX
|
| [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41275593
|
| [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41275541
| dmix wrote:
| China is also copying SpaceX's Starship
| https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/chinas-long-term-
| lunar...
|
| Which is kind of exciting if you don't care about IP law.
|
| Likewise their CR series/Fuxing high speed trains seem to be
| quite nice. They were spawned off their experience working on
| Euro/Japanese trains
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuxing_(train)
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I think Nissan is a bit underrated here. I'm leasing an Ariya
| which has been great (including its charging curve, which is
| better than much of the competition) and feels more premium
| than you'd expect from the brand (to the point that the top
| trim is sometimes referred to as a "baby Infiniti") with things
| like dual pane windows to cut down on road noise, as well as a
| proper heat pump where many still only have resistive heaters.
|
| The 2026 Leaf takes many of the Ariya's good qualities and one
| ups them at one of the lowest price points in the industry.
|
| And both can be parked in spots that no model of Tesla will
| fit. The 3, Y, etc aren't even a consideration for me since
| they won't fit my garage. Tesla badly needs a proper small
| hatch option.
| dmix wrote:
| > The 2026 Leaf takes many of the Ariya's good qualities and
| one ups them at one of the lowest price points in the
| industry.
|
| Still costs $30k+ USD for base trim. Chinese cars are going
| for sub-$20k. Few governments want a repeat of the Japanese
| disruption of US/European car manufacturing, so they were
| banned before getting the opportunity.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Household incomes are also _much_ lower in China compared
| to Western countries. The kind of upper line BYD EV model
| that would appear to be a discount to a Western buyer is
| fairly unaffordable in a country where the median household
| incomes are around Yuan 2-3k (US$300-500) a month.
|
| A US$15,000 car is equally as unaffordable for most Chinese
| just as a US$100,000 car is for most Americans.
|
| Heck, the median household in China only spent Yuan 4k
| (~US$550) a _year_ [0] on transportation and telecom (the
| Chinese government chose to club both into a single
| bracket) in 2024 - meaning at least 50% of Chinese
| households cannot afford the vast majority of EVs
| domestically sold in China.
|
| [0] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/
| t202501...
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I'd love to see a ~$20k EV too, but it's gonna be tough to
| pull that off without China's cheap labor and materials, at
| least until EVs start moving at the kind of volumes that
| traditional ICE and hybrid vehicles sell at.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Prices are always set in a manner in order to optimize
| for margins.
|
| Heck, the Volvo EX30 is for all intents and purposes a
| Zeekr X, yet sells for US$40k a year in Australia despite
| Australia having an automotive FTA with China (ie. no
| tariffs against Chinese exported cars).
|
| On the other hand, a similarly specced Zeekr X sells for
| US$24k a year in Mainland China.
|
| Tl;dr - you will _never_ see a $20k EV in the US or
| Canada because even if a Chinese firm was allowed to
| export into the market, they would be leaving too much
| money on the table.
| olyjohn wrote:
| We're never going to see a $20k car in the US again. Why
| would they sell any car for $20k, when they could sell it
| for $30k like they are doing now? They make more money
| selling fewer cars at higher prices, so no manufacturers
| are interested.
| stoneforger wrote:
| https://evmagazine.com/news/how-chinas-byd-is-using-ai-
| to-sc... , it's automation and vertical integration. It
| shows what was always possible if companies focused on
| product instead of stock buybacks. Fuck Jack Welch.
| rswail wrote:
| Nothing to do with cheap labor/materials and everything
| to do with a very integrated and highly sophisticated and
| competitive supply chain.
| rswail wrote:
| Australia managed to destroy its car industry on its own.
|
| The latest BYD Atto 1 is AUD27K including all on-road
| costs.
|
| Tesla 3 base model is AUD60K, BYD Seal base model is
| AUD50K.
|
| You guys are missing out big time by not allowing Chinese
| cars.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Atto1 is like half size of model 3 tho.
| stevenally wrote:
| "I think it continues to be under-appreciated how much of a
| lead Tesla still has in EVs".
|
| As long as you don't compare them to BYD etc.
| bdangubic wrote:
| as long as you don't compare them to any car. teslas in 2025
| belong in a museum lol
|
| I own tesla s 2014, my neighbour has 2025, same car. tesla x
| was cool... in 2017. tesla 3 is like a worse looking kia and
| model y is like if you took tesla 3 and pumped some air in
| it.
| fragmede wrote:
| If all you care about is looks, that is. Get out of any
| other car and you forget you can't just walk away from it
| and it'll shut itself off and lock the doors. I've had my
| Tesla driving friends drive my ICE car, and then not even
| turn off the engine when they go into the store because you
| don't need to do that with a Tesla.
| pests wrote:
| When my buddy got his first Tesla back in 2018 he had a
| ICE rental for some reason and he left it running in the
| driveway all day once on accident.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The complete lack of awareness with which some people
| operate cars never ceases to amaze me.
| bdangubic wrote:
| lol - quite amazing!
| moogly wrote:
| > Get out of any other car and you forget you can't just
| walk away from it and it'll shut itself off and lock the
| doors.
|
| A lot of cars have that. My (gulp) BMW EV for instance.
| Newer BMW ICE cars too.
|
| But sure, some brands have had problems getting it to
| work for some dumb reason, recently, even the keyless
| entry part, which really has been a solved problem since
| at least the 2010s.
| frankchn wrote:
| > A lot of cars have that. My (gulp) BMW EV for instance.
| Newer BMW ICE cars too.
|
| Yeah, the recent BMWs (both EV and ICEVs) have
| Apple/Android CarKey UWB support, which is much more
| reliable and precise than Bluetooth.
| throwawaysoxjje wrote:
| How is a persons behavior a positive feature for a car?
| bdangubic wrote:
| > If all you care about is looks, that is
|
| wrote myself a reminder I need to make sure to spend $90k
| on the car when I become senile to forget to turn it off
| l1tany11 wrote:
| 2025 S is the same as your 2014 S? That's some hilarious
| cope. Stop lying. You know it's completely different. Yes,
| a model S is still a model S. And the F150 is still a
| pickup truck. Surprise!
| bdangubic wrote:
| 2025: https://www.kbb.com/tesla/model-s/2025/
|
| 2014: https://www.kbb.com/tesla/model-s/2014/
|
| If this was like "find 5 differences game" you'd lose :-)
| l1tany11 wrote:
| Are you serious?
|
| New motors, new battery pack architecture, chemistry,
| etc, new body structure (giga castings), new interior,
| new facia and body panels, new computer architecture, new
| door handles. It goes on and on and on. Find me a part on
| your 2014 that is the same on the 2025. Show it to me in
| the Tesla parts catalog. It's online. Should be easy.
|
| Get a grip.
| bdangubic wrote:
| putting a lipstick on a pig, eh? :)
| bdangubic wrote:
| just asked my wife and she said the first thing she looks
| when she is deciding to buy a car are giga castings and
| facia and door handles - boom - tesla s ftw ;)
| bdangubic wrote:
| When I bought my S in 2014 people were _breaking their
| necks_ checking it out, it was _the shit_ - now this car
| is soooo dated there is no reason to buy 2026 vs. my 2014
| (I got new DU, new battery...)
|
| Tesla entire lineup is old outdated cars. Ford has F-150
| and then another 50 models to choose from...
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Add to that because Tesla allows for access to its repair
| manuals and service tools unlike most OEMs.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Lots of the traditional car manufacturers now have good
| options: Renault, Nissan, Kia, and Hyundai's EVs seem to be
| particularly well regarded. I'd definitely opt for any of those
| over a Tesla given Tesla's reputation with regard to quality
| and repair costs.
|
| If you ignore cost, then Tesla's cars are probably still better
| at this point, but the gap doesn't seem that large.
| rapsey wrote:
| > Tesla's reputation with regard to quality and repair costs.
|
| Tesla lives in the limelight 100x more than any other car
| brand. Every mistake or possible scandal gets insanely
| amplified. They are by far the most repairable EV car and
| have the most durable engines. What they do not tell you is
| that in an EV the engine giving out is the more common
| scenario not the battery pack.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Even BMW has a few electrical cars that aren't half bad. The
| main problem is that they are compromise cars that can be
| sold as ICE, PHEV, or full EV.
|
| That means more complexity, sub optimal design, less
| efficiency, etc. However, competition is indeed brutal right
| now. Tesla did something that only some other manufacturers
| have managed to copy so far: make cars that are EV only from
| the ground up. Love them or hate them, they don't make any
| design compromises to allow space for a combustion engine, a
| generator, or whatever. There's no room for a transmission, a
| fuel tank, or even an engine compartment. That's where the
| Frunk goes. The result is a car that's simpler, more
| efficient, and more optimal for what it does.
|
| BYD did the same. Kia and Hyundai are having a lot of success
| with their electric only line of cars. And in the EU Renault
| and the Stellantis group have some decent and competitive low
| cost models on the market. Tesla's advantage is rapidly
| evaporating here.
|
| Japanese car makers have been more conflicted on this. But
| Nissan's collaboration with Renault is giving them access to
| the right tech to adjust course. And even Toyota is now using
| a lot of Chinese made drive trains and components to finally
| offer EVs that are actually not that bad. The danger is of
| course that "made in Japan" has very limited value in this
| world if all your core tech is effectively Chinese and
| European. That's something that might change in the next
| years of course.
|
| Cost wise, buying a compromise car means having to deal with
| more that can break, more components that may need replacing,
| and a lot of increasingly obsolete parts and components that
| are no longer being modernized. Combustion engine R&D ground
| to a halt about fifteen years ago. All those fuel injection
| systems, and other computer intensive hardware that keeps
| them going is aging fast and not really being invested in a
| lot at this point. Sourcing replacement parts might get
| harder and more expensive over time.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > Hyundai's EVs seem to be particularly well regarded
|
| lol.
|
| you wanna search about kona's gearbox and iccu's beforehand.
|
| i'm not going to get into software.
| TeeWEE wrote:
| The BMW neue klasse is far superior to the latest Teslas.
|
| Both in software hardware and handing.
|
| https://youtu.be/P-H-GJaGiUg?si=eq8YWy8gyJ5YS99X
|
| I think it even surpasses Chinese brands.
| worik wrote:
| I think the (negative) point is the cost of ownership.
| European cars are very cool, if you can afford to keep them
| running
| kmlx wrote:
| i think they look absolutely horrible both inside and out.
| but, of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
| bri3d wrote:
| My understanding is that Tesla 16V LV batteries have a similar
| crash lockout in the BMS that also requires workarounds to
| reset: https://openinverter.org/wiki/Tesla_16v_li-ion_battery
| worik wrote:
| > Even BMW can't make something that is practical.
|
| Hyperbole, but essentially true
|
| The Japanese beat everybody when ICE ruled. Their cars were
| miles ahead on every measure except snob value.
|
| In the the of EV it will be the Chinese. Tesla has no hope of
| keeping up, they are already fallen behind on snob value, their
| cars have none now.
|
| I think the comment about BYD drivers preferring Tesla is out
| of date now. Ti e will tell, but my money is on China
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| From what I can tell the Chinese are targeting the bottom of
| the market with cars that are essentially disposable. The
| ones to watch, IMO, are Hyundai/Kia. If they can sort out the
| reliability issues there's a lot of potential there.
|
| Honestly I'm cautiously optimistic about VW, especially after
| they've started backing away from those awful capacitive
| buttons.
| conception wrote:
| BYD has the world's fastest car now. I think they are
| targeting the market, not a market.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| And 9 times out of 10 when BYD is brought up people are
| talking about their low priced cars like the Dolphin or
| Seagull, not their halo car.
| conception wrote:
| Sure - you start on a segment. Tesla started at the top
| of the market and got stuck trying to work down. BYD is
| starting at the bottom but they are making it pretty
| clear that's a choice not a constraint.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _From what I can tell the Chinese are targeting the bottom
| of the market with cars that are essentially disposable._
|
| What actual information or data leads you to believe this?
|
| All wheel drive, 375mi range and sub 4 second 0-60mph is
| disposable to you? I'm guessing your car is disposable by
| comparison.
|
| https://www.byd.com/us/car/han-ev
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Disposable as in unrepairable or difficult to repair, not
| disposable as in slow. Honestly, aside from people making
| bad faith arguments who would use disposable to imply
| slow?
|
| Do me a favor and stop responding to my comments. Thanks.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Disposable as in unrepairable_
|
| Again, what information or source or evidence leads you
| think this?
| torginus wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVA3dkuiNE8
|
| Here's 2 Korean mechanics reviewing a BYD. They seem
| pretty impressed.
| cruano wrote:
| BYD targets a different market. Tesla should compete with the
| likes of Polestar, Rivian, maybe Porsche if they dare but I'd
| take any of those before a Tesla any day of the week.
| nottorp wrote:
| Uh have Tesla discovered how to make doors that align with the
| car body? All 4 of them in the same car?
|
| [Note that this is not a BMW endorsement. I would only drive
| one if someone else pays for the car, insurance and
| maintenance.]
| rswail wrote:
| Seeing the BYD trucks and other BYD vehicles around where I
| live in Australia, as well as the other Chinese and Korean
| brands, they outnumber the Teslas on the street now.
| torginus wrote:
| I have a theory about EVs - they don't allow much engineering
| range.
|
| To have a broadly usable car, you need at least 50+ kWh
| battery, 100kWish fast charge, and basically almost everything
| you need in a big car. If you don't have it your car is not
| really usable as the main car.
|
| Motors are small and efficient so they are not big cost
| drivers.
|
| Small cars, such as 'cheap' B-segment cars still need all this
| stuff. If you look at the weight of something like a Renault 5,
| you find its not lighter than a Model 3. The manufacturer still
| pays for all that stuff, but the car's supposed to be cheap so
| they cant pass on the cost.
|
| But in a small car, you have packaging problems with having to
| fit the battery pack, meaning you need to build them taller and
| draggier - that means your highway range decreases, and the big
| weight means big (and compact) crash structures, which again
| are more expensive.
|
| In contrast, in a Model 3, you can make the pack thinner,
| design a more aerodynamic shape, have the big roomy frunk as a
| crash structure.
|
| Your extra cost ist like tens of centimeters of steel and
| glass, but customers will happily pay more because its an
| upmarket car.
|
| You can't really go beyond that, because the acceleration and
| torque is crazy even at the base level and at high speeds your
| range will still suck.
|
| This basically means imo that the Model 3 and Y are at the
| ideal intersection of what the technology's good and bad at,
| and market positioning.
|
| That's why I don't think Tesla will make a C-segment car.
| marssaxman wrote:
| > BMW has over-engineered the
|
| They have over-engineered the _everything_ , because that is what
| BMW does. That is what they have been _about_ for the last thirty
| years.
| dmix wrote:
| It's also how they got a lot of things very early in the game
| like radars. They had adaptive cruise control in 1999 (similar
| to Mercedes).
| julieturner99 wrote:
| Yet somehow adaptive cruise is a rarity on the BMWs out
| there, often requiring an option package that few dealers
| spec. (Though I think this may be finally starting to change
| with the 2025 model year).
| gpderetta wrote:
| Are they switching to monthly subscriptions?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Sadly, they're close to 100% caught up to automatic
| transmissions in North America.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Are you advocating for manual transmissions?
| bluGill wrote:
| In european cars for sure. They don'tilike autos there so
| they are an afterthought.
|
| though it also means nobody will steal my truck in the us
| as who can drive it?
| beAbU wrote:
| That's just because literally everything is an optional
| add-on on a BMW.
|
| So many BMWs out there on the road without the indicators
| package because the owner cheaped out when buying it.
| rjsw wrote:
| I didn't even know that was an option, never seen one
| that had it fitted.
| eep_social wrote:
| My understanding is that the hardware is always installed
| but the dealer will not fill the liquid reservoirs unless
| the customer specifically requests (and pays) for it.
| beAbU wrote:
| These days it's a software unlock.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| After reading the blog post I had the same thought. Doing an
| oil change on my F650GS motorcycle required removing the
| plastics, draining the oil from both the top and bottom of the
| motorcycle, removing a plate on the side of the engine after
| install the BMW specified oil redirection funnel, extracting
| the filter and reinstalling. The oil funnel had a legit BMW
| part number. Most of us either just made a mess or used a piece
| of a milk jug. Probably 15 fasteners and 2 drain plugs.
|
| Comparable process on my Sv650: drain plug out. Drain plug in.
| Screw off filter. Screw on filter. Fill.
| barrenko wrote:
| It's basically the plot of the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
| Maintenance.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| Back then they should just let the oil go on the side of
| road. No need to capture it
| kens wrote:
| That reminds me of the Popular Science garage hint from
| 1963, explaining how to easily dispose of used motor oil:
| Dig a hole in the ground and fill it with fine gravel.
| Pour in the oil, and it will be absorbed into the ground
| before your next oil change.
|
| https://books.google.com/books?id=myADAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA166#v
| =on...
| stefanfisk wrote:
| Different times indeed.
|
| The Swedish government created this informational video
| in 1964 on how to properly dispose of your trash when at
| sea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t03saJVFkv4.
| Apparently the trick is to make the trash sink rather
| than float.
| Gud wrote:
| People were doing it, at least make sure they do a good
| job.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| You can also see in the video how much clearer the water
| was then. Very sad.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| You win some, you lose some. Comparable process on my E46 and
| E39: Drain plug out (potentially flipping a little dust cover
| out of the way). Drain plug in. Stand up because everything
| else happens up top. Unscrew filter housing. Replace filter
| element. Replace filter housing. Fill.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| E90 is the same but you're supposed to loosen the filter
| because otherwise some vacuum holds in an extra 0.5L of
| oil.
|
| I like the top mount oil filters, less mess.
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| Hello, fellow E39 owner. Mine is my first BMW, and for all
| I hear about over-engineering from them, this has been a
| pretty straightforward car to work on. As "complicated" as
| the suspension is, for example, it was pretty simple to
| replace everything. I suppose that reputation has been
| earned from their more modern cars.
| mjanx123 wrote:
| The proper BMW oil change procedure is to remove the engine
| and flip it upside down.
| sgt wrote:
| Not too bad though all things considered, there are worse
| examples out there, like my old KTM adventure bike.
| Interestinlgy, the BMW R1200/1250/1300GS is actually simpler
| due to the boxer engine design.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Wait until you see a picture of a clutch replacement on an
| R1200... this should probably have a NSFW tag attached: https
| ://www.reddit.com/r/motorcycle/comments/1he20rk/r_1200_...
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Oh, my god.
|
| For anyone that's not familiar, replacing a clutch is
| usually on the same order of difficulty as an oil change.
| Unbolt a place, extract the clutch pack, pop in a new one,
| cover goes back on.
| fnord77 wrote:
| Thanks for curing me of my desire to get one of these.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You're welcome.
| themafia wrote:
| > install the BMW specified oil redirection funnel
|
| I assumed this was satire. It is not. :|
| chihuahua wrote:
| People get upset when a BMW is expensive to repair, but they're
| misunderstanding the sophisticated German engineering. You're
| not supposed to repair it. You're supposed to throw it away and
| buy a new one.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| /s or /$ What's the best tag for your post?
| close04 wrote:
| The sophisticated engineering works (or worked?) mostly fine
| if the piece of machinery is operated in the extremely narrow
| "just right" operating ranges the sophisticated engineer
| defined. To much dust in the air? One too many potholes? Not
| the premium brand oil? There goes your sophisticated
| machinery.
|
| Times have changed and now the fuse replacement is not just a
| mater of over engineering, something someone put together
| thinking it's a technically perfect process. It became a
| revenue stream. Car designed also by accountants.
| wongarsu wrote:
| In Germany BMW's target market are company cars. Having the
| company pay for your car has tax benefits here even if you
| also use it outside work, so the company giving you a nice
| car that gets replaced by a new model every three years is a
| sought-after benefit. Those cars are indeed sold to the next
| idiot before they develop any issues
| torginus wrote:
| I missed the memo when putting everything together on one
| impossible to repair PCB and then gluing/sealing it
| permanently became 'sophisticated German engineering' instead
| of bottom-shelf junk.
| merger3 wrote:
| Exactly, these are intentional decisions for German cars.
| They're gorgeous, over-engineered, cutting edge pieces of
| machinery and the expense of being practical or repairable. The
| common understanding for decades has been if you're buying a
| German luxury car as a daily driver and repair costs are
| something you even have to consider, you're buying the wrong
| car.
| torginus wrote:
| Old BMW is nothing like new BMW - I know a few older folks
| who drive 20+year old BMWs and Audis with 500k+ km they drove
| off the salon parking lot - not because they can't afford a
| new one, but they like the current ones.
|
| These old cars were engineered to a high standard, and
| designed to be maintained - while maintenance isn't cheap,
| with proper servicing and car, they could last forever.
|
| This is entirely different - in the past few years BMW has
| become infamous for using low quality plastic fasteners that
| become brittle and break eventually, and all around penny-
| pinching everywhere.
|
| It seems they even took the logical next step and installed
| draconian repair and service prevention measures.
|
| They took the stance that once the car is out of the warranty
| period and isn't brough to an official service center, they
| stand to make no profit on it, so it should end up in the
| scrapyard in the shortest time possible.
|
| This proves to me they don't understand their own market -
| people who buy expensive (70k+ish EUR) BMWs are all financial
| wizards who lease their cars, tax optimize them to the gills
| through legally grey methods and other schemes, and then
| resell them at the end of the lease.
|
| This means they're able to drive them for like 300-400 euro a
| month cost - but only because of resale value. If they kill
| resale, then people won't buy them.
|
| The amount of people who will put down 70k+ in cash at the
| salon is exceedingly small.
| marssaxman wrote:
| It was not always so. The E30 I used to drive - a 1986 model
| 325 - was a marvelous little thing, not only a joy to drive
| but a pleasure to work on. Its engineers had been just as
| thoughtful about its maintenance as its operation.
|
| The car was 20 years old when I had it, but still ran like a
| top. I'm sure I'd have been driving it for many more years
| had my ex not run it into the back of a tow truck.
| jinzo wrote:
| I won't argue with non EV engineering, but high voltage stuff
| in an EV is a lot harder problem to make safe in event of a
| crash and subsequent repair. I come out as a BMW apologist, but
| Vanja (evclinic Head boss) likes to be overly dramatic. BMW
| (and almost all other brands) are very afraid that someone will
| die when repairing/driving/rescuing someone from an EV and they
| go to great (and expensive) lengths to make sure the battery
| and the vehicle is as safe as possible. The fuse here is a
| small part, checks and certifications that go into making the
| battery truly safe (in scale, all edge cases ect) are a lot
| more than just the fuse. And that is expensive.
| nixass wrote:
| evclinic overly relies on drama for their content
| jinzo wrote:
| I worked with Vanja before EVs were mass produced, he is
| very driven and smart, but also eccentric. With his
| previous experience with Mercedes Electric repair he
| figured out that, sooner or later repair/knowledge/tools
| will get commoditized, so push at the start and try to get
| a big foothold/mindshare before this happens. Very few
| people actually have the knowledge to judge your work early
| on, so you can get very far if you are intentionally
| promoting yourself and behaving very confident.
|
| His Tesla Battery cell repair stuff, anyone that was near a
| open battery knows it's fucking dangerous thing that has
| VERY low chance of actually working in medium term - but it
| gets him a lot of respect by clueless people. But he also
| does good stuff, but his image and reality are VERY
| different things.
| torginus wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out - at first I thought this was an
| act designed to turn cheap repairs impossible to drive new
| car sales, and force people into BMWs hugely expensive
| service network, but after learning this is for my own good,
| I'm relieved and happy to learn BMW is looking out for me.
| bux93 wrote:
| Hard to maintain systems, whether it's hardware or software,
| are underengineered if anything.
| knob wrote:
| I love this take. Thanks for sharing it. Puts into words why
| sometimes I can spend a lot of time thinking about how to
| improve a system: trying to save future effort.
| beAbU wrote:
| I think it's a German thing to be honest. I've wrenched on
| Mercedes Benz and VW personally, and I've heard horror stories
| from Audi as well.
|
| My merc exposure is both on very old (70s) and modern. So I
| would actually argue that over engineering shit is in their
| DNA, they don't know how not to do it.
|
| My brother had an old W123 body Merc for a while. It had
| fucking _vacuum_ lines running to all the doors for central
| locking. I had a SsangYong with an old-school Merc OM617 diesel
| engine in it. Great engine, and it was relatively easy to work
| on, but the oil filter was positioned such that you can 't
| replace it without spilling oil all over the engine bay.
| Infuriating!
| torginus wrote:
| They have not over-engineered anything in this case - they have
| deliberately taken user-hostile actions, going out of the way
| to prevent repair, and turn cheap repairs into very expensive
| ones.
|
| - They welded the case: even the engine block that experiences
| combustion pressures and temps is just bolted together - why?
|
| - They even outdid (pre-R2R) Apple in every aspect -
| proprietary components, everything put together on the same
| PCB, with third party replacements impossible, replacement
| parts locked out cryptographically, and 'anti-theft' (anti-
| repair) systems installed so even authorized dealers are at a
| risk of bricking the vehicle - and third party shops can't even
| repair it.
|
| - They are German so in the EU they are above the law (or more
| accurately they write the law) - but it'd be nice if us
| Europeans had their own Louis Rossmans and actionable right to
| repair laws, and the EU did something beyond bullying foreign
| tech companies, and applied the same level of scrutiny to
| domestic ones as well.
|
| This is a comical level of evil - they know that due to the
| proprietary components (that you can't get at an auto parts
| store), when these vehicles become 10-15 years old, they will
| be either uneconomical to repair, with repair costs exceeding
| the value of the vehicle, no third party parts, no possibility
| of third-party service - people will resort to stealing these
| cars to source replacement parts.
|
| So they installed a system that bricks the vehicle should it
| detect tampering - which might happen if somebody tries to fix
| their own vehicles.
|
| And let me reiterate, Germans are above the law in the EU - the
| only reason Dieselgate became a huge scandal is that the US
| found out about it - please, American friends, could you do
| another 'gate' about this - its for the good of all.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I have a BMW G20 3-series. So far I've counted 31 electric
| motors in the car for various things. I keep discovering more.
| Archelaos wrote:
| The article misses to explain why this is an EU problem, not just
| a BMW problem. Is the problem described caused by a specific EU
| regulation (which?) or is mentioning the EU just click bait?
| (Honest question.)
| consp wrote:
| It is a BMW problem and the rest is clickbait. If you own a BMW
| you know all this as it has been the case for over decades.
|
| It's also not a eu thing as all manufacturers are locking
| things up, Ford and other US brands are trying as much as all
| other manufacturers. They just haven't reached BMW levels yet.
| rapsey wrote:
| Lol no way do BMW owners commonly know this. Most buy the car
| because it says BMW on it and they think that means quality.
| consp wrote:
| I was more or less pointing to the expensive repairs needed
| in BMW as in you know it's locked down and you need
| expensive OEM stuff. Maybe that is covered under "quality
| is expensive" for normal people but when you buy a BMW you
| know the replacement parts bill is costing you an arm and a
| leg.
| rapsey wrote:
| Yeah but they will wrongly justify for themselves that
| because BMW is quality, the repairs will not be so
| frequent.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| UN Regulation No. 155, and 156, and the Cyber Resilience Act
| (CRA) are requiring car manufacturers to implement
| cryptographic validation that allows only authorized software
| from the manufacturer to be run.
| consp wrote:
| What I meant more is that you need more and more
| specialized tools (according to the manufacturers). My
| previous ford needed a special (expensive!) bracket to keep
| the drivetrain in place if you want to do anything on the
| engine which makes home service less likely.
|
| These regulations do not mean you need 25k in tooling, but
| that is what it has come to. And thus there is a blooming
| (mostly Chinese/Russian) aftermarket tooling business with
| sketchy software you want to run in a VM.
| pjc50 wrote:
| You're going to have to explain dragging the UN in here.
| sublimefire wrote:
| This is just signing, nothing cutting edge. Verification of
| signatures is a fairly old tech. What is the exact problem
| here? Is it that manufacturers do not publish the signed
| binaries or is it that you want to run something on your
| car compiled by you?
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| Authorized software means authorized for that car's VIN
| number. Basically it's the same issue with parts in Apple
| products that are serial number locked.
|
| If for instance if you damaged a headlamp, and then went
| to an authorized BMW dealer, bought the correct brand new
| OEM BMW head lamp assembly from the parts department of
| an authorized BMW dealer, and followed the replacement
| procedure to the letter in the BMW service website... it
| won't work. The headlamp assembly is _not_ authorized to
| talk to the rest of the car even though it 's OEM,
| untampered, with stock firmware.
|
| The headlamp has to be reprogrammed with the correct VIN
| number in order for the rest of the ECU's in that
| particular car to recognize it as authorized.
| danw1979 wrote:
| This 2022 BMW X1 my wife drives is the last BMW we will ever
| own. PS395 for an oil change. PS180 for brake fluid. PS500 a
| year road tax.
|
| Meanwhile my 2011 Prius continues to pass its MOT without
| fail, needs just the usual very affordable consumables, gets
| 50% higher MPG and actually has a larger cargo capacity than
| the X1.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| >actually has a larger cargo capacity than the X1
|
| You have just discovered that SUVs are large because some
| people want their cars to be large. They come with all the
| downsides of that and not much of the upsides.
| psd1 wrote:
| They don't come with all the downsides. They externalise
| the reduced forward visibility for people behind you, the
| headlights spinning onto other users' cabins, the running
| over of toddlers, and, my favourite, the driving in the
| middle of the road rather than risk getting mud on their
| fucking tyres
|
| No tax rate is too high. Rebates for agricultural workers
| maybe.
| Supernaut wrote:
| Sounds like you're getting it serviced by a BMW dealership?
| I take my PHEV 3-series to a local independent mechanic,
| and the entire cost is usually less than you're paying for
| oil alone. Also, because it's a hybrid, the road tax rate
| is very advantageous.
| rs186 wrote:
| Hmm... I never bought a BMW, certainly because I am poor,
| but also because everyone around me who drives a luxury car
| keeps telling me how expensive yet unreliable everything
| is, while everyone who drives a Toyota and Honda almost
| never talks about their car. I took the hint and have been
| doing what is financially responsible.
| Tade0 wrote:
| It's clickbait, but at the very least it's not LLM slop,
| considering how they spelled the word "theoretically".
| raverbashing wrote:
| Correct, it isn't it's more a "German Boomer Engineering
| problem"
|
| Though I'd say this is 80% of the problem, the safety fuse
| thing is needed but it probably takes a while for companies to
| get it right
| tpm wrote:
| What they mean by the EU-bashing is two things:
|
| 1. The EU de facto mandates the car manufacturers have to
| develop and sell cars that produce less CO2 (mostly by the way
| of fines for higher polluting vehicles). This led to the
| development of hybrid ('mild-hybrid', 'full-hybrid', and PHEV)
| and EV vehicles.
|
| 2. The manufacturers tend to both complicate the technology and
| lock the stuff down, so it's not easily repairable. This has
| its own enviromental price, and EV Clinic says this is not
| accounted for. That's not completely fair as on one hand there
| are EU repairability directives that address this but on the
| other we still want to have some degreee of market competition
| and in the end the market should punish those manufacturers (as
| it is already doing, I think).
|
| One thing I want to add is that the EU also mandates real-
| world-fuel-consumption-measurement (OBFCM) devices in new cars
| and if that is followed to its logical conclusion and the
| manufacturers pressure is resisted, this will mean the end of
| hybrids as the real-world data is horrible for them.
|
| https://zecar.com/reviews/plug-in-hybrid%27s-real-emissions-...
| torginus wrote:
| Who dictates the EU regulation? Hello?
| hnburnsy wrote:
| If you love cars or Top Gear, watch Mat Armstrong on YouTube. Mat
| restores crash damaged cars. The BS he has to go through because
| car manufacturers either won't sell him parts, won't sell him
| repair manuals, and unnecessarily cryptographically lock parts to
| the VIN is sometime heartbreaking. He has run across this pyro
| fuse issue many times. Sometimes he has even has to buy two cars
| just to repair one because of this nonsense. Like the article
| points out it just leads to more waste and it has to contribute
| to higher insurance rates for us all.
| ishtanbul wrote:
| Bumping this. Mat went through the exact same crazy process
| with the Revuelto. Audi/Lamborghini overengineers the heck out
| of these cars its really absurd.
|
| https://youtu.be/m37tN54FdQE?si=zXCnQTCOou13l10O
| Rastonbury wrote:
| To be fair it's a lambo, not the pinnacle of maintainability
| or self repairable
| qingcharles wrote:
| 100%. I watch him literally just to see how much bullshit he
| has to go through to get modern cars running again against the
| wishes of the manufacturers.
|
| I get it, though. Cars are becoming like iPhones where the
| manufacturers are totally against you making any repairs at
| all. We've just grown used to cars being one of the most
| commonly repairable items we buy. At some point in the near
| future car ownership will probably diminish significantly as
| robotaxis flood the market and the manufacturers will become
| even less interested in self-repairs.
| Maxion wrote:
| The funny one is the Ferrari he is working on now where not
| even the Ferrari techs could figure out why the car wouldn't
| start, as they couldn't get the car to spit out codes and
| they didn't know why it didn't do that.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Meanwhile, if you work on old Landrovers from the Defender
| 90/110 to early RR L322, you need this:
| https://rangerovers.pub/downloads/rave.zip (500MB zip, PDFs of
| all service and user manuals).
|
| Even if you don't work on them, grab yourself a copy. You never
| know when you might need to know how to rebuild a Borg Warner
| transfer box or ZF 4HP24 gearbox.
| sksasi wrote:
| Just buy a Tesla, it's the most sane thing you could do for peace
| of mind
| tantalor wrote:
| > Theoraticaly
|
| > missleading
|
| Please check spelling before posting
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| erste mal?
| drnick1 wrote:
| And this is one of the reasons I won't be replacing my gas-
| powered Lexus any time soon. Then there is the spyware issue:
| most modern cars (and especially Tesla-like electric cars) are a
| privacy nightmare.
| teiferer wrote:
| None of the issues in the article are specific to electric
| cars. This isn't even one, it's a plug-in hybrid. A modern ICE
| car will have the same issues of having too much electronics
| inside.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Tesla is leading in car privacy, look at mozilla's report.
| nake89 wrote:
| Out of the Privacy Not Included list of car manufacturers it
| is the third not-worst: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/
| privacynotincluded/cate...
|
| It is still very bad: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/pr
| ivacynotincluded/tesl...
|
| Overview: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincl
| uded/arti...
| drnick1 wrote:
| Oh that's very comforting, the leader in car privacy knows
| where I am at all times because it needs that information for
| self-driving.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Self driving is offline
| teiferer wrote:
| PHEV is plug-in hybrid, for those not familiar with terminology.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| EUR4000 euros plus tax to replace the module that contains the
| fuse. Insane.
|
| The ford transit custom PHEV costs PS4500 to replace the timing
| belt. Access issues mean dropping the hybrid battery and parts of
| the sub frame. Compare with the mk8 transit, i've done the wet
| belt myself on that and it requires no special tools (well, i
| bought a specific crank pulley puller for PS20) and can be done
| in a day on the driveway. I believe in some markets the
| replacement schedule is down to 6 years for the new phev due to
| all the wet belt failures on older models.
|
| So far my favourite brand to work on has been Mazda, the
| engineering is very thoughtfully done with consideration for
| repairs.
|
| I hear a lot of praise for toyota but it's from people who
| haven't worked on a car themselves rather than mechanics and they
| must be talking about toyotas from a bygone era because i'm not
| impressed with a 2019 corolla engineering at all, specifically
| various parts of the electrical system. I believe that was the
| most popular car in the world at that time.
|
| Tesla is remarkably well done. Simplicity is under rated. So much
| so i bought one with the intention to keep for a looooong time.
| Maxion wrote:
| > So far my favourite brand to work on has been Mazda, the
| engineering is very thoughtfully done with consideration for
| repairs
|
| I've heard this from mechanics already 15+ years ago. Mazda
| seem to still have this reputation.
|
| I wish there were more repairability scores for cars.
| lionkor wrote:
| Talk to car guys who are into ~2000s era or before cars. They
| usually have pretty solid recommendations.
| close04 wrote:
| Most people need a recommendation for something more
| current, from people who work on these modern cars daily.
| The reputation of 25+ year old models can be misleading.
|
| Another source of good recommendations could be insurance
| companies. Cars with low reliability or very expensive
| fixes probably need more expensive insurance. But I don't
| know if this data is public or if you can tell apart the
| reliability from the repair cost.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| If you're in Europe, you can consider Dacia. A lot of
| their stuff is old Renault parts that they've bought a
| license to use/manufacture. Get a pre-2023 model with the
| 1.6 non-turbo non-hybrid petrol engine - it's actually a
| Nissan HR16DE, which has been in use since 2004. Very
| reliable and low complexity.
| kristjank wrote:
| And parts are ridiculously cheap and widely junkyard-
| available.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Is it using that Nissan/Renault CVT? That transmission is
| notorious junk.
|
| I must say that I've been impressed with Dacia. Even the
| build quality is excellent - on par or beating VW. I've
| driven on Romanian roads so I can see why they would
| prioritize such high build quality.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| You can get them with a manual transmission, or a dual-
| clutch automatic, or CVT. AFAIK, the manuals are all
| decent, although the 6 speed manual on the 4WD models has
| quite low ratios (no transfer case) so it doesn't have
| great fuel economy at highway speeds.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Makes sense. In their home market, Romania, highway speed
| hardly ever exceeds 90 kph.
| lionkor wrote:
| > Most people need a recommendation for something more
| current
|
| Bless them, I would rather buy 10 shitboxes than one
| modern car (and that cost is about the same).
| TylerE wrote:
| I'd rather not die in a very survivable crash.
| kristjank wrote:
| Crash safety has become grossly exagerrated because the
| standards have been sharply rising last few years. Most
| 15yo cars will keep you safe just fine in a median crash.
| TylerE wrote:
| A 15 year old car currently is going for 5 figures - not
| a shitbox. Not unless it's a shelll of rust held together
| by bondo. Then your crash standards or whatever year are
| meaningless as the chassis may have 25% or less of its
| design strength.
| kristjank wrote:
| Sorry for asking, are you in the USA? That might explain
| the 5 figures thing.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > A 15 year old car currently is going for 5 figures
|
| _some_ are, sure - but most aren't. Plenty of well
| maintained clean 2010 model cars on marketplace and
| Craigslist for well under 10k.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Pretty much every major safety feature is an order of
| magnitude less meaningful than the last.
|
| If you wear a seatbelt and eschew the most risky driving
| behaviors your chances of getting in a crash where the
| difference between 2005 and 2025 matters are very, very,
| very, small.
| pton_xd wrote:
| At the very least, modern cars are much heavier and
| ultimately mass wins. For example, a 2005 Honda CRV
| weights 3400 lbs while a 2025 is 3900 lbs.
|
| Plus they have tons more auxiliary safety features like
| lane departure warning, forward collision warning, blind
| spot detection, better visibility, etc. And they are
| roomier, have more power, get better gas mileage, and
| have backup cameras and Apple CarPlay!
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I wouldn't buy a car without ESC, that's just batshit
| crazy, esp. if you live where there's a chance of icy
| roads.
| jabl wrote:
| At least over here where we have mandatory inspections
| you can find statistics on percentage of cars which fail
| the inspections, broken down by brand and model. Toyota
| seems to consistently place in the top.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Those sorts of comparisons are highly misleading because
| the overwhelming majority of failures for any inspection
| program are simple stuff that doesn't affect the
| operation of the vehicle in the base case. Light out,
| bald tires, brakes below replacement threshold,
| windshield crack, minor exhaust leak, etc. So what you
| wind up measuring by proxy is the owner behavior, since
| that's the dominant factor in how proactively those sorts
| of things get addressed.
|
| And it ought to surprise nobody that trophy wives in
| 4runners show up with their vehicle in a statistically
| different state of repair than single moms in Altimas.
|
| The big failures that you really want to avoid almost
| never show up on safety inspection data because they
| typically render the car much less drivable so they
| either get fixed promptly or the car stops coming around
| for it's inspection.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| That's very interesting. I could argue that you are
| reading the signal wrong here. You want to go for the car
| that has the most failures in some cases, since it has
| survived long enough to fail in minor ways that leave it
| still able to drive.
|
| If you have car brand A that has a reputation for having
| catastrophically expensive failures in major components,
| and car brand B which just keep chugging along for
| decades, you will probably see an elevated failure rate
| for brand B since it is still driving, while brand A will
| not be failing since it has already failed so badly it
| has been scrapped.
| tim333 wrote:
| I traded from Mazda to Merc. There's definitely big
| difference in cost to repair and probably difficulty.
| themafia wrote:
| > more repairability scores
|
| In the abstract, if you have access you can look at the
| technicians manual, and see how many labor hours are allotted
| to various common repairs, you can even look at common
| problems and see what the common outcomes were to repair the
| vehicle.
|
| Unfortunately, most people don't have access to this highly
| valuable resource.
| jinzo wrote:
| Is it insane? I'm working in this field, and I know how quickly
| you can come up with such a number if you are BMW and you are
| deathly afraid that someone will get electrocuted while working
| on your car, driving it or rescuing someone in a crash. It's a
| safety and liability issue, where they go to great lengths to
| actually re-certify a battery after crash. The whole thing is
| setup so, that even the dummy electricians in an average BMW
| shop can safely certify that this battery is still safe. It's a
| lot easier to kill yourself (or someone else) when working on a
| EV Battery than wet belt. Also a lot harder to repair said
| battery than wet belt. And that goes for all EVs and
| manufacturers that actually care about people (Tesla,
| demonstrably does not).
| close04 wrote:
| The article and comment aren't debating whether the fuse
| plays an essential role. There's no reason to make the
| process of fixing the issue after a minor incident expensive,
| extremely convoluted, and very prone to error.
|
| Making it a very complicated and expensive fix isn't what's
| saving your rescuer or mechanic from getting electrocuted
| while working around your car.
| gmueckl wrote:
| You seem to be ignoring the fact that the battery pack
| status after a crash is essentially unknown. It should go
| through a thorough and competently conducted safety
| inspection or it may kill someone in the future. Of course,
| this doesn't excuse extra red tape tacked into the
| procedure, but the core idea of an inspection is just
| unavoidable.
| close04 wrote:
| > Of course, this doesn't excuse extra red tape tacked
| into the procedure
|
| That's exactly it. I understand the importance of safety
| but reading the list of complaints I just cannot believe
| that safety is the key driver for the design decisions.
|
| > ISTA's official iBMUCP replacement procedure is so
| risky that if you miss one single step -- poorly
| explained within ISTA -- the system triggers ANTITHEFT
| LOCK.
|
| > Meaning: _even in an authorised service centre, system
| can accidentally delete the configuration_ and end up
| needing not only a new iBMUCP, but also all new battery
| modules.
|
| > BMW refuses to provide training access for ISTA usage
|
| _Everything_ about this screams greed driven over-
| engineering. Since when are error prone processes and
| lack of access to information better for safety?
|
| We live in a world where everyone justifies taking user
| hostile actions with some variation of "safety". Software
| and hardware are locked down, backdoored, need
| manufacturer approval to operate even when original parts
| are used, etc.
| jinzo wrote:
| I won't go into details about 'training access for ISTA
| usage' - cause I don't know what exactly Vanja means by
| this - but generally speaking in EU BMW provides the
| easiest access from all OEMs for aftermarket repair.
| Everyone has to provide it by law, but BMW has the most
| straightforward way of registering/paying/using it. For
| sure not ideal, but far from really being problematic
| IMHO.
|
| But other than that I mostly agree, I don't think that
| the over-engineering is greed driven - but the EU
| Manufacturers (but honestly, even other ones) have a
| really hard time with anything software based. Be it in
| car or outside of it. But BMW is far from the worst on
| that front.
|
| P.S: VW ODIS original diagnostic is based on Eclipse :D
| gmueckl wrote:
| My experience with many German mechanical and electrical
| engineers is that they have a tendency to think of
| software like a magical cheap and malleable part on a BOM
| that can make their arbitrary design work. Especially the
| mechanical engineers like a nice little black box that
| they screw on and wire into their machine to make it go
| brrr once they turn it on.
|
| That kind of thinking along with some calcification of
| organizational structures in/around R&D teams seems to be
| the cause for the rather dysfunctional software
| development at the German car companies. Software dev
| doesn't thrive in this environment.
|
| Volkswagen probably had the right idea on paper when they
| created Cariad as a subsidiary software development
| company to isolate the devs, but then they ruined it by
| importing their own culture into it again.
| entrox wrote:
| > There's no reason to make the process of fixing the issue
| after a minor incident expensive, extremely convoluted, and
| very prone to error.
|
| Yes there is. Either nobody is engineering towards that
| aspect or it is a conscious decision, deliberating between
| two different buckets: bill-of-material cost per unit and
| estimated impact on your warranty & goodwill budget.
| Whatever is deemed to be cheaper will win.
|
| Source: I work at an automotive OEM and one of my first
| projects almost two decades ago was how to anchor after-
| sales requirements into the engineering process. For
| example, we did things like introducing special geometry
| into the CAD models representing the space that needs to be
| left free so a mechanic can fit his hands with a tool
| inside. These would then be considered in the packaging
| process. If you consider these are two completely different
| organizations, it becomes a very tricky problem to solve.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| It's like the manufacturer discovering to their complete
| _surprise_ they are building a car. :-D
| close04 wrote:
| > BMW refuses to provide training access for ISTA usage
|
| Refusing access to training isn't a BoM issue by any
| means. Neither is a repair process that's so error prone
| that it can do even more damage to the car. We are
| surrounded by evidence that manufacturers in every field
| are taking decisions that are hostile towards their
| customers in the chase for profits. With the rise of EVs
| with far fewer moving parts needing constant maintenance,
| the manufacturers had to shift to different revenue
| streams, like killing repairability and locking
| everything behind manufacturer approval.
|
| This is a professional shop voicing the complaints, not a
| random guy trying to do a fix on the side of the road.
|
| Imagine someone told you they work for Apple and the
| reason everything is soldered, glued, stacked in a way it
| will never survive disassembly, and every bit of software
| and hardware in the device needs the manufacturer's
| blessing to be replaced or just keep running is because
| it was cheaper and safer this way.
|
| > it becomes a very tricky problem to solve.
|
| It was a solved problem for everything mechanical where
| locking it down or preventing people from learning wasn't
| _really_ an option. How did it become tricky again just
| now when we deal with far more flexible software and
| possibility to lockdown?
| entrox wrote:
| I likely did not communicate clearly enough: it is tricky
| because of organizational reasons, not technical. There
| are many trade-offs that have to be made and it involves
| different business units with their own targets and
| incentives.
|
| To take a few examples from the article with likely
| causes (note I don't work for BMW, so this is pure
| speculation based on my own experience):
|
| > BMW has over-engineered the diagnostic procedure to
| such a level that even their own technicians often do not
| know the correct replacement process.
|
| The ECU, diagnostic procedures and service methods are
| being developed by a different org-units. One is
| engineering, which works towards their own development
| use cases. They might develop the on-board diagnostic
| interfaces. The service unit develops their own tester
| and have to develop their own procedures.
|
| Engineering is usually late with providing real hardware
| & software samples, let alone a fully integrated car. The
| service unit might only get a working test car very late
| in the process and discover that the procedure is super
| complicated. By that point the car development is already
| too far along for major changes. Remember that most
| components have been specified and awarded to suppliers
| years ago by this point.
|
| > And it gets worse: the original iBMUCP module, which
| integrates the pyrofuse, contactors, BMS and internal
| copper-bonded circuitry, is fully welded shut. There are
| no screws, no service openings, and it is not designed to
| be opened, even though the pyrofuse and contactors are
| technically replaceable components.
|
| Engineering is not concerned with these issues, it's
| usually the service unit which needs to bring in
| maintenance requirements. A judgement call is being made
| whether an assembly that you source as a single part
| needs to be split up further. For example, if you split
| it up further, you now have more parts to manage. You
| need to provide logistics and must allocate space in your
| spare parts warehouses for these new parts.
|
| That usually makes sense for expensive components. Here's
| another fact: the manufacturer allocates a warranty &
| goodwill budget for each car line, because the
| manufacturer has to pay dealers for these repairs if it
| falls into the warranty period or is judged to fall under
| good will. It's usually not in the interest of the
| manufacturer to have expensive repairs because of that.
|
| It might also be that the repair is being deemed to
| dangerous, because it is a high-voltage component.
| Opening it up and tinkering with it might increase the
| risk of an electrical fire in the battery. It might be
| that this risk was judged to be higher than the repair
| cost.
|
| > Additionally, the procedure requires flashing the
| entire vehicle both before and after the replacement,
| which adds several hours to the process and increases
| risk of bricked components which can increase the
| recovery cost by factor 10x.
|
| No service unit wants these long flashing times, because
| it blocks a repair bay in the workshop. But it's usually
| because the EE integration has been developed in this
| way. It might need coding, calibration or just bringing
| up everything to the latest release.
|
| Vehicle SW is super regulated, you need to fulfill a
| staggering amount of regulations. Look up UNECE-R156 SUMS
| as an example. It might be that the new parts comes with
| a newer SW version, which has only been verified and
| approved in combination with newer SW in the other
| components. This would require flashing ancillary ECUs as
| well even if they have not been changed to ensure release
| compliance.
|
| > Even after we managed to open the unit and access
| everything inside, we discovered that the Infineon TC375
| MCU is fully locked.
|
| Look up UNECE-R155. Things like these are mandated, if
| not directly in the regulation then indirectly by making
| the manufacturer liable for any modification that
| somebody did to their car. It is practically required to
| lock it down.
|
| Just a few points off the top of my head, the comment got
| too long anyway.
| ptsneves wrote:
| Thanks for your comment. It looks to me that most of the
| people who work in engineering area express some form of
| understanding or give the benefit of the doubt to the
| situation while people from outside the field borderline
| call for malice in the side of BMW.
|
| I think both are right. Engineering a modern car is
| really complex as you pointed out but the customer also
| has the right to say, "well that is what you are paid
| for". In the end the customer can just go to the next car
| brand.
|
| I own a relatively recent BMW but it is only a mild
| hybrid diesel (4 year old M340D) and before I even
| received the car, they changed the whole engine and did
| not release the car until that was executed. That was
| done by the dealer, and i never knew what was the reason.
|
| On the flip side of modern car engineering I once had a
| check engine light called the dealer and with
| authorization prompts on my side they were able to tell
| me some gas exhaust sensor was malfunctioning and I would
| be able to go there at my leisure, as it was not urgent.
| That was nice. When i bought the car I had 5 years of
| maintenance included and this is one of the nicest things
| about owning a car in modern times. They even call me
| when it is about time to do the maintenance asking for
| when I am available. I never owned top brand cars before
| but this is for me worth the premium so far as it is one
| less thing to organize.
|
| Apart from the normal maintenance and the above I never
| had any issue with the car, and it is a very big
| difference between a 2001 Passat TDI(my youth car) or a
| Ford Torneo Connect(the car i am aiming to exchange for
| due to family reasons).
| bluescrn wrote:
| Many people drive older cars worth less than PS4000.
|
| Sticking to old/cheap cars seems like an increasingly good
| option with so many scare stories about the pain and extreme
| expense of getting modern cars, particularly EVs, repaired.
|
| And the impending ban on new ICE vehicles seems likely to
| lead to more older cars being kept on the road for a lot
| longer.
| jacquesm wrote:
| My current car is my last. It's a 1997 and it runs pretty
| much as good as new and I expect the thing to outlive me.
| jandrese wrote:
| Depends on the parts situation. As someone who works on
| my own cars I've become increasingly distressed at the
| car parts industry. Even OEM parts, when they are still
| available, seem to have had a dramatic decrease in
| quality over the past couple of decades. This is even
| assuming the correct part is shipped in the first place,
| which is another problem that has become entirely too
| common, especially in an age where everything is
| computerized. So many times you get a box with the
| correct part number on the outside but the wrong part
| inside.
|
| If you have the parts and the will it's possible to keep
| any car running close to forever. That said if you've
| gotten to the point where the frame is totally rusted out
| then maybe it's time to consider moving on.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Plastics. Those are the hard to source bits. Plastic
| doesn't stay plastic for ever and NOS can be dried out
| just as much as the bits that are in the car.
|
| Most other things are easy to source, and anything made
| of steel can be fixed (zero rust, so far).
| jandrese wrote:
| 1997 car with no rust? I'm guessing you don't live in an
| area that knows snow.
| torginus wrote:
| Yeah - a car hits a similar valuation around ~15 years of
| age, meaning a failure of this component limits the
| financially viable lifespan of a car to this amount -
| mechanics do engine rebuilds for less money.
| fnord77 wrote:
| ICE bans are going to cause the value of old cars to
| skyrocket
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, it is insane. It's a fuse. They must have some stats on
| how often those things need replacing and it should have been
| accessible. The customer has - when they buy the car -
| absolutely no way of knowing what kind of surprises like this
| there are hidden in the vehicle and besides, it kills the
| second hand market so you can only trade your vehicle to a
| BMW dealership where they can absorb those costs for a
| fraction of what it will cost an end user. BMW is a crap
| brand in spite of their reputation, we've had one leased Mini
| in our company and it is the very last time we do business
| with BMW, that thing was more in the shop than out of it with
| electrical issues. A friend had pretty much every BMW ever
| made since he got wealthy enough to afford them (car
| enthusiast) and his experience is much the same, but he keeps
| buying them.
| lazide wrote:
| Fuses are not items that should be replaced normally - they
| are self-destroying emergency protections for the
| electrical system.
|
| If it is protecting that end users can plug arbitrary loads
| into, that is one thing - but this doesn't sound like that?
|
| Why did that fuse blow? Because if that is not addressed,
| it's likely to just blow again.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think the people that replace fuses are aware of the
| potential issues around them. The article - which I'm
| sure you've read so don't take this as commentary on your
| comment - details that in other electric vehicles, for
| instance Tesla this is handled quite differently:
|
| "While Tesla's pyrofuse costs EUR11 and the BMS reset is
| around 50EUR, allowing the car to be safely restored,
| BMW's approach borders on illogical engineering, with no
| benefit to safety, no benefit to anti-theft protection --
| the only outcome is the generation of billable labour
| hours and massive amounts of needless electronic/lithium
| waste."
|
| It's not a choice between 'ridiculously inaccessible with
| the potential to create more damage than your car is
| worth' and 'push to reset'. There are many options in
| between, some of which would be a happy medium between
| the two that protect both safety, the environment and the
| customers' wallet. Which BMW's solution clearly isn't.
| taneq wrote:
| Yep, might be there was a known issue that was addressed,
| at which put in a new one. But just replacing a fuse (or,
| simultaneously worse and better, just resetting a
| breaker) without further investigation is just kicking a
| very spicy can down the road.
|
| I had a doozy of a trip issue on one project, a motor
| would occasionally (not always, no real pattern,
| hot/cold/etc. didn't matter) trip the breaker, requiring
| a sparky to come out and open up the panel to reset it.
| We tried a bunch of things, megger-ing the motor, testing
| peak startup current on each phase with a fancy meter,
| checking phase-to-neutral current (Larger than you'd
| think! But this was normal, apparently.)
|
| Everything was normal. In the end all we could think
| something was weird about the contactor. They took it out
| (I was off site at the time) and took it down to the
| substation to test it out.
|
| With three phases connected to the contactor (and nothing
| connected on the other side) they energised the coil, and
| with an almighty bang it tripped the main incomer and
| took the entire sub offline.
|
| Turns out there was a manufacturing defect in the
| contactor and sometimes for a millisecond, if the phase
| of the moon was right, it dead shorted two phases.
|
| So there, even when you know everything, you don't know
| everything.
| bradfa wrote:
| This fuse blows because a crash was detected and it is to
| protect the people inside the car and rescuers. The
| article argument is that it can blow even for small
| crashes where no damage to the battery occurs but
| rehabilitating the vehicle still incurs an outrageous
| cost. This is not a simple over current protection fuse.
|
| $1000 for the module with the fuse seems ok to me.
| Another $3000 to link the module to the vehicle is the
| outrageous part.
| jinzo wrote:
| They are not only linking it to the vehicle, they are
| doing a LOT of other checks on the battery - that it's
| not damaged in non-obvious ways. For that you need
| trained people (it's really high voltage and amperage
| stuff), tooling AND you really need to be sure you
| guarantee everything is OK.
|
| Even the basic mechanical disconnect and lowering of the
| battery is far from simple (and requires A LOT more
| expensive tools than changing a wet belt - not because
| they are greedy, but because a lift that can lower such
| hevy battery costs a lot of money, mostly in materials),
| and that's not even opening it, making sure you don't get
| electrocuted when you work on it ect.
| kristjank wrote:
| Fuses are necessary on any electrical system, and
| especially in a car, which is an electrical shitshow
| (floating ground, high-voltage and high-frequency
| interference), fuses blow all the time. Granted, usually
| on a well-maintained and new car it happens very rarely,
| but saying that it's a catastrophic and concerning event
| is dumb.
| lazide wrote:
| What sort of cars do you drive?
|
| I've never had a fuse blow on a car less than 20 years
| old, and then it was due to shorts due to damaged
| insulation and bad grounds due to corrosion, which are
| legit problems that need to be corrected.
|
| Also, unlike breakers, fuses are generally immune to
| issues with HF interference and the like - they work
| through basic thermoelectric effects which iron out all
| but the most extreme issues. If you're moving multiple
| amps in a situation described as 'RF', or 'high
| frequency' in a DC system that's not just noise!
|
| That's a real problem that needs fixing!
|
| Not fixing the underlying problem behind a blown fuse (or
| constantly tripping breaker) is how your car (or house or
| whatever) burns to the ground.
|
| Or you have a Lucas, in which case my condolences.
| kristjank wrote:
| I'll grant you that, I had a lot of beaters. A typical
| thing was that a lock solenoid pulled too much current in
| cold weather and consistently blew the central locking
| fuse.
| jinzo wrote:
| This is a pyrofuse, it does not blow with overcurrent as
| regular fuse, but blows in the same way airbags blow -
| when detecting a crash. We can debate if they blow too
| quick, but if you are designing this system - where and
| truly lives can be in danger, you would probably err on
| the side of caution too.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Pyrofuse will definitely blow on overcurrent.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Usually not by itself though, and if it does that makes
| it a hybrid fuse, one that has both a pyrotechnical
| disconnector and a thermal/overcurrent one.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The problem is not that the pyrofuse blows. Safer to be
| paranoid when it's the the battery pack. The insanity is
| what it takes to replace it, including throwing away
| perfectly good parts because of the anti-theft
| protections.
| torginus wrote:
| Ladies and gentlemen - behold the perfect consumer
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Then why name it a goddamn fuse then?
| 11mariom wrote:
| > Fuses are not items that should be replaced normally -
| they are self-destroying emergency protections for the
| electrical system.
|
| Next time when the fuse switch in my home I'll buy new
| home. I shouldn't normally switch on auto-fuse again!
|
| Fuse blows, so you know something went wrong, you check
| corresponding part, fix it, and enable/change fuse.
| Nothing special. In home perspective - it could be
| plugging too many energy needy receivers into one outlet.
| lazide wrote:
| That is literally exactly what I'm saying.
|
| In that situation, if you bypassed the fuse, or just kept
| replacing them without figuring out why it blew (too much
| load on a specific circuit), you very well might burn
| your house down by catching the wiring inside your walls
| on fire.
|
| If it's something that it is easy to connect loads too,
| then that is probably not super unusual and easy to fix,
| because people do that all the time, and you know what is
| happening and how to fix it. But you do need to fix it.
|
| If it isn't, then that is very concerning, because
| _something_ caused that overload, and without that fuse
| your wires would have caught on fire instead of the fuse
| blowing. Inside your walls.
|
| Either way, fuses are an emergency measure to stop the
| wires from destroying themselves from overload. They are
| destroyed in the process of saving your wires.
|
| And if you are doing this all the time? You've got a very
| big problem brewing.
| prepend wrote:
| The article gave examples for why the fuse blows - it
| falsely thinks the vehicle was in an accident and trips.
| Hitting a pothole or a rabbit.
|
| It is unlikely to blow again under normal use.
| taneq wrote:
| It's not a fuse. It's a fuse plus guarantee plus liability.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > It's a fuse plus guarantee plus liability.
|
| This is BMW we're talking about. Their guarantees are
| worth absolutely nothing if my experience is anything to
| go by and them accepting liability is not something you
| should have to pay 4K for if other brands can do the same
| thing under $100.
| jinzo wrote:
| I'm sure it depends on market, but I also know 100% that
| if they will certify the battery as safe, and then you
| get electrocuted when entering your car because the
| battery was not safe - they will be on the hook, in all
| developed markets. No one else, that cares about people
| safety, do the same thing for under $100. Even Tesla,
| that almost completely disregards any safety - be it
| "Full Self Driving" or "let's just change this, without
| checking if the battery is actually safe", does not do it
| under $100.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Given that I've tried to hold BMW to their warranty and
| was shafted I would not bet on that.
| semanticist wrote:
| There's a difference between BMW ignoring their warranty
| and who gets found liable during the wrongful death
| lawsuit after the mechanic gets electrocuted due to
| poor/unsafe EV design.
|
| I'm sure BMW would love to not be liable in those cases
| if they could just decide not to be liable, but
| inspections and fuses presumably turn out to be cheaper
| than the settlements they'd otherwise be paying.
| Glawen wrote:
| Do you realise how difficult it is to get "electrocuted"
| in a battery powered vehicle ? I suggest you document
| yourself on the matter.
|
| The only real issue in reality is thermal runaway
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, what is the max voltage of these batteries?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Depends on the brand and the model, there is a trend
| towards higher voltages because that implies lower
| currents and wiring is heavy and expensive.
|
| It started out with (nominally, voltage can rise and fall
| based on charge levels) (30S) 144V packs, (96S) 352V is
| very common and there are (192S) packs that do 704V (but
| that are marketed as 400V and 800V respectively).
|
| You don't want to get zapped by any of these, it's middle
| voltage DC which is quite dangerous, so the fuses
| definitely have a safety aspect in case of a crash, they
| are to protect emergency personnel from touching the
| frame and exposed wiring. But that's in case of a very
| serious crash, your average encounter with a rabbit might
| set off the crash detector (which can't really know ahead
| of time how bad a crash will be) but has extremely little
| chance of resulting in exposed wiring. In the case of BMW
| that rabbit could end up being pretty expensive.
| amelius wrote:
| Yikes, that sounds dangerous.
|
| I'd personally prefer e.g. 48V even if that meant some
| more losses and/or thicker cables.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Running an EV off 48V would lead to a heavily, heavily
| compromised vehicle. There just aren't components that
| can handle 5-10kA of current with a reasonable size.
| amelius wrote:
| What parts of the car need that amount of current?
|
| Are you talking about the charging circuitry?
|
| What are the requirements for the motor(s)?
| jandrese wrote:
| Charging speed is directly related to the voltage of the
| pack. Even if your own vehicle had arm-thick cables to
| support high speed charging at 48v there is no quick
| charger in the world that could support it. You would be
| stuck in the bad old days of needing hours to recharge
| the battery on your EV.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| No it's not, only in a practical sense. If you truly had
| 'arm thick cables', you could definitely charge a 48V
| battery just as fast. Practically speaking, though, you
| don't do this because every becomes so unmanageable that
| you can't build a charger, bus bars, etc, that would be
| able to match the charging speed.
| jandrese wrote:
| The problem isn't the cables in your car, it is the cable
| between the DC fast charger's transformer and your car.
| They are already thermally limited, which is why you need
| higher voltages to support faster charging.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Like I said, this assumes you use ridiculous cabling and
| bus bars. You could design something that handles this,
| it would just be wildly impractically large and cost way
| too much money.
|
| Also, the problem is definitely also the cables in your
| car. Moving to 48V would mean amperage would increase by
| 10-20x, which would mean cabling thickness would have to
| increase substantially.
| amelius wrote:
| I wouldn't see why not. A battery is internally a series-
| connection of lower voltage batteries.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Both as you mentioned. Charge circuitry for DCFC can be
| >200kW.
|
| Motors, for instantaneous current, can easily exceed
| 100kW, some much much more than that.
|
| Even assuming limitations to 100kW (which, would be very
| low for motor current), that's still 2000 amps at 48V.
| Remember, 100kW is ~134 hp.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Yikes, that sounds dangerous.
|
| It is.
|
| > I'd personally prefer e.g. 48V even if that meant some
| more losses and/or thicker cables.
|
| That's unfortunately not an option. The problem with the
| 600 to 1000 V domain is that it is able to creep where
| lower voltage would stay constrained and high enough that
| it can jump small gaps and start arcing spontaneously.
| The fact that it is DC makes it more dangerous still. But
| from an economy and practical engineering perspective it
| makes perfect sense. Keep in mind that these cars are
| often built using Lithium-Ion packs (though fortunately
| we are finally seeing a change here towards safer
| options, even if they are slightly less dense and more
| expensive), so the electrocution risks are small compared
| to the thermal runaway risks.
| jinzo wrote:
| What are you talking about? Yes I know how quickly I can
| get electrocuted when the battery pack is open. I just
| need to touch two exposed busbars ~30cm apart. Or my tool
| needs to touch them.
| Tostino wrote:
| I disagree with your other takes in this thread, but you
| are 100% right here. This is dangerous stuff that needs
| to be treated with respect.
|
| I don't think it should be locked away to just the MFG,
| but it does need to be respected.
| Glawen wrote:
| Exactly, you need to touch both plus and minus. You moved
| the goalpost from getting electrocuted driving your car
| due to shoddy quality remanufacturing of battery, to
| getting electrocuted while repairing the high voltage
| side of your vehicle. Remanufacturing quality does not
| come into play if you decide to touch plus and minus side
| of a HV battery.
| jinzo wrote:
| Sorry I have no idea about this goalpost moving, maybe
| it's a language barrier. I'm just saying working on it is
| quite dangerous. But you can easily get electrocuted by
| shoddy remanufacturing (especially if someone drilled
| into the battery to replace a single cell - as EV Clinic
| shows in their videos), that's why there are additional
| safeties with regards to bad isolation. So I stand by
| both takes.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| They mention in the article that replacing the same fuse
| on a Tesla cost EUR11.
| monegator wrote:
| They'll refuse warranty on the XDrive if you don't use
| _approved brand and model of tyres_ so... my bet is on
| them wanting to extort all the precious money they can
| from their poor customers
| OptionOfT wrote:
| They'll refuse warranty if the difference between thread
| is too much between front and back as that causes wear of
| the clutches. Just like you should have the same tire on
| the same axle.
|
| Or if the tires are not the right size, especially in
| staggered setups.
|
| If you come from a car that is FWD with AWD capabilities,
| it doesn't matter as much.
|
| But BMW (at least the ones with the engine mounted
| longitudinally) which have xDrive are permanent AWD.
| close04 wrote:
| > It's a fuse plus guarantee plus liability.
|
| If that was the issue you wouldn't be allowed to change
| your wheels on the side of the road. They'd be locked
| down to the car and require a complex software procedure
| to guarantee they were swapped correctly and won't
| endanger lives.
|
| This is a professional shop raising the issues. They are
| liable for how the repair is done. BMW is just liable to
| lose money if people can easily fix their car at some
| other, cheaper, professional garage.
| jinzo wrote:
| Yes, as changing a tire is completely the same tool-and-
| knowledge level than repairing a EV Battery.
|
| If you would see how EV Clinic "repairs" Tesla batteries,
| you would not say they have any concern for liability.
| close04 wrote:
| > Yes, as changing a tire is completely the same tool-
| and-knowledge level than repairing a EV Battery.
|
| I think you are intentionally misrepresenting this and
| moving the goalposts to make your point. GP blamed safety
| and liability for the way the process looks like, not the
| complexity of the task. When it comes to safety you bet
| that an improperly installed or inspected wheel or tire
| can be dangerous.
|
| A short internet search tells me [1][2] that some sort of
| tire malfunction causes tens of thousands of accidents
| and kills hundreds of people every year in the US alone.
| That doesn't include wheel malfunctions (e.g. wheel
| coming off). Yet this isn't locked behind some
| manufacturer approval and proprietary tools.
|
| How BMW chose to approach this is profit driven. The old
| money printing machine from ICE maintenance, repairs, and
| spare parts is slowing down so they come up with new ways
| of extracting money. Like making the lives harder and
| more expensive for any non-BMW shop to do repairs.
| They're not alone in this, other brands do the same.
|
| > If you would see how EV Clinic "repairs" Tesla
| batteries, you would not say they have any concern for
| liability.
|
| More moving of goalposts mixed with not understanding
| what liability is, and where it belongs. So you tell me
| what's Tesla's liability when EV Clinic "repairs" a
| battery.
|
| [1] https://www.smithlawcenter.com/practice-
| areas/defective-tire...
|
| [2] https://www.safetyresearch.net/nhtsa-gets-real-on-
| tire-fatal...
| jinzo wrote:
| > I think you are intentionally misrepresenting this and
| moving the goalposts to make your point. GP blamed safety
| and liability for the way the process looks like, not the
| complexity of the task. When it comes to safety you bet
| that an improperly installed or inspected wheel or tire
| can be dangerous.
|
| Sorry that you feel that way, it was not my intention.
| But improperly installed or inspected wheel or tire is A
| LOT less dangerous than crashed EV Battery. And in EU you
| have a lot of effort going even into this, Police can
| inspect (and does) the tire from the outside (+ regular
| mostly yearly MOTs). All new cars have to have pressure
| sensors in the tire. So I would say EU (where EV Clinic
| is present) is making a lot of the same strides to make
| everything around tires safer. And believe it or not, if
| you go buy any new car in EU, drive it 5 minutes and swap
| the wheels yourself, it'll flag an error! As the wheels
| need to have appropriate pressure sensors - that also
| need to be programmed into the vehicle for a lot of
| makes.
|
| You think it's profit driven, I don't. Agree to disagree.
|
| > More moving of goalposts mixed with not understanding
| what liability is, and where it belongs. So you tell me
| what's Tesla's liability when EV Clinic "repairs" a
| battery.
|
| I was aiming at EV Clinics liability, not Teslas. And I
| can guarantee you that both Tesla and BMW take into
| consideration the bad press if someone, even non official
| mechanic, repairs their cars and then they kill
| someone/catch fire. Of course Tesla a lot less than BMW,
| I even have a feeling that this contributed more to how
| BMW does things, than profit.
| jandrese wrote:
| Improperly installed wheels that have fallen off of
| vehicles in motion have killed not only the occupants of
| the vehicle but pedestrians and other motorists
| (especially motorcyclists) in the past. We also allow
| people to fill vehicles with highly combustible fluids
| with little to no oversight, which has caused fires and
| deaths.
|
| There is a certain level of risk that is inevitable with
| moving multi-ton machines at lethal speeds, and deciding
| that this particular issue is where we are going to draw
| the line is dubious.
|
| The point that "allowing this fuse to be replaced
| affordably is too much of a safety issue" is a cop out is
| valid.
| prepend wrote:
| They have no stats because the entire platform is new and
| different. I would guess they have a very poor prediction
| model.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Yes, it's insane. People working in the field have their
| perception warped by what they see around them.
| jinzo wrote:
| I mean, I don't think my perception is warped by what I
| see. But by "am I willing to risk that my repair will kill
| someone, because they wanted cheaper repair"? Or even if
| not kill, maybe just burn down their car (+ house,...). "Am
| I willing to use cheap tools, not rated for 800V (or 400V)
| god knows how many Amps?". Because this is not software
| development - you can be killed REALLY quickly working on a
| HV EV battery pack. It's no joke. For sure it'll cost more
| than working on a regular car, where there is danger, but a
| lot less. And that's just the basic thinking, without going
| deeper into why its more expensive to repair stuff like
| this.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You, you are the problem.
|
| It's not excusable to do this to the product because of some
| hand wavey napkin math about liability.
|
| Understand how people will interact with your product and
| then use that information to avoid doing things like routing
| power where firefighters want to cut and you'll accomplish
| the same thing without a stupid expensive hair trigger fuse.
| jinzo wrote:
| I am a problem, but on the other spectrum - OEMs ain't
| getting the repair EUREUREUR because people like me repair
| stuff (but a different approach than Vanja).
|
| Then, almost no manufacturer that sells in the EU knows how
| to do this (Renault is almost the only one that doesen't
| have pyrofuses in the battery, almost everyone else has).
| The catch is, the routed power is not problematic, the
| problem is when something gets squished and redirects that
| routed power to somewhere else. Which tends to happen in a
| metal tincan.
| torginus wrote:
| _If_ you and BMW are correct - if we take it for a fact that
| a simple fender-bender can make batteries develop life-
| threatening faults, which absolutely require a 4k euro
| inspection that involves complete disassembly and specialist
| equipment, then that means that EVs are unsuitable for public
| use.
|
| So either all EVs need to be scrapped forever, or BMW needs
| to engineer a more tractable solution to the problem, or BMW
| is overreacting and overcharging customers.
| jinzo wrote:
| No, from my experience, a simple fender-bender does not
| cause this.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Yeah, that's OP's point then, that a fender bender
| causing this is an overreaction from BMW
| jinzo wrote:
| We don't have the full picture. Like I mentioned too many
| times in this thread, I know EV Clinic head boss Vanja
| likes to overreact and twists stuff to fit into his
| narrative. Not saying this one was not a fender bender,
| but I take all his stuff with a grain of salt. Mostly
| because I worked with him AND work on the same stuff he
| does - and it usually doesen't match up to what I'm
| seeing to the degree he 'dramaticizes'.
| torginus wrote:
| In the article, it was mentioned that the issue can be
| caused by hitting the curb, there's a guy in the comments
| who says his VW grenaded itself this exact way just while
| charging (luckily his car was in warranty).
| neuralRiot wrote:
| I also work in this field, and I feel manufacturers like to
| exaggerate the dangers as a liability umbrella, aside of
| disassembling the battery itself it's very hard to even
| access the HV components in a dangerous way, every HV
| connector has an interlocking line that opens the battery
| internal contactor so other than hacking the HV line with a
| saw I don't see how you could "touch" the live wires.
| devmor wrote:
| As a lifelong Toyota fan, I agree they are miserable to work
| on, especially the electronics. I have a stoplight switch issue
| in my 86 (from being rear-ended) that I have neglected because
| it would require pulling out the trunk assembly to fix.
|
| The engineering praise comes from the fact that if you are
| taking care of it, you will probably never have to work on it
| until it's well into 6-digit mileage. This remains consistent
| through pretty much their entire line with the one exceptional
| black mark really being the RAV4.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I occasionally like to see what the highest mileage Toyota
| Prius I can find for sale is. They are obviously used as
| taxis and it's common to find one for sale with half a
| million miles.
|
| Usually at that point someone puts in a new hybrid battery
| and sells it to someone else starting out driving Ubers.
| devmor wrote:
| Oh yes, the Prius gets even better lifetime because the
| hardest strain on the engine components is completely
| negated by the electric motor. If I ever ditch the little
| mini sports car, I will most likely replace it with another
| Prius.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| In fairness most cars get taken for scrap with an engine
| which starts and runs. Even when they are running a bit
| rough it's more often fueling and ignition components
| than a mechanical problem with the engine components.
|
| That said, the synergy drive is by design a very robust
| mechanical system. It has no dog gears, clutch or torque
| converter. I'm sure this contributes a lot to their long
| life.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They reach a million miles because they're taxis, not in
| spite of it.
|
| What kills the hybrids is that the kind of people who buy
| these sorts of "peak appliance" cars tend to be the same
| kind of people who'll obliviously let some critical fluid
| run too low. You get orders of magnitude less of that sort
| of behavior in taxi fleets.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I don't know if this is applicable to hybrids, but taxis
| attain high mileage with relatively few engine cold
| starts. Engine cold starts are what kills main and conrod
| bearings and piston walls. Taxis' bodies may be beat to
| garbage, the interior might be trash, but the engine and
| likely the transmission too will be representative of a
| vehicle with an order of magnitude less kilometers
| driven. Because they go an order of magnitude further
| between cold engine starts.
|
| All this assumes proper maintenance, especially oil
| changes.
| jabl wrote:
| > As a lifelong Toyota fan, I agree they are miserable to
| work on, especially the electronics.
|
| I had a Toyota Yaris a couple of decades ago. Very reliable,
| very few issues. But some routine things like replacing
| headlights were completely bonkers. You had to wiggle your
| hand between some sharp metal parts to unscrew the back end
| of the armature. Sheesh, would it have been that prohibitive
| to add a few cm of extra space there?
| devmor wrote:
| The headlights are a sore point for me as well. I have to
| remove _the entire front bumper piece_ to replace them on
| the 86.
|
| Who thought that was appropriate?
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >Tesla is remarkably well done. Simplicity is under rated.
|
| https://electrek.co/2025/12/03/tesla-model-y-named-worst-car...
|
| >So much so i bought one with the intention to keep for a
| looooong time.
|
| Good luck with that.
| richx wrote:
| I am affacted by this as well: the rear knuckle uniball
| bearing was broken after 3 years (Achsschenkel). Many MY here
| in Europe have this issue, due to bad parts or too hard
| suspension.
|
| But there are two other things that make it a bit unfair for
| Tesla in comparison to other brands:
|
| Often the cars fail official inspections because of rotten
| breaks - this happens when your drive carefully and the Tesla
| is using regenerative breaking instead of the real breaks.
| Simple solution is to force breaking from time to time (I.e.
| breaking in neutral). Another aspect is, that all the other
| brands have a mandatory inspection from the manufacturer
| before the cars will be tested by the independent check. This
| avoids that they will fail it, because the car will be
| repaired before it is checked by the independent inspection.
| This is not mandatory for Teslas.
| iSnow wrote:
| >Often the cars fail official inspections because of rotten
| breaks - this happens when your drive carefully and the
| Tesla is using regenerative breaking
|
| Huh? Every EV uses recuperative braking, how is this
| special to Tesla?
| kotaKat wrote:
| German TUV thinks Teslas are horrible because apparently
| nobody is servicing their brakes on a regular enough
| interval so every time Teslas get pulled in for their 2
| year inspections after 3 years of ownership they keep
| failing out on brakes and suspension, but VWs are the
| pinnacle of perfection because they slam 10K service
| intervals in your face.
|
| (Of note: I drive a hybrid vehicle, and over 125,000+
| miles of ownership I have replaced my front brakes once
| and my rear brakes three times now in five years.)
| dotancohen wrote:
| I'm at 125000 on my Long Range Model 3. I plugged a tire
| last month and photographed brake caliper - like new. I
| could not believe it. I can upload a photo if you'd like.
| kotaKat wrote:
| .... I also didn't add the rest of my environmental
| conditions like the fact I'm in an absolute rust belt in
| the winter.
|
| NYS DOT does some good work with the salt and sand up
| here, heavy on the salt. Mother Earth has some high blood
| pressure up here as she turns rotors to rust.
|
| My calipers (all around) are also in excellent condition
| after 150k and I've been told that it's an absolute
| surprise I didn't destroy them with how low the pads went
| on the last change...
| ch_sm wrote:
| > Huh? Every EV uses recuperative braking, how is this
| special to Tesla?
|
| It's not. But there are some newer EVs (e.g. Mercedes and
| VW) that track brake usage and will periodically switch
| to using the disk brakes when there's danger of
| corrosion.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The Teslas have far stronger regen than other brands.
| Have you ever wondered why Tesla's Long Range models have
| 500 horsepower? It's not for increased acceleration
| power, it's for increased braking power. Far less energy
| is wasted on the friction brakes in a Tesla.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Often the cars fail official inspections because of
| rotten br[e]ak[e]s - this happens when your drive carefully
| and the Tesla is using regenerative breaking instead of the
| real br[e]ak[e]s.
|
| That's something that they should have taken into
| consideration when designing the car.
| CrimsonRain wrote:
| It is not a big deal. Just burnish it once every few
| months when it makes high pitched sound during low speed
| braking. https://service.tesla.com/docs/Public/diy/model3
| /en_us/GUID-...
| OvbiousError wrote:
| > that all the other brands have a mandatory inspection
| from the manufacturer before the cars will be tested by the
| independent check.
|
| I'm in Europe. Never heard of mandatory inspection before
| independent checks. How would that even work, or be
| enforced.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Service intervals. Other OEMs will prompt a service
| interval at X thousand miles/km to go pop in and have it
| looked at by a dealer, probably swap out your cabin air
| filter, upsell you on some new wiper blades, etc.
|
| ICE vehicles would normally catch these issues sooner
| because you'd be pulling in a lot more often for oil
| changes (and a quick mechanical inspection is typically a
| courtesy at that time).
| torginus wrote:
| I think the break rusting issue can be fixed in software.
| lnsru wrote:
| I am no Tesla fanboy. But let's face the truth. Teslas leave
| factory with end of line check. Then they are driven more
| than average cars for 3 years without any maintenance. Then
| go for check. And surprise surprise, the first model Ys were
| not well made. I bet with 1000-1500EUR maintenance cost over
| these 3 years the TUV result would be dramatically different.
|
| Btw, my petrol car had ugly rusty rear brakes. No way to pass
| the check. The car had manual handbrake and I used in every
| highway exit to slow down and removed rust.
| Thedarkb wrote:
| I've got a '91 Toyota Carina and can attest that it's very easy
| to work on, my friend and I pulled the engine and gearbox in
| under two hours with hand tools, but I can't really speak for
| anything modern.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| > I hear a lot of praise for toyota but it's from people who
| haven't worked on a car themselves rather than mechanics and
| they must be talking about toyotas from a bygone era because
| i'm not impressed with a 2019 corolla engineering at all
|
| Toyota hybrid powertrains are more reliable than any other
| company, but other than that they are no longer special.
| everdrive wrote:
| >i've done the wet belt
|
| All that to say that a wet belt should not even be used in the
| first place.
| zeroping wrote:
| Last week, I replaced a faulty cell in my PHEV.
|
| The most expensive tooling was the two floor jacks I purchased to
| make the process easier. The software needed was available from
| the manufacturer for a reasonable fee. The battery pack itself
| was surprisingly modular and simple to dismantle for repair.
|
| I don't many things GM has done, but (at least back in 2010) they
| did a good job of letting owners do their own work.
| manmal wrote:
| Yeah just don't go to a BMW dealer, and save 50+% of the cost. I
| recently had numerous repairs done for EUR2k on my 2er, and the
| dealer had quoted me EUR5k. 1k for a part isn't that outlandish,
| you just can't go to a dealer that bills you EUR300 per hour.
| mvkel wrote:
| This is what makes Teslas sustainable and other car cos, like
| Porsche, not.
|
| A battery pack for a Model 3 is $10K. So even if the whole car is
| only worth $20K, it's still worth keeping on the road.
|
| The Porsche Taycan battery pack is $70K. The moment you have any
| issue at all with it, the car will be considered totaled.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Is that $10k the list price, or have you actually seen a recent
| invoice from a mechanic for a Model 3 battery swap?
| whatever1 wrote:
| It's an urban legend.
| oskarkk wrote:
| I've searched the internet and I found some articles and
| people talking about prices around $11-16k, most of the times
| including labor.
|
| https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/new-battery-cost-
| for...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/183if34/what_i.
| ..
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModel3/comments/1blczt1/what_a.
| ..
|
| https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/tesla-battery-
| replace...
|
| https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/tesla-model-3-battery-
| re...
| cyberax wrote:
| I was quoted $15k in a Tesla service center for a Model 3
| battery replacement, with parts and labor.
| lifty wrote:
| Wait another year. CATL is destroying the battery market
| with their new LFP and sodium batteries. Prices are
| collapsing.
| hnarn wrote:
| Doesn't sound like a market being "destroyed" to me, it
| sounds like a market being a market.
| lifty wrote:
| Maybe that would have been a better way to phrase it. I
| meant it in a positive way.
| fnord77 wrote:
| wasn't CATL blacklisted by the US govt?
| peppersghost93 wrote:
| Anything good for the EV market will be blacklisted by
| the US govt
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Sodium will take 15 years to catch up to LFP prices. Stop
| consuming hype.
| labcomputer wrote:
| I have no info on Tesla batteries. But, just as a point of
| reference, you can now buy knock-down 48V battery "kits" from
| China for under $90/kWh. They include everything you need:
| case, cells, BMS, circuit breaker/isolator, and fire
| suppression. Assembly takes about an hour. (The raw prismatic
| cells without the rest go for ~$50/kWh).
|
| Shipping from China to the west coast runs an additional
| $30/kWh due to the weight of the cells and volume of the box
| (shipped in several boxes to reduce cost). So you can have a
| 300 lbs, 15 kWh 48V battery shipped to your door for about
| $120/kWh).
|
| High voltage EV batteries need additional components (like HV
| contractors) due to stacking so many cells in series, but it
| seems entirely plausible that Tesla's economies of scale
| allow them to offer a 75 kWh battery for $10k (~$133/kWh)
| plus installation.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Automotive grade cells are a bit more expensive (generally
| higher C rates, dunno if they have other specs)
| tw04 wrote:
| > The moment you have any issue at all with it, the car will be
| considered totaled.
|
| Huh? The taycan has an 8-year/100k mile battery warranty. How
| many 100k+ mile carreras do you see for sale on eBay?
| josephh wrote:
| The warranty isn't going to cover underside damages caused by
| going over a shallow bump
| tw04 wrote:
| No, your insurance is going to cover damages caused by
| hitting road debris whether you're driving an EV or an ICE
| vehicle.
| cromka wrote:
| Carrera is not Taycan. Why would you equate both? Different
| cars with different targets.
| tw04 wrote:
| > Different cars with different targets.
|
| The head of the product disagrees with you. No offense but
| I think he has a slightly better idea of their target buyer
| than you.
|
| >AW: How much was Tesla on Porsche's mind when the Taycan
| was produced? It seems like you're going right after Model
| S with this car.
|
| >SW: The first target for ourselves was to make sure that
| the Taycan becomes a Porsche. _We needed to make it as
| close to the 911, our icon, as possible._ Obviously, we had
| a look at the competition, we had a look at BMW, Mercedes,
| Tesla.
|
| https://www.autoweek.com/news/people/a2157176/talking-
| taycan...
| lan321 wrote:
| It's like the S60, VW W12, old V12 Continentals, etc. If it's
| expensive to maintain no one wants to buy it off you so you
| get hit with massive depreciation costs. You can get a 20y/o
| 'no issues' 500+hp V12 Continental for 10k where I'm at.
| They've had a brutal cost/year and cost/mile.
| archi42 wrote:
| Huh? S60? Can you clarify?
|
| I've driven a 2003 Volvo S60 (plain 5 cylinder, no turbo),
| which matches your 20 years - and most diy repairs were
| quite straightforward. I suppose you're talking about some
| Mercedes or other brand I'm less familiar with?
| nicholassmith wrote:
| Quite a few actually, regular 911s often end up being daily
| drivers and given Porsche build them to last there's plenty
| of high milers out there.
| tw04 wrote:
| There are currently 17 total carreras for sale with over
| 100k miles, none of them are less than 8 years old. The
| average taycan buyer isn't going to own the car long enough
| to exceed the warranty.
| tpm wrote:
| EV Clinic identified some issues in Teslas too, for example
| this one: https://x.com/evclinic/status/1994876173277335745
| fsh wrote:
| This is like comparing a Casio to a Rolex. Both do roughly the
| same thing, but the markets are completely different. Nobody
| buys a high-end luxury car like a Taycan because it makes
| financial sense. The manufacturers know this and price
| everything accordingly.
| The_President wrote:
| Like a G-Shock to a Seiko.
| Beijinger wrote:
| You realize that most Ferraris don't decrease, but increase
| in value over time?
| constantcrying wrote:
| That is such a terrible example. Why are you comparing Teslas
| to cars where the battery pack costs more than the Tesla,
| instead of the myriad of competitively priced models?
| leipie wrote:
| I cannot find any explanation for that this is the result of EU
| regulation. Tesla should also adhere to the same EU regulation
| and they manage to do this without the "extra CO2" costs as the
| article states itself. This article smells like FUD to get
| attention.
| hexo wrote:
| what is phev?
| jandrese wrote:
| Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle. It's the most complex
| drivetrain you can possibly buy with a full gas engine and
| transmission mated to a full EV with external charging support.
| sgt wrote:
| PHEW!
| timbit42 wrote:
| I can't speak for other PHEV drivetrains but the Toyota PHEV
| design isn't that complex. It uses an ingenious planetary CVT
| with a small gas engine instead of a full gas engine and
| regular transmission.
|
| Also, because the gas engine mostly runs at its most
| efficient RPM, there is little stress on it so it runs very
| reliably.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Plug in hybrid.
| Neil44 wrote:
| I have a BMW PHEV. There's a 3 cyl turbo engine with an auto
| box at the front and a 90hp electric motor and 7.6kwh battery
| at the back. Most of the new ones just have a more traditional
| layout with an electric motor built into the autobox. You get
| more elec range than a hybrid but less than a full EV. Now that
| it's cold I start my commute on engine to get the car warmed up
| with 'free' heat then switch to EV later. If I want to beat
| someone off the lights I use both together.
| m463 wrote:
| replacing a tesla pyro fuse is about $500, and it has a lifetime.
|
| I think it might be the ev equivalent of a wear item like a water
| pump or alternator on an ice vehicle.
| mrgaro wrote:
| This only applies to pre-2020 Tesla's and it was around 8-10
| years. The more recent ones are designed to last the vehicles
| lifetime.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| my VW Multivan's gearbox needed a replacement. 17000 CHF, I kid
| you not. Luckily VW Germany paid for the whole ordeal, but I
| wouldn't have been happy to pay that...
| moktonar wrote:
| This behavior of locking down everything needs to be regulated,
| not only for car manufacturers but also for everything else
| generic92034 wrote:
| Let's start with smartphones.
| moktonar wrote:
| You can make a law that encompasses all
| chakintosh wrote:
| Not just BMW. I've been watching (and enjoying) Mat Armstrong's
| youtube videos where he restores crash damaged luxury cars, one
| of them was a Lamborghini Revuelo. The car's battery was
| completely intact, but the safety fuse blew up in the BMS and
| despite replacing the entire module, the car wouldn't talk to the
| battery and wouldn't even start. Eventually he had to buy an
| entire 30K battery, and even then, the car wouldn't start because
| the car was so new Lamborghini themselves still didn't have the
| diagnostics tool to clear the crash code.
|
| PHEVs are great, I've driven two in the past 6 years, but in most
| cases, you're one airbag deployment away from a very, costly
| repair and in 99% of cases, a totaled car.
| cjrp wrote:
| Interestingly I've seen YouTubers replace the fuse in a Tesla
| for about PS40 and a few hours of labour (it's under the rear
| seats). Maybe something they're doing right.
| sgt wrote:
| Tesla is the DIY's EV enthusiast car for a reason.
| jinzo wrote:
| Yes mostly propaganda and being first/having a big driving
| base. They are notoriously closed/locked down from the
| diagnostic/reprogramming perspective.
| IshKebab wrote:
| What car isn't these days?
| jinzo wrote:
| You can replace the fuse (not that easly) but for
| approximately the same price in a BMW. You do have to put in
| more work but the problem is with re-certifying the battery.
| Tesla does not care if the battery was damaged in the crash,
| they will (more or less) happily re-enable it. BMW decided
| that the only safe way is to re-certify the whole battery.
| I'm not saying it's the right decision, I think they over did
| it and VW does it better - but I do understand WHY they chose
| to do it so, and the WHY is not nearly as outrageous as a lot
| of people here think.
| chakintosh wrote:
| > they will (more or less) happily re-enable it.
|
| That's one more car they will happily milk for a
| subscription. Also, safety laws in the US are way more lax
| than Europe.
| supernova87a wrote:
| It seems to me an analogy that as a product is increasingly
| complex, the ultimate consumer/demander of it becomes more and
| more disconnected from maintenance, operations, etc.
| considerations and whether that system is well designed and
| serviceable.
|
| Cars of a past generation were able to be owner-maintained (or
| understood), and therefore the owner had some interest in knowing
| that it was easy to maintain and would buy (at least partly) on
| that premise. Something that was a nightmare to maintain would
| not be so easily bought because the owners would soon realize how
| hard they were to fix.
|
| Now, with a car that is so complicated, the owner is far distant
| from being the fixer of it until years later seeing a surprise
| repair bill. Even the maintainers are not even directly
| knowledgeable about the design and how to repair. And the
| information about its maintainability is a low factor on the
| buying considerations list. But by then you've already given the
| company the money and incentive to keep on building this way. And
| rarely (or extremely/too "laggily" does that information feed
| back).
|
| It seems to me enterprise software systems have this problem as
| well.
| kristjank wrote:
| >Lot of vehicles designed and produced in Europe -- ICE, PHEV,
| and EV -- have effectively become a missleading ECO exercise.
| Vehicles marketed as "CO2-friendly" end up producing massive CO2
| footprints through forced services, throw-away components, high
| failure rates and unnecessary parts manufacturing cycles,
| overcomplicated service procedures, far larger than what the
| public is told. If we are destroying our ICE automotive industry
| based on EURO norms, who is calculating real ECO footprint of
| replacement part manucfacturing, unecessary servicing and real
| waste cost?
|
| >We saw this years ago on diesel and petrol cars: DPF failures,
| EGR valves, high-pressure pumps, timing belts running in oil, low
| quality automatic transmissions, and lubrication system defects.
| Everyone calculates the CO2 footprint of a moving vehicle --
| nobody calculates the CO2 footprint of a vehicle that is
| constantly broken and creating waste.
|
| Extremely well put.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| More like a weird rant that reduces EVs to only existing due to
| the environment. But they're just better cars lol. And the poor
| reliability of european cars applies regardless of propulsion
| type
| wil421 wrote:
| They aren't better cars if they are disposal items like
| phones and most electronic devices.
| Retric wrote:
| High end ICE cars have long been treated as disposable
| items. 3 year lease and then resell for 1/2 of its initial
| price so suddenly it's cheaper than new midrange models for
| good reasons.
|
| Lower end cars on the other hand can be worth 3/4th of
| their initial value 5 years out, that's a durable good.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| They last longer than ICE cars.
|
| https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-leads-vehicle-longevity-
| mile...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Right to repair laws should cover this, and / or have a very
| clear procedure for e.g. consumers and mechanics to report these
| anti-repairability practices. Even if they're not on purpose
| (which I doubt, but have no evidence of), the author of this post
| clearly explains what the problem and what the various hurdles
| are.
|
| I get that from a safety point of view, certain things should be
| checked and / or replaced after a crash, especially when
| volatiles like batteries or fuel tanks are involved. But they
| shouldn't cost thousands.
| igogq425 wrote:
| I am in Germany. I will keep my 14-year-old Renault gasoline car
| roadworthy and use it for as long as possible. When it is no
| longer economically viable to drive a gasoline-powered car, I
| expect there to be electric cars that cost a four-figure sum in
| euros when new, are virtually maintenance-free, and come with a
| guarantee that a replacement battery will be available at a
| reasonable price (preferably from third-party suppliers) that I
| can replace myself without having to go to a specialist workshop.
| I hope that there will be manufacturers who recognize the need
| for such vehicles and will meet that demand. I will definitely
| not pay 20,000 or 50,000 euros or whatever for a skateboard with
| a battery and car bodywork.
|
| Articles like this confirm my opinion on the subject. What annoys
| me most is that we argued in favor of electric cars because of
| climate protection. I am in favor of climate protection, but when
| I read this article, I just feel like I'm being taken for a ride.
| Politicians should not have simply decided to phase out
| combustion engines. They should have imposed further constraints
| on the automotive industry with regard to low purchase costs,
| durability, reusability, and affordable maintenance.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Everyone calculates the CO2 footprint of a moving vehicle --
| nobody calculates the CO2 footprint of a vehicle that is
| constantly broken and creating waste."
|
| Did anyone think politicians are there for a common good? They
| are there to turn us unto sheep to shear. Their primitive lies
| and propaganda and us being idiots are their main instrument
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Did anyone think politicians are there for a common good?
|
| The problem is that a whole bunch of people who know the
| politicians are not concerned with anything in the same
| ballpark as the common good will lie to your face about it when
| the thing the politicians are pushing suits them for the next
| 5min even if the long term consequences are obvious.
|
| The politicians behavior is just a symptom of the problem.
| mystraline wrote:
| At this point, when I look at ANY electric vehicle, I'm seeing
| basically what Richard Stallman and Cory Doctorow warned about.
|
| Its a DMCA DRM hellscape, full of equipment that was _sold_ (with
| a state registration no less), and these car companies still
| maintain remote control and real ownership indefinitely.
|
| Mercedes EQS won't "let" owners open the hood.
|
| BMW "rented heated seats" bullshit.
|
| GMC Hummer EV Requires dealer-level authentication to reset the
| 12V battery or perform certain repairs.
|
| Tesla uses proprietary diagnostic tools and encrypted software.
|
| Volvo has explored payment-based bricking.
|
| Even the EFF warned about this 12 years ago in 2013 :
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-co...
|
| Will I consider an EV? Sure. Am I going to place primary buying
| decision on reparability and full ownership? Damn straight I
| will. If that means I buy hybrids and/or ICE vehicles. I want
| something I can maintain without running to the vendor to ask
| permission, or even "giving" them the ability to say no.
| yason wrote:
| This is absolutely not limited to EVs, the same
| enshittification is in a lot of ICEs and hybrids as well.
| Today's cars won't be driving in 2040 when a student could buy
| it for a grand wit 300 000 miles on the clock, and keep fixing
| it himself in order to save money.b
|
| Owning a car (or device) you have "purchased" is getting more
| and more difficult to achieve. So is owning of anything at all
| that can or is allowed to connect online. You basically pay for
| it in order to rent it because you no longer control its
| lifetime.
| fnord77 wrote:
| seems like this would run afoul of american right-to-repair laws
| prepend wrote:
| It's funny how I extrapolate car design sessions in my head based
| on software design sessions.
|
| I sold my bmw after 15 years of multiple bmws because their
| design is so poor for maintenance. I had cooling system problems
| that required hours of labor to get to just to replace a plastic
| part that cost $5 where an aluminum one would cost $7.
|
| It seems to me that bmw was designing for best case scenarios
| where everything goes perfectly. And since it's supposed to go
| perfectly who cares if it's $5000 to fix because it will "never
| break."
|
| Reminds me of Rube Goldberg software designs where 9 things have
| to happen in sequence for success.
|
| The idea of rubust design that assumes everything breaks and you
| can still operate is one I value. I look for car companies (and
| everything I suppose) following this principle.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| What you're describing is the stereotype for "rich west europe"
| engineering culture.
|
| Every now and then you see it leak out into some other
| environment, like Toyota and their pull-apart ball joints that
| "aren't an issue" because "the user will just service it on
| schedule" where it reliably causes problems in all sorts of
| dumb ways (because like anything else, designing stuff to
| within an inch of it's life takes practice).
|
| Now, don't get me wrong, this European approach creates a lot
| of cool highly performant products, but it's stuff that tends
| to fall on it's face real good if you violate any of the
| assumptions made when designing it and the approach is
| naturally suited to some products more than others.
| giamma wrote:
| Here is an American example, Fox suspensions. Fox is one of
| the main producers of bicycle suspensions. Great products,
| but check their service intervals for a fork [0], 125 hours.
|
| Now if you practice mountainbike you may ride your bike 1 to
| 5 times a week. Let's say you only ride once a week for 4
| hours: 125 / 4 = 31, you would need to service your fork
| every 31 weeks. Add some few more rides and you have to
| service the fork twice a year.
|
| Each service easily costs $150 if done by a bike shop. If you
| do it yourself (plenty of tutorials on youtube), you need
| expensive special tools, oil, special grease and spare
| o-rings and seals easily costs 30-40$ for every service. And
| you have to properly dispose the old oil.
|
| [0] https://tech.ridefox.com/bike/owners-manuals/2979/fork--
| 2025...
| bradyd wrote:
| That service interval is pretty common across all bike
| suspension forks (and dropper posts are usually only around
| 50 hours).
|
| A SR Suntour fork has a 100 hour maintenance interval, for
| example.
|
| https://www.manualslib.com/manual/3730626/Sr-Suntour-
| Durolux...
| eptcyka wrote:
| > 9 things have to happen in sequence
|
| This is literally how all software works. Except it is
| thousands of instructions. Further, it is very often that
| programs don't handle anything besides the happy path.
| jlarocco wrote:
| It's not just BMW, it's basically all car manufacturers. There
| are several car maintenance YouTubers who complain about it for
| many brands. For example "The Car Care Nut" complains about
| Toyotas being badly designed for maintenance, questionable
| material choices, etc..
|
| The problem is that $2 here and there adds up, and at the level
| of the whole car it can add hundreds, or thousands of dollars
| of extra cost for reliability that the user can't experience
| directly. For some percentage of owners the plastic part works
| fine for the whole time they have the car. On the other hand
| sturdier parts add expense in the case of an accident or
| replacing parts during routine maintenance.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| BMW has been the worst of the worst for a long time though.
| [0] is a representative example, but pretty much any "car
| brands ordered by upkeep cost" list will have BMW out on
| their own planet.
|
| Before Teslas really took over the "high income tech worker"
| market, in Seattle you used to be able to get a used BMW for
| quite cheap, because all the Microsoft and Amazon workers
| would lease them and then they'd go on the used market when
| the lease was up. I actually considered doing this, but
| multiple mechanics said very bluntly, "don't, this is a trap,
| the maintenance costs will eat you alive".
|
| [0]: https://www.crsautomotive.com/what-are-the-total-costs-
| of-ve...
| hinkley wrote:
| It was practically a stereotype that all of the young male
| H1Bs had a BMW desktop background on their work computer. I
| knew one guy who practically bankrupted himself by buying
| one the moment he thought he could afford it. The mandatory
| insurance got him. And then we found out he's a terrible
| driver. Thing was in the shop all the time.
| justin66 wrote:
| I watch "The Car Care Nut" sometimes, as I've got a Toyota.
| Nothing I've ever seen there would lead me to put Toyota into
| the same maintenance cost/difficulty category as BMW or
| Mercedes.
|
| Consumer Reports puts them at almost opposite ends of the
| spectrum, as well.
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-maintenance/the-
| cos...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I've owned a few Mercedes and didn't find them really more
| difficult to work on than other cars of similar age I've
| owned. I haven't owned any that are really new, so that may
| have changed. I haven't owned any BMWs but their reputation
| for being difficult to work on and overengineered goes back
| decades.
| bombcar wrote:
| There was an era where Mercedes were insanely easy to
| work on, with the detail you'd expect from unleashed
| German engineers.
|
| I didn't know the 123 hood folded all the way back until
| near the end of having one!
|
| https://www.classiccarstodayonline.com/2022/04/22/mercede
| s-1...
| hinkley wrote:
| BMW uses bolts that require people to buy a special set of
| drivers to work on them, don't they? Like giant inverted
| torx bolts.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| External Torx. They're not so unusual. Even General
| Motors has used those in some places for eons -- I still
| have the set of them I bought at Autozone to replace the
| brakes on a Saturn a couple of decades ago.
|
| The real fucker in automotive fasteners is XZN, aka
| Triple Square. These are all over VW products.
|
| As fasteners go, they're fine. They work well.
|
| The interface has 12 points, and it looks like something
| from the toolkit like an Allen key or a Torx bit might be
| the right choice, but it isn't that way at all: The
| angles are wrong (XZN angles are based on squares, not
| hexagons).
|
| But that's OK: They make XZN socketry in factories every
| day that does have the correct angles. They're easy-
| enough to buy and to use.
|
| The fuckery aspect is a human factor: Because it looks
| like it "should work" with a Torx driver or an Allen key,
| people dive in with the wrong tools and fuck it up for
| the next guy.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Anyone can build a car that will never fall apart. It takes a
| great deal of engineering to build a car that _just barely_
| doesn 't fall apart.
| noncoml wrote:
| To be fair the "The Car Care Nut" while clearly very
| knowledgeable and extremely good at his job, all he does is
| complain in his videos.
|
| Edit: but at the end of the day all his own cars are
| Toyota/Lexus
| constantcrying wrote:
| >I had cooling system problems that required hours of labor to
| get to just to replace a plastic part that cost $5 where an
| aluminum one would cost $7.
|
| If the car has 10 places where the manufacturer saves 2
| dollars, that is 20 dollars a car. At around 2.5 Million cars
| shipped each year that is 50 Million Euros each year _profit_
| for BMW.
|
| The entire car industry is extremely cost sensitive, especially
| right now, with so much global competition and little
| consolidation.
|
| The issue also isn't that the part is cost optimized. The issue
| is that it fails.
| harrall wrote:
| Ask a car guy and they'll tell you that German car makers have
| been known to be be maintenance money sinks for 40 years.
|
| But German car makers are really quick to add new technology.
| They were quick to add ABS, fuel injection, complex
| suspensions, etc.
|
| But have you ever tried to make something you built to easy to
| maintain? You have to reroute everything, redesign your layout,
| add access ports, switch fittings... my god it can take almost
| as much time as building the thing to begin with. As an
| engineering requirement, it's a high impact one.
|
| (OK most people probably don't build physical things they
| design much, but I'm sure some of you play Minecraft.
| Especially for those contraptions, do you add access corridors,
| extra access entrances, plan access into the construction? No,
| most people just make some tiny hole somewhere to get in.
| You're just happy it works.)
|
| And at the pace some car makers add new technology, I don't
| think they budget the time to go back and do that. I think with
| the quick pace of EV technology as well, previously more
| maintenance friendly car makers are in the same boat.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| BMWs at least up to the mid-2000s are really cheap and easy
| to maintain. Parts are pennies, service documentation is
| readily available, and they're reliable enough that they last
| a long time with basic maintenance.
|
| Compared to stuff like Toyotas or Hondas, they practically
| cost nothing to keep on the road.
| corwinxpro wrote:
| > Compared to stuff like Toyotas or Hondas
|
| Don't get this. I had a CR-V from 1996 (over 300k), sold it
| a few years ago, and can still see it cruising around the
| town. My previous Toyota Yaris was pretty much unkillable,
| just like a RAV 4 or a 1998 TLC.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| You must live somewhere absolutely bone dry where it
| never gets cold enough to salt the road.
|
| We were putting Toyota Hiluxes back to the leasing
| company at three years and they were going straight in
| the crusher.
| apparent wrote:
| Eh, I had one from the early aughts and it was pretty
| expensive to maintain. Simple things that have never broken
| on other cars I've owned, like the passenger side door
| lock, broke in my BMW. Headlight issues were expensive, and
| anything that required official parts was at least 3x as
| much as a Honda/Toyota/etc. repair.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Some bits can be kind of expensive unless you know a good
| BMW indy. The nice thing about the older ones -
| particularly from like maybe E30 to E39 models - is
| there's a lot of "hacker culture" around them and it's
| easy to find someone who knows the Easy Way To Do It.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| > But have you ever tried to make something you built to easy
| to maintain?
|
| There is still a difference between e.g. Lada 2104 which,
| while admittedly having some strange fastening designs, was
| relatively straight-forward do (partially) disassemble and
| reassemble, and e.g. modern Fords where you can't to take the
| lights off of your trunk door without fully disassembling it
| first. Even better, the exact jigsaw puzzle of the design
| varies from one modification/year to another even for what is
| supposedly the same car model.
| harrall wrote:
| Ford seems to regularly re-design some sometimes-major part
| of their vehicles every model year, for better or worse.
| Some model years are banger and others are just a failed
| experiment, but you do get newer advancements.
|
| Compare that with Toyota's approach and it's just small
| tweaks. It's reliable, parts are standard, and they've had
| the chance to really dial things in but altogether it feels
| dated in some ways.
|
| And of course German automakers have some of the latest
| stuff but a lot of it feels like version 1 stuff. It works
| and sometimes is really cool but just isn't dialed in
| enough to be reliable.
|
| It's really interesting the different engineering cultures
| between different car companies.
|
| I wonder where the new Chinese automakers stand.
| hinkley wrote:
| They also did a lot of pioneering work in DSG transmissions.
| I bought a Jetta when they finally moved it to VW from Audi.
| Great transmission and saved me a lot on brake jobs. Their
| DSG tune automatically engine brakes when you feather the
| brake pedal.
|
| > But have you ever tried to make something you built to easy
| to maintain?
|
| At work, all the time. The people who get it love working on
| or with my code. The ones who don't look at me like I have a
| horn growing out of my head.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| I'm sure the money you saved on brake jobs was more than
| eaten up by the DSG service intervals. The interval on my
| Jetta Sportwagen Diesel with DSG was 40,000 miles. That
| required special hardware (tools and dongles, IIRC) and
| software if I wanted to do it myself.
| hinkley wrote:
| My vehicle before that was the Accord that had the shit
| transmission that bailed out reliably at 110k miles, so
| I'm sure I barely noticed. My Accord shat itself at
| 100,300 miles, in the mountains. Luckily it was noon, a
| warm day, and I had cell service.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Porsche had a research program about a very reliable car in the
| 70s. It has some odd technical choices from today's
| perspective. https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-
| history/when-porsch...
|
| One would assume taxi companies etc would be willing to pay for
| cars that have high uptime and reliability. But I think they
| drive mostly the same stuff as regular people. At least one
| would assume they could get beefier suspension and transmission
| and high displacement downtuned engines.
|
| In general new cars are still vastly better than old ones. 90:s
| cars rusted from everywhere after ~8 years while most cars
| nowadays have zinc coating and more plastic and are still
| mostly fine after 15 years.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I don't think it's a coincidence that an enormous number of
| rideshare/delivery drivers drive priuses though. Reliable,
| not too expensive, low maintenance, and high mpg is kind of
| exactly what you'd expect them to look for.
| BigGreenJorts wrote:
| Not to mention still roomy!
| notjonheyman wrote:
| The only slight pain in those priuses is removing the
| windshield wiper assembly to get to the spark plugs closest
| to the firewall. It's not like they didn't have enough room
| in the engine bay to the left to better engineer this. But
| it's something that you rarely have to do. Maybe 2-3 times
| for the life of the car if it reaches 300k+ miles.
| hinkley wrote:
| Engineers hate mechanics. How can they feel your wrath
| unless you specifically design a giant "fuck you" into
| every vehicle shipped?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Not enough people know how cool the Prius hybrid system is.
| One would think having EV + gas would add complexity, but
| it actually allows them to delete a lot of parts. There is
| no clutch, no belts, no starter, there's practically
| nothing that can break. Not knowing how the regen affects
| braking I brought my Prius in for 80k service and asked for
| new brake pads and mechanic asked me why I want to replace
| them, they look good as new.
|
| Only downside is the flimsy high efficiency tires, I've
| spent more money on tows and tires than I saved on gas.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Isn't there even less in a proper BEV? You lose the
| benefit of being able to pay the gas tax though.
| bityard wrote:
| > while most cars nowadays have zinc coating and more plastic
| and are still mostly fine after 15 years.
|
| In your part of the world, maybe. I live in the middle of the
| salt belt in the US and we get about 10 years out of most
| cars. That's when you start seeing rust holes in the fenders
| around the wheels, when most of the frame has flaked away and
| the floor pans become involuntary structural elements.
|
| If you're a car nut who spends extra time and money on
| preventive maintenance and rustproofing, you can get a few
| more years. But the rust comes for your car at some point
| anyway.
|
| Car manufacturers know how to make the frames and bodies last
| longer, this is not an unsolvable manufacturing and design
| challenge. It's just that nobody is getting a raise for going
| to their boss and saying, "I know how to make the company
| sell slightly fewer cars..."
| solace_silence wrote:
| Just look at what's on the road today, there are many more
| older cars still running than in the past. Even in the salt
| belt.
| Lalabadie wrote:
| I live up North (capital N) from you, where we have ~4
| months of calcium spread on our roads to manage the
| accumulating ice every winter. A well-maintained car has
| the chance to live long enough to succumb to rust from
| that.
|
| Rustproofing is still a good treatment to get done to delay
| and minimize damage, but it's a thorough and slightly
| expensive job.
|
| People who have a hobby car usually retire it in a garage
| from November to April-May instead.
| organsnyder wrote:
| I have a 2009 Civic that has no noticeable body rust,
| despite being in Michigan. Two times I've had to get minor
| body work done (not rust-related), the bodyshop owner
| commented that he never sees them this clean anymore. I
| chalk it up to being diligent with car washes, especially
| in the winter. Purists will cringe at this, but I'm fine
| with sacrificing some surface appearance (the paint doesn't
| look too bad, considering how many carwashes it's seen) in
| exchange for longevity.
| mpbart wrote:
| Which part of Michigan are you in? I know some people
| that live up in northern Michigan where they don't bother
| salting the roads in the winter and just put down sand
| instead which I would imagine contributes to better
| longevity
| organsnyder wrote:
| I'm in Grand Rapids. We use tons of salt here.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > One would assume taxi companies etc would be willing to pay
| for cars that have high uptime and reliability. But I think
| they drive mostly the same stuff as regular people. At least
| one would assume they could get beefier suspension and
| transmission and high displacement downtuned engines.
|
| Here in the UK until recently it was all Skoda Octavias, nice
| simple comfortable cars with a reliable diesel engine. Prior
| to that, it was all Citroen Xantias - again, nice simple
| comfortable (really comfortable with their hydraulic
| suspension) cars with a big reliable diesel engine.
|
| It's not uncommon to see them hit well over half a million
| miles, often in less than five years.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| Galvanised bodyshells and panels has been a thing since the
| 80s, or indeed the 70s for Volvo and Saab.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| My last 4 cars were BMW. I love the way they drive, but ...
|
| I think they are optimized for the EU leasing market. 4 years,
| 120.000km. If you buy one for long ownership and want more out
| of them (they can most certainly do 400=500k km reliably), you
| have to take care of them from day 1. You change the
| maitainance schedule (which by default is set to lowering fleet
| lease costs and who cares beyond that), learn about and do
| preventive maintainance (such as replacing the entire cooling
| around 120k km), stricktly use BMW oil (for the additives)
| unless you are realy knowledgeable about it, and invest in a
| decent fault scanner (to lnow what is going on and not just run
| up expensive maintainance bills at the BMW shop).
|
| If you think that's all too much hassle, just lease them short
| term or buy something else.
| buserror wrote:
| Thats why they've been increasing the service interval to
| silly numbers. 3 years ago, 10k miles, now... 18k miles _for
| the same model of car_ for the first service! Absolutely
| insane.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Yep, and remember, "lifetime" in BMW speak is 120k.km/4y,
| not "forever".
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I never considered buying a BMW before they put out an EV
| (the i4, not the i3). One of the reasons is maintenance, the
| EV still needs some, but much less than an ICE.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I was looking for this reply as well; definitely my
| perception that a lot of mid- to high-end cars are engineered
| to drive and feel great for 4-5 years, and after that it's
| kind of a crapshoot. You can see it as well with the various
| subscriptions, for app connectivity, M2M infotainment data,
| etc-- all of it is oriented around that same time horizon.
| varispeed wrote:
| I found the hard way that nowadays manufacturer's authorised
| (branded) service centres optimise for making you get rid of
| the car. For instance, I had something wrong with the car,
| they kept gaslighting me that the car is absolutely within
| specs and drive exactly how it should. Next appointment they
| admitted that maybe something indeed is wrong, but probably
| not. After complaint they said the car is faulty but it will
| be very very expensive to repair and maybe I should consider
| buying a new one. They they offered me part exchange for one
| of their approved used models framing it as a gesture of good
| will and that it will be cheaper than the repair.
| Unbelievable.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Management only cares about analyzing and completing the 'happy
| path' because customers only buy 'happy path'. Customers don't
| (with rare exceptions) buy 'unhappy path', even though
| statistically it is a near certainty that where they will find
| themselves at some point.
|
| I guarantee no engineer wanted an expensive, difficult to
| replace pyro fuse. Unfortunately, it doesn't particularly
| matter what individual engineers want, it's what the _system_
| wants, and the system wants to make _money_.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I don't know how "German engineering" became a badge of honor.
| Probably from the people who continually roll new leases every 2
| years.
|
| Even 25 years ago working on German vehicles compared to the
| Japanese counter-parts was a harrowing endeavor.
|
| Germans are excellent at making cool flashy features...that rely
| on 16 moving parts that cost $700 each, and need to remove the
| engine exhaust manifold to access one screw to release part #15.
|
| They get a 10 for "Wow!" factor, a 0 for "well thought out", and
| a 10 for "extremely over complicated". Unsurprisingly this
| mindset has carried over into EVs now too.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Everything is branded for what it is not. Quality Inns, etc...
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Probably from the people who continually roll new leases
| every 2 years.
|
| 100% this. BMW's own stats say that something like 90% of
| buyers of new BMWs keep them for 3 years or less. The fact that
| parts like oil pans are made out of plastic or that lately all
| their gearboxes have the oil drain port completely removed is
| just irrelevant to the buyers because none of them care about
| keeping the car for a decade like people used to. And the
| collapse of second hand prices due to these catastrophic repair
| costs is not really a problem for them either.
|
| >>Germans are excellent at making cool flashy features...that
| rely on 16 moving parts that cost $700 each
|
| To be completely fair - Mercedes used to do this in their S
| Class _and_ also it would work for decades despite the
| complexity. _That 's_ German Engineering. But that quality has
| been missing across all German brands for a good while, it pops
| up every and now then in specific components that are still
| extremely well designed and reliable, but it's not standard
| across the entire vehicle.
| janc_ wrote:
| BMW always had a reputation for frequent & expensive repairs,
| even as far back as the 1970s (although I guess "typical" BMW
| drivers aren't the most careful either, so maybe that's also
| relevant...).
| torginus wrote:
| This reminded me of the video about the Tesla door handles,
| where its explained how they redesigned the retracting door
| handles of the Model S from having a bunch of switches and
| mechanical parts to just a motor + a position sensor:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bea4FS-zDzc
| torginus wrote:
| Germans are also famous for how hard they work, working a
| grueling 1350 hours per year, compared to freeloading lazy
| Greeks, who merely work 2000.
| nsoqm wrote:
| It's about productivity, not about the raw amount of hours.
| torginus wrote:
| I remember on reddit this was pointed under some article
| once, and there was a consensus about how West Europeans
| are just _more productive_.
|
| Then 2 weeks later there was an article about how much
| money do Americans make per hours worked, and everyone was
| falling over each other pointing out how flawed the
| methodology was.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Germany has a stagnant economy, on the edge of shrinking.
| It's projected to only have 0.2% growth this year.
| nightshift1 wrote:
| That's not even 26h /week. All this stat show is that there
| are probably more jobs in Germany. Need more data to draw any
| conclusions.
| torginus wrote:
| Not according to eurostat:
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
|
| The theory that Greeks work more hours because less of them
| work in total doesn't line up with the numbers.
|
| But if we pick Poles instead of Greeks, they have a similar
| level of employment to Germany while working just as many
| hours as the Greeks
| petsfed wrote:
| Nowadays, when I hear "German Engineering", I internally
| translate it to "German love of complexity and bespoke/manual
| manufacturing".
|
| The extreme depreciation of BMWs and Germany's loss to the
| Allies in WWII are both aspects of the same phenomenon; that
| fact is very funny to me.
| ariwilson wrote:
| Compare this car to the Toyota RAV4 PHEV which in some ways is
| simpler than a gas powered RAV4 (no alternator, no transmission)
| but maintains the same ease of maintainability and cheap parts
| availability as the base RAV4 (makes sense, they sold >4M of
| them).
|
| PHEVs are complicated tech so I figured I would choose one with a
| proven design (Prius -> Prius Prime -> RAV4 Prime).
| BobBagwill wrote:
| The goal is to eliminate outright vehicle sales, and move
| everyone to leases and rentals? Just like in software? Safety is
| important, too (nudge nudge wink wink).
|
| Given that speed and alcohol are the top two causes of traffic
| deaths, mandatory SAE J3016 Level 4 self-driving would prevent a
| lot of deaths. But of course, it will make the price of a "safe"
| automobile many times the annual income of 99% of North American
| and EU drivers.
|
| Even a FAANG HENRY who would buy a BMW i7 M70 won't be able to
| afford a "safe" automobile in a "safe" country.
|
| A Waymoid is your future, first-worldians!
| foxyv wrote:
| I wouldn't mind if cars were so expensive only the top 2-5% of
| earners could afford them, but we need viable alternatives to
| driving. We have dismantled our transportation infrastructure
| at the pleasure of car companies. Now you have drivers that
| cannot afford their cars but must drive anyways. You also have
| people who are unfit to drive that are forced to do so.
|
| Self-driving is a bandaid for a problem that is made by cars.
| It doesn't address the hundreds of other issues caused by them.
| Also it adds to the incremental squeezing of the middle class
| out of existence.
| apparent wrote:
| I was getting the 12v battery in my car replaced the other day,
| and my mechanic told me I'm lucky not to have a BMW, which
| apparently uses lithium ion batteries that cost $1,200 to
| replace. I assume they last much longer than lead acid batteries,
| but I do wonder what the value is to the driver. Is this just a
| way to juice the maintenance bills, to keep dealers happy?
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| Buying non Tesla EVs doesn't make any practical sense.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Why?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| You'll most likely be overpaying for overall package, not get
| the advanced software and will be forced to pay insane yearly
| service fee.
|
| Then there's whole long term thing - very little spare parts
| availability cuz most EVs are niche models, some already
| ceased to exist, service tools not available or insanely
| overpriced.
|
| Some like Kia/Hyundai are notoriously unreliable to begin
| with.
| Beijinger wrote:
| BYD?
|
| Hyundai unreliable?
| Fwirt wrote:
| I keep mulling over decisions like this, and I think the
| fundamental clash between the hacker ethos of repairability and
| the corporate ethos of products with well-defined failure modes
| comes down to a clash of innate human values with capitalism.
|
| Capitalism fundamentally does not view human life as sacred. Or
| rather, it puts a finite value on human life. The bond between a
| mother and son is priceless, there is (in the case of a loving
| relationship) no price that either would put on the life of the
| other. That is to say, there is no amount of money that either
| would accept in exchange for the death of the other. As actuaries
| know, this is not true from a capitalist viewpoint. The value of
| a human life is frequently calculated by various means to be
| somewhere around 3.5 million dollars at birth. Which is to say,
| if a policy change costs an organization (private or public) over
| 3.5 million dollars to save one human life, it does not make
| financial sense. So when you look at a decision by an automaker
| to include a "safety" feature, you have to ask "did the amount of
| money that this costs the company work out in terms of human
| lives". In this case, BMW likely concluded that the financial
| damages of settling an insurance claim for a battery fire, and
| damage to their brand from the massive negative publicity of
| battery fires (see Tesla) would be more than the cost of
| implementing this "feature". This is also true from the legally
| mandated standpoint of crash safety features, which result in
| cars being much easier to total because of crumple zones. The
| cost of a $100k vehicle is much less than the cost of a $3.5
| million human life. On the other hand, the carbon and pollution
| cost of replacing many $100k vehicles is borne by the public. An
| interesting view of this topic is summarized in the Wikipedia
| article "Value of Life" under the heading "Uses", which
| specifically covers the cost of implementing emissions regulation
| vs. the cost of the human lives that reduced emissions would
| save. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Uses
|
| As has been pointed out many times, vehicles these days are cost
| engineered to last as long as the average buyer of a new vehicle
| will hold onto the car. Since BMW targets a luxury market, that
| lifetime is likely on the order of 4-5 years. A Toyota is
| probably closer to 10 years. Automakers do not (as far as I know)
| make a meaningful amount of money on the maintenance of used
| cars; OEM parts do not necessarily come directly from the
| automaker, but rather a company that contracts with them or a
| subsidiary whose financials are not counted as part of the
| manufacturer's bottom line. Therefore, in our modern era of late-
| stage capitalism, companies have no incentive to make cars that
| last longer, and complaints from customers who wish that their
| end-of-life cars were easier to repair will fall on deaf ears.
| Those of us who wish our cars were less "safe" in order to
| contribute less to the criminal waste of disposal of otherwise
| sound vehicles and carbon cost of making a new vehicle would do
| well to consider the financial calculations that went into those
| decisions. Is making batteries that are easy to fix but kill
| someone when improperly repaired in 1/1000 crashes more ethical
| than installing systems to prevent batteries from ever being
| misconfigured? Are there more BMW crashes than other brands due
| to the target demographic? Is the number of batteries that will
| be repaired improperly significant enough to cause a large number
| of battery fires? I don't know.
|
| This is by no means an excuse of these practices, but merely an
| attempt to understand them. I would love to hear where my
| reasoning is flawed so I can better understand this. It certainly
| seems to me that the risk of a shade tree mechanic soldering a
| piece of wire into a BMW battery computer is astronomically low,
| but I have seen repairpeople of all shades do really stupid
| things to save money so probably not zero.
| The_President wrote:
| BMW PHEV? That's a funny way to spell the word "lease."
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