BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive • Hacker News Board

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#301

Post by amelius » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 1:25 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #298

amelius wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what is the max voltage of these batteries?

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…

Yikes, that sounds dangerous.

I'd personally prefer e.g. 48V even if that meant some more losses and/or thicker cables.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#302

Post by monegator » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 1:25 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #240

taneq wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a fuse. It’s a fuse plus guarantee plus liability.

> 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.

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

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#303

Post by potato3732842 » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 1:27 PM UTC

jabl wrote: post #232

close04 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rep…

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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#304

Post by __turbobrew__ » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 1:29 PM UTC

CraigJPerry wrote: post #124

€4000 euros plus tax to replace the module that contains the fuse. Insane. The ford transit custom PHEV costs £4500 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 £20) and can be done in a day on the driveway. I…

> 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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#305

Post by rs186 » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 1:31 PM UTC

danw1979 wrote: post #157

consp wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This 2022 BMW X1 my wife drives is the last BMW we will ever own. £395 for an oil change. £180 for brake fluid. £500 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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#306

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 1:33 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #209

bluescrn wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people drive older cars worth less than £4000. 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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#307

Post by iknowstuff » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 1:34 PM UTC

kristjank wrote: post #243

>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 auto…

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

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#308

Post by igogq425 » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 1:34 PM UTC

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#309

Post by FpUser » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 1:37 PM UTC

>"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

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#310

Post by potato3732842 » Fri, Dec 05, 2025, 1:38 PM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #190

devmor wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cons…

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.

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.