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BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive
- JSR_FDED 10mo agoThis 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.
- jkterhune 10mo agoPHEV in the title is plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Different from a pure EV.
- mannykannot 10mo agoDoes that make a difference in this regard? If so, how, and is it an unavoidable penalty for PHEVs? I can see PHEVs having a complexity penalty from having an IC engine over and above the EV components, but that does not seem to be the source of the problems here.
- dghlsakjg 10mo agoI would say so for this particular failure. The issue in this case has everything to do with the electronics design and close to nothing to do with propulsion. The issue described is happening because German car makers love to put generic parts inside proprietary modules that cannot be repaired, and require extensive OEM tooling to replace. This kind of dumb shit happens on ICE cars and EVs that follow this design paradigm. As described int the article the actual failed piece is ~$50 if you can replace just that pyrofuse. BMW doesn’t allow tha though. So you have to replace the entire module
- adgjlsfhk1 10mo agoWell designed PHEVs can actually be simpler than pure ICs (at least on the hardware side. To build a combustion only car well, you need to balance efficiency, power, and responsiveness. This means you need all sorts of complicated tech, like correctly sized turbos, variable valve lift, variable valve duration, etc. In a PHEV, otoh, you have an electric engine (which can also steal power from the driveshaft), which means you don't need to worry about responsiveness of the combustion engine. You can fill half a second of turbo lag with the motor, and optimize for narrower RPM ranges since you can charge/discharge the battery to keep the engine running in its happy place. You also no longer need fancy and complicated brakes because you can do 99% of your braking with regen. All of this does come with more complex software, but the hardware can end up with significant simplification.
- GMoromisato 10mo agoThis is true. EVs are much simpler than ICE, and PHEV basically have all the complexity of EV+ICE.
- NewJazz 10mo agoPlus more. My Volt had a component fail that was responsible for switching the cabin heater between the battery and the motor, so if I placed the vehicle in pure EV mode then I couldn't heat the cabin, oops!
- jgilias 10mo agoPHEV means a lot of things. Toyota PHEVs with e-CVT are simpler than a normal ICE. VW PHEVs where there’s an electric motor tucked into their DSG gearbox - not so much.
- spockz 10mo agoAnd then the kicker. VW doesn’t allow the dsg with electric motor to be repaired by dealers. If something is wrong it needs to be replaced completely. At the cost of €15k (NL, 2021). The only serviceable thing is the clutch and the mechatronic. IMHO this is something that should be regulated away as consumer unfriendly and environment unfriendly. (Not to say hostile.) In the end I got a DSG specialist fix the problem in two hours by replacing two simple components physically. The car then spend an hour retraining the dsg.
- rswail 10mo agoPHEVs mean that half the time your using your battery to drag around an ICE, the other half the ICE is dragging around a battery. A very temporary phenomenon in the evolution from ICE to EV.
- torginus 10mo agoYour phrasing implies this causes extra weight gain - just to illustrate, the new Prius is about 1.4t (while having decent PHEV range), while the ID4 (a similar sized EV) is 2t.
- fyrn_ 10mo agoMany modern ford cars have 6 CAN buses. ICE cars are not simpler. The tech _has_ been beaten with the hammer of incremental improvement for a long time, but ICE cars are not less computer controlled. If anything ice engines require many more "computers" and sensors to be efficient
- SkyPuncher 10mo agoMy Hybrid F-150 is so freaking complex. They basically seem to have swapped many components over to electrical drive (like the F-150 Lightning), but they still have to slap all of the ICE components in there as well.
- fHr 10mo agoAbsolutely, also I'm not stupid rich and most are not but I witness how much they spend more on services and repair that I can very very easily do on my "stupid" gasoline car myself. I buy my used cars for 5k and a used ev is like 20k-25k where I live so I on purchase save the first 20k. The gas cost I save with lower insurance and service/repair costs easily. So it's juat a waste of money in my opinion and a bit of an itelligence test.
- Panzer04 10mo agoEVs 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. A huge, huge range of players making every possible variation under the sun, with simple designs and extremely low costs. This is what the car space is missing out on, because of regulations etc owing to their larger size and much higher danger levels that entails. I suspect many places have regulations that largely exclude smaller, simpler cars from being viable as well.
- kgwgk 10mo ago> electronic propulsion is pretty simple So simple that it’s usually called electric propulsion.
- pandaman 10mo agoEV is indeed easy. Safe and reliable EV is hard. Vehicle environment is hostile to electric components, where they are exposed to vibration, dirt, and moisture. Even if you get "safe" chemistry in the battery cells of an Alibaba e-bike, it only means the cells themselves are less likely to explode in a chemical fire. It still has enough current to melt metall and set off a regular fire. And in the best case it will just stop working and good luck repairing some random components, which might have been from a short production run and there are no spares in the existence.
- stinkbeetle 10mo ago> EVs are not complicated. > Modern carmakers might make them complicated OP did not say they would not travel on electric trains or unicycles or elevators or electric forklifts or electric container ships. They said they don't want an EV. The things that modern carmakers make complicated.
- Rohansi 10mo ago> They said they don't want an EV. The things that modern carmakers make complicated. It's probably more of a sign of what's coming in the future. There is no need to make EVs difficult/expensive to repair. The change in technology is just an excuse to lock everything down and rake in more money for repairs/new vehicles. They could do the same for ICE vehicles too.
- 8note 10mo agoEV and "driving a computer" are orthogonal chances are that you are driving an ICE computer, with all the problems driving a computer comes with. the EV itself is simpler than ICE is. fewer moving parts, and short supply chains once you actually have the thing. how much complexity goes into making and supplying your gas?
- nomel 10mo agoYeah, modern ICE is a massively complex control system problem, requiring so much more compute than EV, just to meet regulations. Here's a funny example: the fuel vapor recovery system. It stores fuel vapors from the gas tank, that otherwise would have leaked into the air, in a canister of activated carbon. When under appropriate driving/environmental conditions, it opens valves and feeds the vapor into the intake stream, so it's burned. [1] https://www.motor.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Evap_0319-1.png https://www.motor.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Evap_0319-1... Article: https://www.motor.com/magazine-summary/vapor-tales-understanding-evap-fault-codes-march-2019/ https://www.motor.com/magazine-summary/vapor-tales-understan...
- p0w3n3d 10mo agoHowever when you advertise your car as eco friendly, you should be forbidden to create a non-repairable apple phone on wheels
- vjvjvjvjghv 10mo agoIn principle and EV car should be much simpler than an ICE car. It seems they are adding a lot of extra stuff that's not really necessary.
- teo_zero 10mo agoI think you are referring to BEV cars. The definition of EV includes hybrid and plug-hybrid (which the fine article is about, by the way).
- aetherspawn 10mo agoTeslas are dead simple, to the point where people are putting Tesla anything in virtually anything you can think of - classic cars, random sedans, you name it. There’s also that guy on YouTube who updated the electricals in his original Model S with electricals from a 10 years later Model 3 Highland just by buying spare parts, and it was pretty doable with fairly basic and limited tools/public information. So the complexity in this article is just a BMW/PHEV thing, not an EV thing.
- rconti 10mo agoAs they point out, the Tesla pyro fuse (at least on a Model S) is a cheap part. However, in some model years it's on top of the pack, which means you have to drop the pack to get to it. And, from memory, it's a 10 year lifespan part. However, on other Model S cars, it's easily accessible from the bottom. I wonder how we can make automakers make more repairable cars. Obviously, right-to-repair and allowing access to documentation and tools for independent shops is a a necessary but not sufficient step. I shudder to think at some of the other possibilities -- heavy-handed attempts to regulate how much specific repairs can cost. Maybe mandating the sale of manufacturer-provided extended warranties for no more than x% the cost of the vehicle purchase price would be an incentive to keep repair cost in check?
- radium3d 10mo agoThe majority of their cars (Y/3 models) have the penthouse (top) of battery pack super easily accessible from under the back seat, no need to drop a pack. Not to mention Tesla has the best service mode system in their computer of any brand of all time. They also have the best free to owners assembly/disassembly manuals in the service portal https://service.tesla.com/ https://service.tesla.com/. They have taken self-service literally to the next level compared to anything I've ever driven ICE, Hybrid or EV and I've owned all of them.
- mrexroad 10mo ago+1 for the Tesla service manuals. My wife’s was making a clunk from front suspension. Before my assistant (my kid) had finished taking off the wheel, I found the up-to-date official torque specs on service site. Usually it takes me a while to find torque values and cross check with another source. It was beyond refreshing to see Tesla buck the trend of selling service-manuals-as-a-service. Service documentation / manufacturer software required for cars I currently wrench: - Early 20’s: Bookmarked URL to the official online documentation (Tesla). With that said, I haven’t had need beyond checking mechanical connections, flushing brakes, and replacing filters. - Early 10’s: VM containing a mid-00’s version of windows that runs a cracked copy of the long defunct manufacturer software service manual. Also runs software to interface with car, but simply painful to use. Beginning of era where tasks like replacing the 12v battery require manufacturer software to interface (though simple things still had undocumented secret Contra-like button sequences to do so). - Early 10’s car: folders of screenshots and pdf exports collected over a decade for various procedures I needed to do. OBD-2 dongle + generic app handled basic things. Not much different than decade prior vehicle. - Early 00’s: PDF of a seemingly printed-and-scanned copy of a digital version of the service manual. Off by a model year, surprising number of inconsistencies given its German. Computer and K+DCAN connection required for re-coding new parts, flashing, etc. Some fancier OBD-2 scanners could do majority of service related functions (cycle abs, reset airbag light, etc). - Late 80’s: PDF scans of the dozen+ service books (still trying to luck into a physical copy of the set without paying an absurd sum). Most mechanically complex vehicle I own. No computer necessary, but soldering required.
- dangus 10mo agoThe article points out that it’s specificity BMW making this hard and expensive. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. If you own a BMW you’ll be dropping $5k on a repair someday. It’s a matter of when not if. That’s why most people lease them and move on to the next one.
- inferiorhuman 10mo agoThis seems like more of a BMW issue than EV. On my E46 and E39 there's a pyrotechnic fuse on the negative battery terminal. It's somewhere around $400 in parts to replace. It's only gotten more expensive and more complex with their newer ICE cars. Back in the 80s and 90s Ford's solution was a reusable inertia switch.
- nutjob2 10mo agoYou're blaming the wrong thing. EVs are ultimately much, much simpler than ICE cars, it's just that certain manufacturers are taking this opportunity to turn their cars into elaborate scams. Everything is a computer these days, but that doesn't mean that they have to be needlessly complicated. I think EVs are great, but I won't be buying one until they start selling cheap, simple ones.
- floxy 10mo agoWhat are the biggest overcomplicating issues with something like the Nissan Leaf? Especially on something like a 2018-2025 S trim?
- CalRobert 10mo agoI am, perhaps naively, hoping the Slate pickup can be better about this.
- teiferer 10mo agoNone of the issues in the article are specific to electric cars. This isn't even one, it's a plug-in hybrid. A modern ICE car will have the same issues of having too much electronics inside.
- jandrese 10mo agoOne would expect a plug in hybrid to be the most complex of all the vehicle types. It has all of the complexity of an EV combined with all of the complexity of a gas burner.
- bob1029 10mo agoThe complexity here is partially a consequence of the energy storage mechanism and may be essential. It is not possible for an entire tank of gasoline to spontaneously detonate in the same way that an EV battery can. If a mechanic fucks up a procedure and drills a hole through fuel tank, it's not fantastic but you can usually detect and recover from this before it gets to be catastrophic. If you accidentally puncture an EV battery or drop something across the terminals it can instantly kill everyone working on the car. These are not the same kind of risk profile. I would not want work on anything with a high voltage system. Especially if it had been involved in an accident or was poorly maintained. These fuses and interlocks can only help up to a certain point. Energy is energy and it's in there somewhere. You can have 40kW for an entire hour or 100MW for 2 seconds. Gasoline cars usually throw a rod or something before getting much beyond 2x their rated power output.
- a2128 10mo agoEVs are not intrinsically complicated as some sibling commenters say, but the issue is that EVs are new and mostly made after the point when automakers started building cars as computers. And it's also a good excuse to put even more computers inside because an EV has to look modern with big screens and cool chimes right? I think this genuinely hampers EV adoption and governments should take some sort of action if they want to transition the market to EVs. Not that the average consumer chooses cars based on how many computers are inside it, but this builds a general impression of fragility and creates such negative stories. We need simple, reliable, serviceable EVs, but the incumbents are not going to build it on their own. (Government excessive regulations for safety, backup cameras, speed limiters, etc arguably created this problem in the first place)
- Tade0 10mo agoIn terms of (unnecessary) complexity of modern ICE cars the Car Wizard has a few words that might interest you: Title of the clip: Why does it cost over $4K to replace a simple $50 gasket? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJMWvyDP3j8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJMWvyDP3j8 It's not an EV issue. It's a modern car issue.
- brikym 10mo agoAre ICE cars really any better with BMW? The used values indicate they are very expensive to maintain.
- boudin 10mo agoThe problem of repairability and independent garages to have access to the tools, software and training to repair cars is not specific to electric cars. The level of electronic and automation is related to safety norms which applies to any car.
- dyauspitr 10mo agoPHEVs are particularly complicated because they have to support two drive trains. Just EV’s are very simple outside of the battery management. It’s power from the battery going to a motor.
- Beijinger 10mo ago" power imbalance that comes from this amount of complexity." Look what happened in Russia: https://www.autoblog.com/news/all-of-russias-porsches-were-bricked-by-a-mysterious-satellite-outage https://www.autoblog.com/news/all-of-russias-porsches-were-b...
- SilverElfin 10mo agoIs this an issue with all BMW PHEVs or just one model from one year?
- bri3d 10mo agoManufacturer locked crash resets for BMS are a common theme amongst EVs, especially European ones. Exclusive to neither this model year nor BMW, although some other makes have less arcane procedures than the ISTA one.
- lisbbb 10mo agoThere are tons of used BMWs on the used market here in the states. They don't hold their value because everyone knows that some stupid thing is wrong with them that either can't be fixed or is so ludicrously costly to fix that it would be more than the whole entire car is worth. BMW is a shit company, doesn't matter if it is ICE or EV or whatever it is, they're intentionally made to be impossible to repair cheaply. It would be so easy to build "open" hardware and have onboard diagnostics built into the cars, but no.
- linkage 10mo agoThe Ultimate Leasing Machine, as it were
- samarthr1 10mo agoThis makes me feel that peak car was 2010 ish, when, when engines were powerful, cheap, and not too polluting, but also not overly complex. Spare parts were small, cheap, and easily accessible too (atleast for my toyota) I dread being forced to upgrade, not out of disdain for the environment, but the fact that I will spend more money, on a less reliable, less "mine" car, and more something big daddy government wants.
- mannykannot 10mo agoI have never owned or wanted a pickup, but now I'm wondering about getting a basic one (if that's still an option.) It is annoying and depressing.
- eddieroger 10mo agoI'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 that touts an 8 foot bed (which is great) in the chassis footprint of a Mini Cooper. I don't think I saw pricing, but I would snatch one of those up.
- ethbr1 10mo agoSlate?
- pickledish 10mo agoThey're talking about this I'm pretty sure! https://www.telotrucks.com/ https://www.telotrucks.com/
- eddieroger 10mo agoYes, those. Thank you!
- jfoster 10mo agoI think it continues to be under-appreciated how much of a lead Tesla still has in EVs. Even BMW can't make something that is practical. First people said "competition is coming" for about a decade. Now the competition has finally half arrived, but it's still so far behind. Perhaps the closest is BYD, but most BYD drivers would prefer to be driving a Tesla.
- alephnerd 10mo agoI wouldn't understate BYD, but Tesla did play a massive role in helping build China's domestic EV ecosystem because Tesla also worked on building a supplier ecosystem in China, which also helped incubate much of the Chinese ecosystem. That said, BYD is outcompeting most other Chinese players as well, and it can be argued that this is due to the fact that BYD is also a private sector player unlike most of it's domestic competitors. The only competitor in China that can compete against BYD is SAIC - an SOE owned by Shanghai's government. That said, the EV glut has become a significant headache from a local government fiscal perspective - the majority of Chinese automotive companies are owned by state and local governments - a large number of whom ended up spending eye bleeding amounts of yuan on EVs despite no competitive advantage, and it's these state and local governments that are now increasingly holding the bag - which Chinese market regulators have increasingly raised red flags about [0] (and I myself foreshadowed on HN a couple times [1][2]). [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/terminal/T3V4AWMB2SJX https://www.bloomberg.com/news/terminal/T3V4AWMB2SJX [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41275593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41275593 [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41275541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41275541
- dmix 10mo agoChina is also copying SpaceX's Starship https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/chinas-long-term-lunar-plans-now-depend-on-developing-its-own-starship/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/chinas-long-term-lunar... Which is kind of exciting if you don't care about IP law. Likewise their CR series/Fuxing high speed trains seem to be quite nice. They were spawned off their experience working on Euro/Japanese trains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuxing_(train) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuxing_(train)
- iForgtbutPretty 10mo ago[flagged]
- marssaxman 10mo ago> BMW has over-engineered the They have over-engineered the everything, because that is what BMW does. That is what they have been about for the last thirty years.
- fnord77 10mo agoI have a BMW G20 3-series. So far I've counted 31 electric motors in the car for various things. I keep discovering more.
- dmix 10mo agoIt's also how they got a lot of things very early in the game like radars. They had adaptive cruise control in 1999 (similar to Mercedes).
- julieturner99 10mo agoYet somehow adaptive cruise is a rarity on the BMWs out there, often requiring an option package that few dealers spec. (Though I think this may be finally starting to change with the 2025 model year).
- gpderetta 10mo agoAre they switching to monthly subscriptions?
- Scoundreller 10mo agoSadly, they’re close to 100% caught up to automatic transmissions in North America.
- Archelaos 10mo agoThe article misses to explain why this is an EU problem, not just a BMW problem. Is the problem described caused by a specific EU regulation (which?) or is mentioning the EU just click bait? (Honest question.)
- consp 10mo agoIt is a BMW problem and the rest is clickbait. If you own a BMW you know all this as it has been the case for over decades. It's also not a eu thing as all manufacturers are locking things up, Ford and other US brands are trying as much as all other manufacturers. They just haven't reached BMW levels yet.
- rapsey 10mo agoLol no way do BMW owners commonly know this. Most buy the car because it says BMW on it and they think that means quality.
- consp 10mo agoI was more or less pointing to the expensive repairs needed in BMW as in you know it's locked down and you need expensive OEM stuff. Maybe that is covered under "quality is expensive" for normal people but when you buy a BMW you know the replacement parts bill is costing you an arm and a leg.
- rapsey 10mo agoYeah but they will wrongly justify for themselves that because BMW is quality, the repairs will not be so frequent.
- somerandomqaguy 10mo agoUN Regulation No. 155, and 156, and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) are requiring car manufacturers to implement cryptographic validation that allows only authorized software from the manufacturer to be run.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- hnburnsy 10mo agoIf you love cars or Top Gear, watch Mat Armstrong on YouTube. Mat restores crash damaged cars. The BS he has to go through because car manufacturers either won't sell him parts, won't sell him repair manuals, and unnecessarily cryptographically lock parts to the VIN is sometime heartbreaking. He has run across this pyro fuse issue many times. Sometimes he has even has to buy two cars just to repair one because of this nonsense. Like the article points out it just leads to more waste and it has to contribute to higher insurance rates for us all.
- ishtanbul 10mo agoBumping this. Mat went through the exact same crazy process with the Revuelto. Audi/Lamborghini overengineers the heck out of these cars its really absurd. https://youtu.be/m37tN54FdQE?si=zXCnQTCOou13l10O https://youtu.be/m37tN54FdQE?si=zXCnQTCOou13l10O
- Rastonbury 10mo agoTo be fair it's a lambo, not the pinnacle of maintainability or self repairable
- qingcharles 10mo ago100%. I watch him literally just to see how much bullshit he has to go through to get modern cars running again against the wishes of the manufacturers. I get it, though. Cars are becoming like iPhones where the manufacturers are totally against you making any repairs at all. We've just grown used to cars being one of the most commonly repairable items we buy. At some point in the near future car ownership will probably diminish significantly as robotaxis flood the market and the manufacturers will become even less interested in self-repairs.
- Maxion 10mo agoThe funny one is the Ferrari he is working on now where not even the Ferrari techs could figure out why the car wouldn't start, as they couldn't get the car to spit out codes and they didn't know why it didn't do that.
- sksasi 10mo agoJust buy a Tesla, it's the most sane thing you could do for peace of mind
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- tantalor 10mo ago> Theoraticaly > missleading Please check spelling before posting
- amarant 10mo ago[flagged]
- gorfian_robot 10mo agoerste mal?
- drnick1 10mo agoAnd 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.
- teiferer 10mo agoNone of the issues in the article are specific to electric cars. This isn't even one, it's a plug-in hybrid. A modern ICE car will have the same issues of having too much electronics inside.
- dzhiurgis 10mo agoTesla is leading in car privacy, look at mozilla's report.
- nake89 10mo agoOut of the Privacy Not Included list of car manufacturers it is the third not-worst: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/categories/cars/ https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/cate... It is still very bad: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/tesla/ https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/tesl... Overview: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/ https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/arti...
- drnick1 10mo agoOh that's very comforting, the leader in car privacy knows where I am at all times because it needs that information for self-driving.
- dzhiurgis 10mo agoSelf driving is offline
- teiferer 10mo agoPHEV is plug-in hybrid, for those not familiar with terminology.
- zenlot 10mo ago[dead]
- CraigJPerry 10mo ago€4000 euros plus tax to replace the module that contains the fuse. Insane. The ford transit custom PHEV costs £4500 to replace the timing belt. Access issues mean dropping the hybrid battery and parts of the sub frame. Compare with the mk8 transit, i've done the wet belt myself on that and it requires no special tools (well, i bought a specific crank pulley puller for £20) and can be done in a day on the driveway. I believe in some markets the replacement schedule is down to 6 years for the new phev due to all the wet belt failures on older models. So far my favourite brand to work on has been Mazda, the engineering is very thoughtfully done with consideration for repairs. I hear a lot of praise for toyota but it's from people who haven't worked on a car themselves rather than mechanics and they must be talking about toyotas from a bygone era because i'm not impressed with a 2019 corolla engineering at all, specifically various parts of the electrical system. I believe that was the most popular car in the world at that time. Tesla is remarkably well done. Simplicity is under rated. So much so i bought one with the intention to keep for a looooong time.
- Maxion 10mo ago> So far my favourite brand to work on has been Mazda, the engineering is very thoughtfully done with consideration for repairs I've heard this from mechanics already 15+ years ago. Mazda seem to still have this reputation. I wish there were more repairability scores for cars.
- lionkor 10mo agoTalk to car guys who are into ~2000s era or before cars. They usually have pretty solid recommendations.
- close04 10mo agoMost 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 repair cost.
- zeroping 10mo agoLast week, I replaced a faulty cell in my PHEV. The most expensive tooling was the two floor jacks I purchased to make the process easier. The software needed was available from the manufacturer for a reasonable fee. The battery pack itself was surprisingly modular and simple to dismantle for repair. I don't many things GM has done, but (at least back in 2010) they did a good job of letting owners do their own work.
- manmal 10mo agoYeah just don’t go to a BMW dealer, and save 50+% of the cost. I recently had numerous repairs done for €2k on my 2er, and the dealer had quoted me €5k. 1k for a part isn’t that outlandish, you just can’t go to a dealer that bills you €300 per hour.
- mvkel 10mo agoThis 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.
- nandomrumber 10mo agoIs that $10k the list price, or have you actually seen a recent invoice from a mechanic for a Model 3 battery swap?
- whatever1 10mo agoIt’s an urban legend.
- oskarkk 10mo agoI've searched the internet and I found some articles and people talking about prices around $11-16k, most of the times including labor. https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/new-battery-cost-for-a-model-3.322358/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/new-battery-cost-for... https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/183if34/what_is_the_actual_cost_of_replacing_a_2018_model/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/183if34/what_i... https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModel3/comments/1blczt1/what_are_battery_replacement_costs_for_m3_rwd_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModel3/comments/1blczt1/what_a... https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/tesla-battery-replacement-costs https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/tesla-battery-replace... https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/tesla-model-3-battery-replacement-cost/ https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/tesla-model-3-battery-re...
- cyberax 10mo agoI was quoted $15k in a Tesla service center for a Model 3 battery replacement, with parts and labor.
- lifty 10mo agoWait another year. CATL is destroying the battery market with their new LFP and sodium batteries. Prices are collapsing.
- leipie 10mo agoI cannot find any explanation for that this is the result of EU regulation. Tesla should also adhere to the same EU regulation and they manage to do this without the "extra CO2" costs as the article states itself. This article smells like FUD to get attention.
- hexo 10mo agowhat is phev?
- jandrese 10mo agoPlug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle. It's the most complex drivetrain you can possibly buy with a full gas engine and transmission mated to a full EV with external charging support.
- sgt 10mo agoPHEW!
- timbit42 10mo agoI can't speak for other PHEV drivetrains but the Toyota PHEV design isn't that complex. It uses an ingenious planetary CVT with a small gas engine instead of a full gas engine and regular transmission. Also, because the gas engine mostly runs at its most efficient RPM, there is little stress on it so it runs very reliably.
- Mashimo 10mo agoPlug in hybrid.
- Neil44 10mo agoI have a BMW PHEV. There's a 3 cyl turbo engine with an auto box at the front and a 90hp electric motor and 7.6kwh battery at the back. Most of the new ones just have a more traditional layout with an electric motor built into the autobox. You get more elec range than a hybrid but less than a full EV. Now that it's cold I start my commute on engine to get the car warmed up with 'free' heat then switch to EV later. If I want to beat someone off the lights I use both together.
- m463 10mo agoreplacing a tesla pyro fuse is about $500, and it has a lifetime. I think it might be the ev equivalent of a wear item like a water pump or alternator on an ice vehicle.
- mrgaro 10mo agoThis only applies to pre-2020 Tesla's and it was around 8-10 years. The more recent ones are designed to last the vehicles lifetime.
- _zoltan_ 10mo agomy VW Multivan's gearbox needed a replacement. 17000 CHF, I kid you not. Luckily VW Germany paid for the whole ordeal, but I wouldn't have been happy to pay that...
- moktonar 10mo agoThis behavior of locking down everything needs to be regulated, not only for car manufacturers but also for everything else
- generic92034 10mo agoLet's start with smartphones.
- moktonar 10mo agoYou can make a law that encompasses all
- chakintosh 10mo agoNot just BMW. I've been watching (and enjoying) Mat Armstrong's youtube videos where he restores crash damaged luxury cars, one of them was a Lamborghini Revuelo. The car's battery was completely intact, but the safety fuse blew up in the BMS and despite replacing the entire module, the car wouldn't talk to the battery and wouldn't even start. Eventually he had to buy an entire 30K battery, and even then, the car wouldn't start because the car was so new Lamborghini themselves still didn't have the diagnostics tool to clear the crash code. PHEVs are great, I've driven two in the past 6 years, but in most cases, you're one airbag deployment away from a very, costly repair and in 99% of cases, a totaled car.
- cjrp 10mo agoInterestingly I’ve seen YouTubers replace the fuse in a Tesla for about £40 and a few hours of labour (it’s under the rear seats). Maybe something they’re doing right.
- sgt 10mo agoTesla is the DIY's EV enthusiast car for a reason.
- jinzo 10mo agoYes mostly propaganda and being first/having a big driving base. They are notoriously closed/locked down from the diagnostic/reprogramming perspective.
- IshKebab 10mo agoWhat car isn't these days?
- chakintosh 9mo agoVW cars pre SFD lock
- 10mo ago
- supernova87a 10mo agoIt seems to me an analogy that as a product is increasingly complex, the ultimate consumer/demander of it becomes more and more disconnected from maintenance, operations, etc. considerations and whether that system is well designed and serviceable. Cars of a past generation were able to be owner-maintained (or understood), and therefore the owner had some interest in knowing that it was easy to maintain and would buy (at least partly) on that premise. Something that was a nightmare to maintain would not be so easily bought because the owners would soon realize how hard they were to fix. Now, with a car that is so complicated, the owner is far distant from being the fixer of it until years later seeing a surprise repair bill. Even the maintainers are not even directly knowledgeable about the design and how to repair. And the information about its maintainability is a low factor on the buying considerations list. But by then you've already given the company the money and incentive to keep on building this way. And rarely (or extremely/too "laggily" does that information feed back). It seems to me enterprise software systems have this problem as well.
- kristjank 10mo ago>Lot of vehicles designed and produced in Europe — ICE, PHEV, and EV — have effectively become a missleading ECO exercise. Vehicles marketed as “CO₂-friendly” end up producing massive CO₂ footprints through forced services, throw-away components, high failure rates and unnecessary parts manufacturing cycles, overcomplicated service procedures, far larger than what the public is told. If we are destroying our ICE automotive industry based on EURO norms, who is calculating real ECO footprint of replacement part manucfacturing, unecessary servicing and real waste cost? >We saw this years ago on diesel and petrol cars: DPF failures, EGR valves, high-pressure pumps, timing belts running in oil, low quality automatic transmissions, and lubrication system defects. Everyone calculates the CO₂ footprint of a moving vehicle — nobody calculates the CO₂ footprint of a vehicle that is constantly broken and creating waste. Extremely well put.
- iknowstuff 10mo agoMore like a weird rant that reduces EVs to only existing due to the environment. But they’re just better cars lol. And the poor reliability of european cars applies regardless of propulsion type
- wil421 10mo agoThey aren’t better cars if they are disposal items like phones and most electronic devices.
- Retric 10mo agoHigh end ICE cars have long been treated as disposable items. 3 year lease and then resell for 1/2 of its initial price so suddenly it’s cheaper than new midrange models for good reasons. Lower end cars on the other hand can be worth 3/4th of their initial value 5 years out, that’s a durable good.
- iknowstuff 10mo agoThey last longer than ICE cars. https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-leads-vehicle-longevity-mileage-study-finds/ https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-leads-vehicle-longevity-mile...
- qazswx 10mo ago[dead]
- Cthulhu_ 10mo agoRight to repair laws should cover this, and / or have a very clear procedure for e.g. consumers and mechanics to report these anti-repairability practices. Even if they're not on purpose (which I doubt, but have no evidence of), the author of this post clearly explains what the problem and what the various hurdles are. I get that from a safety point of view, certain things should be checked and / or replaced after a crash, especially when volatiles like batteries or fuel tanks are involved. But they shouldn't cost thousands.
- igogq425 10mo agoI am in Germany. I will keep my 14-year-old Renault gasoline car roadworthy and use it for as long as possible. When it is no longer economically viable to drive a gasoline-powered car, I expect there to be electric cars that cost a four-figure sum in euros when new, are virtually maintenance-free, and come with a guarantee that a replacement battery will be available at a reasonable price (preferably from third-party suppliers) that I can replace myself without having to go to a specialist workshop. I hope that there will be manufacturers who recognize the need for such vehicles and will meet that demand. I will definitely not pay 20,000 or 50,000 euros or whatever for a skateboard with a battery and car bodywork. Articles like this confirm my opinion on the subject. What annoys me most is that we argued in favor of electric cars because of climate protection. I am in favor of climate protection, but when I read this article, I just feel like I'm being taken for a ride. Politicians should not have simply decided to phase out combustion engines. They should have imposed further constraints on the automotive industry with regard to low purchase costs, durability, reusability, and affordable maintenance.
- FpUser 10mo ago>"Everyone calculates the CO₂ footprint of a moving vehicle — nobody calculates the CO₂ footprint of a vehicle that is constantly broken and creating waste." Did anyone think politicians are there for a common good? They are there to turn us unto sheep to shear. Their primitive lies and propaganda and us being idiots are their main instrument
- potato3732842 10mo ago>Did anyone think politicians are there for a common good? The problem is that a whole bunch of people who know the politicians are not concerned with anything in the same ballpark as the common good will lie to your face about it when the thing the politicians are pushing suits them for the next 5min even if the long term consequences are obvious. The politicians behavior is just a symptom of the problem.
- mystraline 10mo agoAt this point, when I look at ANY electric vehicle, I'm seeing basically what Richard Stallman and Cory Doctorow warned about. Its a DMCA DRM hellscape, full of equipment that was sold (with a state registration no less), and these car companies still maintain remote control and real ownership indefinitely. Mercedes EQS won't "let" owners open the hood. BMW "rented heated seats" bullshit. GMC Hummer EV Requires dealer-level authentication to reset the 12V battery or perform certain repairs. Tesla uses proprietary diagnostic tools and encrypted software. Volvo has explored payment-based bricking. Even the EFF warned about this 12 years ago in 2013 : https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-consumers-crazy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-co... Will I consider an EV? Sure. Am I going to place primary buying decision on reparability and full ownership? Damn straight I will. If that means I buy hybrids and/or ICE vehicles. I want something I can maintain without running to the vendor to ask permission, or even "giving" them the ability to say no.
- yason 10mo agoThis is absolutely not limited to EVs, the same enshittification is in a lot of ICEs and hybrids as well. Today's cars won't be driving in 2040 when a student could buy it for a grand wit 300 000 miles on the clock, and keep fixing it himself in order to save money.b Owning a car (or device) you have "purchased" is getting more and more difficult to achieve. So is owning of anything at all that can or is allowed to connect online. You basically pay for it in order to rent it because you no longer control its lifetime.
- fnord77 10mo agoseems like this would run afoul of american right-to-repair laws
- prepend 10mo agoIt’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 goes perfectly. And since it’s supposed to go perfectly who cares if it’s $5000 to fix because it will “never break.” Reminds me of Rube Goldberg software designs where 9 things have to happen in sequence for success. The idea of rubust design that assumes everything breaks and you can still operate is one I value. I look for car companies (and everything I suppose) following this principle.
- potato3732842 10mo agoWhat you're describing is the stereotype for "rich west europe" engineering culture. Every now and then you see it leak out into some other environment, like Toyota and their pull-apart ball joints that "aren't an issue" because "the user will just service it on schedule" where it reliably causes problems in all sorts of dumb ways (because like anything else, designing stuff to within an inch of it's life takes practice). Now, don't get me wrong, this European approach creates a lot of cool highly performant products, but it's stuff that tends to fall on it's face real good if you violate any of the assumptions made when designing it and the approach is naturally suited to some products more than others.
- giamma 10mo agoHere 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 the fork twice a year. Each service easily costs $150 if done by a bike shop. If you do it yourself (plenty of tutorials on youtube), you need expensive special tools, oil, special grease and spare o-rings and seals easily costs 30-40$ for every service. And you have to properly dispose the old oil. [0] https://tech.ridefox.com/bike/owners-manuals/2979/fork--2025-36mm-or-38mm#serviceintervals https://tech.ridefox.com/bike/owners-manuals/2979/fork--2025...
- Workaccount2 10mo agoI 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 release part #15. They get a 10 for "Wow!" factor, a 0 for "well thought out", and a 10 for "extremely over complicated". Unsurprisingly this mindset has carried over into EVs now too.
- outside1234 10mo agoEverything is branded for what it is not. Quality Inns, etc...
- gambiting 10mo ago>>Probably from the people who continually roll new leases every 2 years. 100% this. BMW's own stats say that something like 90% of buyers of new BMWs keep them for 3 years or less. The fact that parts like oil pans are made out of plastic or that lately all their gearboxes have the oil drain port completely removed is just irrelevant to the buyers because none of them care about keeping the car for a decade like people used to. And the collapse of second hand prices due to these catastrophic repair costs is not really a problem for them either. >>Germans are excellent at making cool flashy features...that rely on 16 moving parts that cost $700 each To be completely fair - Mercedes used to do this in their S Class and also it would work for decades despite the complexity. That's German Engineering. But that quality has been missing across all German brands for a good while, it pops up every and now then in specific components that are still extremely well designed and reliable, but it's not standard across the entire vehicle.
- janc_ 10mo agoBMW always had a reputation for frequent & expensive repairs, even as far back as the 1970s (although I guess "typical" BMW drivers aren't the most careful either, so maybe that's also relevant...).
- 10mo ago
- ariwilson 10mo agoCompare this car to the Toyota RAV4 PHEV which in some ways is simpler than a gas powered RAV4 (no alternator, no transmission) but maintains the same ease of maintainability and cheap parts availability as the base RAV4 (makes sense, they sold >4M of them). PHEVs are complicated tech so I figured I would choose one with a proven design (Prius -> Prius Prime -> RAV4 Prime).
- BobBagwill 10mo agoThe goal is to eliminate outright vehicle sales, and move everyone to leases and rentals? Just like in software? Safety is important, too (nudge nudge wink wink). Given that speed and alcohol are the top two causes of traffic deaths, mandatory SAE J3016 Level 4 self-driving would prevent a lot of deaths. But of course, it will make the price of a "safe" automobile many times the annual income of 99% of North American and EU drivers. Even a FAANG HENRY who would buy a BMW i7 M70 won't be able to afford a "safe" automobile in a "safe" country. A Waymoid is your future, first-worldians!
- foxyv 10mo agoI wouldn't mind if cars were so expensive only the top 2-5% of earners could afford them, but we need viable alternatives to driving. We have dismantled our transportation infrastructure at the pleasure of car companies. Now you have drivers that cannot afford their cars but must drive anyways. You also have people who are unfit to drive that are forced to do so. Self-driving is a bandaid for a problem that is made by cars. It doesn't address the hundreds of other issues caused by them. Also it adds to the incremental squeezing of the middle class out of existence.
- apparent 10mo agoI 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?
- cryptoegorophy 10mo agoBuying non Tesla EVs doesn’t make any practical sense.
- Beijinger 10mo agoWhy?
- dzhiurgis 10mo agoYou'll most likely be overpaying for overall package, not get the advanced software and will be forced to pay insane yearly service fee. Then there's whole long term thing - very little spare parts availability cuz most EVs are niche models, some already ceased to exist, service tools not available or insanely overpriced. Some like Kia/Hyundai are notoriously unreliable to begin with.
- Beijinger 10mo agoBYD? Hyundai unreliable?
- dzhiurgis 10mo agoHyundai, reliable?
- Beijinger 10mo agoRankings: Hyundai is often highly ranked by automotive experts. For example, RepairPal ranks Hyundai 4th out of 32 car brands for reliability. J.D. Power studies also consistently place Hyundai among the top brands for initial quality and long-term dependability.
- dzhiurgis 10mo ago#12 according to CR https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/who-makes-the-most-reliable-cars-a7824554938/ https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...
- Fwirt 10mo agoI keep mulling over decisions like this, and I think the fundamental clash between the hacker ethos of repairability and the corporate ethos of products with well-defined failure modes comes down to a clash of innate human values with capitalism. Capitalism fundamentally does not view human life as sacred. Or rather, it puts a finite value on human life. The bond between a mother and son is priceless, there is (in the case of a loving relationship) no price that either would put on the life of the other. That is to say, there is no amount of money that either would accept in exchange for the death of the other. As actuaries know, this is not true from a capitalist viewpoint. The value of a human life is frequently calculated by various means to be somewhere around 3.5 million dollars at birth. Which is to say, if a policy change costs an organization (private or public) over 3.5 million dollars to save one human life, it does not make financial sense. So when you look at a decision by an automaker to include a "safety" feature, you have to ask "did the amount of money that this costs the company work out in terms of human lives". In this case, BMW likely concluded that the financial damages of settling an insurance claim for a battery fire, and damage to their brand from the massive negative publicity of battery fires (see Tesla) would be more than the cost of implementing this "feature". This is also true from the legally mandated standpoint of crash safety features, which result in cars being much easier to total because of crumple zones. The cost of a $100k vehicle is much less than the cost of a $3.5 million human life. On the other hand, the carbon and pollution cost of replacing many $100k vehicles is borne by the public. An interesting view of this topic is summarized in the Wikipedia article "Value of Life" under the heading "Uses", which specifically covers the cost of implementing emissions regulation vs. the cost of the human lives that reduced emissions would save. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Uses As has been pointed out many times, vehicles these days are cost engineered to last as long as the average buyer of a new vehicle will hold onto the car. Since BMW targets a luxury market, that lifetime is likely on the order of 4-5 years. A Toyota is probably closer to 10 years. Automakers do not (as far as I know) make a meaningful amount of money on the maintenance of used cars; OEM parts do not necessarily come directly from the automaker, but rather a company that contracts with them or a subsidiary whose financials are not counted as part of the manufacturer's bottom line. Therefore, in our modern era of late-stage capitalism, companies have no incentive to make cars that last longer, and complaints from customers who wish that their end-of-life cars were easier to repair will fall on deaf ears. Those of us who wish our cars were less "safe" in order to contribute less to the criminal waste of disposal of otherwise sound vehicles and carbon cost of making a new vehicle would do well to consider the financial calculations that went into those decisions. Is making batteries that are easy to fix but kill someone when improperly repaired in 1/1000 crashes more ethical than installing systems to prevent batteries from ever being misconfigured? Are there more BMW crashes than other brands due to the target demographic? Is the number of batteries that will be repaired improperly significant enough to cause a large number of battery fires? I don't know. This is by no means an excuse of these practices, but merely an attempt to understand them. I would love to hear where my reasoning is flawed so I can better understand this. It certainly seems to me that the risk of a shade tree mechanic soldering a piece of wire into a BMW battery computer is astronomically low, but I have seen repairpeople of all shades do really stupid things to save money so probably not zero.
- The_President 10mo agoBMW PHEV? That’s a funny way to spell the word “lease.”
- hshdhdhj4444 10mo agoWell, in a couple of years the Chinese cars will be in the EU and the local manufacturing looks like it’s not ready to compete at all.