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BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

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Re: BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

#91

Post by analog31 »

wolrah wrote: post #6
h2odragon wrote: post #2

Makes me want to go out and hug my truck, whose gear selector consists of metal sticks and pins. I'd be leery of using this device, with all that complexity, as an input for video games. The latency makes me ugh. Certainly don't want that much "systems" stuff between me and the transmission of a car I'm piloting.

> Makes me want to go out and hug my truck, whose gear selector consists of metal sticks and pins. If it's a manual transmission or an ancient automatic, sure, but manual transmission trucks basically haven't existed for a decade or so and every automatic since the mid 90s has an electronic gear selector of some variety. Somehow the world keeps working just fine. The biggest problem that's come up with them has been…

Amusingly, I discovered that my Toyota Sienna had electronic transmission control when I was downshifting on a mountain descent, and absent-mindedly threw it into reverse. I'm still alive.

Re: BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

#92

Post by jjtheblunt »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #85
jjtheblunt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not what you were thinking, I guess, but I push-started my manual Saab and Honda many times, could my manual Mercedes but never needed to, which you can't do with an automatic.

You can if you get them moving fast enough, but it's terrible for the gearbox.

that would require some fast running while holding the door and steering wheel!

Re: BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

#93

Post by majormajor »

sandworm101 wrote: post #84
rconti wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Bad Things can happen: https://money.cnn.com/2016/06/20/autos/jeep-recall-anton-yel... I absolutely hate stateless switches on automotive stuff. Why can't I tell that my turn signal is on by 'feel'? Why do I have to rely on a (too quiet) clicking, or a (too hidden) indicator light? I have an E70 X5 with the "new style" transmission selector, as well as a Tesla 3 that replicates it on the right side of the column…

>> Why can't I tell that my turn signal is on by 'feel'? I once had a ford rental car with turn signals that made me actively avoid using them. They felt OK, but the clicking of the relay was fake, a recorded sound. All seemed good until you cancelled the indicator. The computer sometimes kept playing the fake clicking sound. It kept clicking for a full click cycle every time you cancelled the indicator mid-click. It…

In the pre-digital days I had a 92 BMW that seemed to have the reverse "problem" - pushing "up" or "down" on the cruise control settings wouldn't move you up or down a whole mile per hour, but seemed to operate in KMH - it would move something like 0.6 or 0.7 miles. (There was no direct digital readout, but it had a "average speed" trip computer that I remember resetting after some changes after noticing it seemed to move less than 1mph on the speedometer.)

Re: BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

#94

Post by timc3 »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #70
themitigating wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latency for doing what? Shifting from reverse to drive? The ZF transmissions in BMWs are very fast shifting even though they are torque converters and there are paddle shifters on the wheel.

ZF 4HP22 in my older (4.0 litre) Range Rover, 4HP24 in my newer one with the 4.6 engine. Actually they're both the same age to within weeks, I just got the 4.6 eight years after the 4.0, but anyway - it takes about a quarter of a second to change up or down if you manually prod the gearstick coming up to some bends. It's definitely faster than the R380 manual gearboxes fitted to Discos, Defenders and manual P38s, whi…

The BMW ZF is much faster. They are even using it in their M cars.

Re: BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

#95

Post by speed_spread »

userbinator wrote: post #89
rconti wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Bad Things can happen: https://money.cnn.com/2016/06/20/autos/jeep-recall-anton-yel... I absolutely hate stateless switches on automotive stuff. Why can't I tell that my turn signal is on by 'feel'? Why do I have to rely on a (too quiet) clicking, or a (too hidden) indicator light? I have an E70 X5 with the "new style" transmission selector, as well as a Tesla 3 that replicates it on the right side of the column…

The E90 and newer BMWs seem to have indicator clicks that are almost inaudible That's very odd, given how much emphasis they have (or used to?) about road-feel and other forms of feedback while driving, and BMW's slogan is "the ultimate driving machine".

BMW has lost much of its driving mojo in the last decade. The quest for more customers has eroded a lot of the car's character.

Re: BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

#96

Post by jillesvangurp »

waiseristy wrote: post #59
hatware wrote: post #8

Neat how modern car systems turned into microservices.

It is interesting how it evolved that way. As individual components were computerized (ABS, TCS, TCM's, ECM's, etc.), there was no real point at which it made sense to centralized things. Now, with the silicon shortages, and the ever increasing complexity of vehicle networks, I think things are going to hit a crossover point. Instead of a vehicle full of "microservices", we will probably see more vehicles with some c…

Electrical cars don't need gears and a lot of the other moving parts you find in an ICE car like this. They still need lots of silicon of course.

The Tesla (and several other EV manufacturers) approach to car software is highly centralized. Unlike traditional car manufacturers, there are no external component providers that get to run their own proprietary firmware on their own dedicated chips. Upgrading and testing/integrating all these proprietary firmware blobs is a nightmare and is mostly not a thing with legacy car manufacturers. Tesla and other modern EV manufacturers on the other hand provide over the air updates for essentially all software in the vehicle. Reason: all of that is developed in house and shares a lot of the hardware infrastructure.

One big reason car manufacturers struggle so much with chip shortages is that a lot of the shortages are for decades old chip designs still used by various suppliers for things like brakes, the automatic windows, the fuel injection system, etc. Chip manufacturers are reluctant to invest in new production capacity for obsolete chip designs.

The reason Tesla managed to break some delivery records in the middle of these shortages is that they use more modern chip designs and were able to actually switch to a different chip provider. They don't use a lot of different chips for most of these things. More centralized and integrated is the modern design for cars.

Legacy ICE vehicle design is essentially stuck at where they were ten years ago. Most manufacturers are in the process of ramping down R&D around this topic. They'll milk their production lines for a while but attention has already shifted to EVs for most of them. New models (if any) are essentially the same components they've been shipping for a while with minor changes.

Re: BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

#97

Post by harryha11er »

German here: Startled by your use of the word "Gangwahlschalter" (I had never heard the word before) I did a quick google search and apparently there is a German Dictionary company that actually tracks use of words and its synonyms. A query to their database confirmed my intuition that "Schalthebel" would be the word people would use. (src: https://www.dwds.de/r/plot/?view=1&corpus=zeitungenxl&norm=d...)

Re: BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

#98

Post by sgt »

simondotau wrote: post #90
quarantaseih wrote: post #61

Im currently renting a BMW with this gear selector. In fairness, I throughly hate the car (an X1). Terrible lag, awful throttle response, terrible steering, unpredictable brakes, etc. But the two candidates for worst feature of the car are 1. The gear selector 2. The indicator lights Every time I have to engage one of the two I let out a little curse. I driven stick shifts, autos, rear wheel drive cars, trucks, front…

Pretty much everything you’ve said is the exact opposite of my experience (BMW 1-series F20 125i). Great throttle response, minimal turbo lag, precise steering, and highly controllable confidence inspiring brakes. I can see why someone might not like the shifter and indicator stalk, but they simply haven’t been an issue for me. In fact there’s aspects of them which I prefer.

Maybe throttle response/automatic transmission/turbo lag isn't completely predictable across the same models? That would be disturbing.

I know that for example turbodiesels (even newish ones) start off pretty snappy but then turbo lag and other lags creep in.

Re: BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

#99

Post by waiseristy »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #96
waiseristy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting how it evolved that way. As individual components were computerized (ABS, TCS, TCM's, ECM's, etc.), there was no real point at which it made sense to centralized things. Now, with the silicon shortages, and the ever increasing complexity of vehicle networks, I think things are going to hit a crossover point. Instead of a vehicle full of "microservices", we will probably see more vehicles with some c…

Electrical cars don't need gears and a lot of the other moving parts you find in an ICE car like this. They still need lots of silicon of course. The Tesla (and several other EV manufacturers) approach to car software is highly centralized. Unlike traditional car manufacturers, there are no external component providers that get to run their own proprietary firmware on their own dedicated chips. Upgrading and testing/…

Good summary! I think the core of what you talk about is a fundamental difference between a 21st and 20th century OEM. 20th century OEMs see software as a not only a hassle, but something that is isolated in discrete components and thus able to be “vendorized”. 21st century OEMs understand that the entire car is a software system, and they should be incredibly closely involved with every aspect of it.

There is room still for company’s that only can transition halfway though. It’s not like vendors cant make their discrete components OTA capable. Vendors will also be just as capable of pivoting to new silicon in the case of supply disruptions. Ford, Daimler, and the other usual suspects, are going to be more involved with their software, but they will still have vendors.

Tesla can get away with a lot of this creative homebrew craziness because they have such an insane software / hardware budget. I honestly don’t know what that company’s software practices would look like if they didn’t have such amazing access to cash

Re: BMW F Series Gear Selector, Part Two: Breakthrough

#100

Post by sgt »

quarantaseih wrote: post #61

Im currently renting a BMW with this gear selector. In fairness, I throughly hate the car (an X1). Terrible lag, awful throttle response, terrible steering, unpredictable brakes, etc. But the two candidates for worst feature of the car are 1. The gear selector 2. The indicator lights Every time I have to engage one of the two I let out a little curse. I driven stick shifts, autos, rear wheel drive cars, trucks, front…

Does the car say at which factory it was built?
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