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BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

evclinic.eu

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Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#441

Post by Beijinger »

fsh wrote: post #233
mvkel wrote: post #130

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.

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.

You realize that most Ferraris don't decrease, but increase in value over time?

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#442

Post by Beijinger »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #2

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.

" 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...

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#443

Post by jinzo »

Glawen wrote: post #425
jinzo wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#444

Post by amelius »

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.

I wouldn't see why not. A battery is internally a series-connection of lower voltage batteries.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#445

Post by 0manrho »

Panzer04 wrote: post #34
JSR_FDED wrote: post #2

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.

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.…

> 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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#446

Post by [deleted] »

SoftTalker wrote: post #402
justin66 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

[deleted]

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#447

Post by hinkley »

notjonheyman wrote: post #427
BobaFloutist wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Engineers hate mechanics. How can they feel your wrath unless you specifically design a giant “fuck you” into every vehicle shipped?

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#448

Post by hinkley »

justin66 wrote: post #393
jlarocco wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#449

Post by hinkley »

Analemma_ wrote: post #379
jlarocco wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#450

Post by hinkley »

harrall wrote: post #377
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…

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…

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.

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