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BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

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Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#411

Post by jandrese »

Kirby64 wrote: post #398
jandrese wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#412

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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…

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#413

Post by jacquesm »

jandrese wrote: post #376
jacquesm wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 ev…

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).

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#414

Post by harrall »

Joker_vD wrote: post #406
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…

> 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 o…

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#416

Post by eddieroger »

amluto wrote: post #135
eddieroger wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#417

Post by Kirby64 »

jandrese wrote: post #411
Kirby64 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#418

Post by bityard »

Gravityloss wrote: post #378
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…

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 suspen…

> 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..."

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#419

Post by nightshift1 »

torginus wrote: post #359
Workaccount2 wrote: post #349

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…

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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#420

Post by solace_silence »

bityard wrote: post #418
Gravityloss wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suspen…

> 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 nu…

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.
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