Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

evclinic.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 548 posts

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#391

Post by torginus »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #104
CyberDildonics wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVA3dkuiNE8

Here's 2 Korean mechanics reviewing a BYD. They seem pretty impressed.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#392

Post by apparent »

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?

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#393

Post by justin66 »

jlarocco wrote: post #355
prepend wrote: post #336

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 g…

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 reliab…

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...

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#394

Post by devmor »

jabl wrote: post #234
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…

> 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 spa…

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?

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#395

Post by apparent »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #387
harrall wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 go…

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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#396

Post by Kirby64 »

amelius wrote: post #347
Kirby64 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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)?

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#397

Post by ryandrake »

jlarocco wrote: post #355
prepend wrote: post #336

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 g…

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 reliab…

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#398

Post by Kirby64 »

jandrese wrote: post #362
amelius wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#399

Post by buserror »

PeterStuer wrote: post #388
prepend wrote: post #336

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 g…

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 an…

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#400

Post by jacquesm »

fnord77 wrote: post #328
jacquesm wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_...

Thanks for curing me of my desire to get one of these.

You're welcome.
Post reply on HN