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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

#451

Post by ErroneousBosh »

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…

Galvanised bodyshells and panels has been a thing since the 80s, or indeed the 70s for Volvo and Saab.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#452

Post by [deleted] »

0_____0 wrote: post #320
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_...

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.

[deleted]

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#453

Post by gmueckl »

jinzo wrote: post #272
close04 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 a…

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#454

Post by LgWoodenBadger »

hinkley wrote: post #450
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…

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 do…

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#455

Post by peppersghost93 »

fnord77 wrote: post #331
lifty wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait another year. CATL is destroying the battery market with their new LFP and sodium batteries. Prices are collapsing.

wasn't CATL blacklisted by the US govt?

Anything good for the EV market will be blacklisted by the US govt

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#456

Post by LorenPechtel »

jinzo wrote: post #269
kristjank wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#457

Post by dghlsakjg »

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.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#458

Post by varispeed »

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 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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#459

Post by drnick1 »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #259
drnick1 wrote: post #113

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.

Tesla is leading in car privacy, look at mozilla's report.

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.

Re: BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

#460

Post by [deleted] »

bradyd wrote: post #433
giamma wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

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