>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.
€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.
Is it insane? I'm working in this field, and I know how quickly you can come up with such a number if you are BMW and you are deathly afraid that someone will get electrocuted while working on your car, driving it or rescuing someone in a crash. It's a safety and liability issue, where they go to great lengths to actually re-certify a battery after crash. The whole thing is setup so, that even the dummy electricians in an average BMW shop can safely certify that this battery is still safe. It's a lot easier to kill yourself (or someone else) when working on a EV Battery than wet belt. Also a lot harder to repair said battery than wet belt. And that goes for all EVs and manufacturers that actually care about people (Tesla, demonstrably does not).
Yes, it is insane. It's a fuse. They must have some stats on how often those things need replacing and it should have been accessible. The customer has - when they buy the car - absolutely no way of knowing what kind of surprises like this there are hidden in the vehicle and besides, it kills the second hand market so you can only trade your vehicle to a BMW dealership where they can absorb those costs for a fraction of what it will cost an end user. BMW is a crap brand in spite of their reputation, we've had one leased Mini in our company and it is the very last time we do business with BMW, that thing was more in the shop than out of it with electrical issues. A friend had pretty much every BMW ever made since he got wealthy enough to afford them (car enthusiast) and his experience is much the same, but he keeps buying them.
This is BMW we're talking about. Their guarantees are worth absolutely nothing if my experience is anything to go by and them accepting liability is not something you should have to pay 4K for if other brands can do the same thing under $100.
I'm sure it depends on market, but I also know 100% that if they will certify the battery as safe, and then you get electrocuted when entering your car because the battery was not safe - they will be on the hook, in all developed markets. No one else, that cares about people safety, do the same thing for under $100. Even Tesla, that almost completely disregards any safety - be it "Full Self Driving" or "let's just change this, without checking if the battery is actually safe", does not do it under $100.
If that was the issue you wouldn't be allowed to change your wheels on the side of the road. They'd be locked down to the car and require a complex software procedure to guarantee they were swapped correctly and won't endanger lives.
This is a professional shop raising the issues. They are liable for how the repair is done. BMW is just liable to lose money if people can easily fix their car at some other, cheaper, professional garage.
I think the people that replace fuses are aware of the potential issues around them. The article - which I'm sure you've read so don't take this as commentary on your comment - details that in other electric vehicles, for instance Tesla this is handled quite differently:
"While Tesla’s pyrofuse costs €11 and the BMS reset is around 50€, allowing the car to be safely restored, BMW’s approach borders on illogical engineering, with no benefit to safety, no benefit to anti-theft protection — the only outcome is the generation of billable labour hours and massive amounts of needless electronic/lithium waste."
It's not a choice between 'ridiculously inaccessible with the potential to create more damage than your car is worth' and 'push to reset'. There are many options in between, some of which would be a happy medium between the two that protect both safety, the environment and the customers' wallet. Which BMW's solution clearly isn't.
1) a lot of people aren’t aware of that issue with fuses, and just keep replacing them while burning up wiring/ignoring actual problems. Or even worse manually bypass. It may be the case in this scenario (a crash), which is why they are forcing an inspection because the car might actually burn to the ground.
2) ridiculous repair procedures are the norm for BMW. The only brand I’m aware of that is somewhat common and worse is Jaguar.
I get the complaint, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a bit like a Lotus or Lamborghini owner complaining about the rough ride.
This fuse blows because a crash was detected and it is to protect the people inside the car and rescuers. The article argument is that it can blow even for small crashes where no damage to the battery occurs but rehabilitating the vehicle still incurs an outrageous cost. This is not a simple over current protection fuse.
$1000 for the module with the fuse seems ok to me. Another $3000 to link the module to the vehicle is the outrageous part.
They are not only linking it to the vehicle, they are doing a LOT of other checks on the battery - that it's not damaged in non-obvious ways. For that you need trained people (it's really high voltage and amperage stuff), tooling AND you really need to be sure you guarantee everything is OK.
Even the basic mechanical disconnect and lowering of the battery is far from simple (and requires A LOT more expensive tools than changing a wet belt - not because they are greedy, but because a lift that can lower such hevy battery costs a lot of money, mostly in materials), and that's not even opening it, making sure you don't get electrocuted when you work on it ect.
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.
I’ve never had a fuse blow on a car less than 20 years old, and then it was due to shorts due to damaged insulation and
bad grounds due to corrosion, which are legit problems that need to be corrected.
Also, unlike breakers, fuses are generally immune to issues with HF interference and the like - they work through basic thermoelectric effects which iron out all but the most extreme issues. If you’re moving multiple amps in a situation described as ‘RF’, or ‘high frequency’ in a DC system that’s not just noise!
That’s a real problem that needs fixing!
Not fixing the underlying problem behind a blown fuse (or constantly tripping breaker) is how your car (or house or whatever) burns to the ground.
Or you have a Lucas, in which case my condolences.
I'll grant you that, I had a lot of beaters. A typical thing was that a lock solenoid pulled too much current in cold weather and consistently blew the central locking fuse.
Yep, might be there was a known issue that was addressed, at which put in a new one. But just replacing a fuse (or, simultaneously worse and better, just resetting a breaker) without further investigation is just kicking a very spicy can down the road.
I had a doozy of a trip issue on one project, a motor would occasionally (not always, no real pattern, hot/cold/etc. didn’t matter) trip the breaker, requiring a sparky to come out and open up the panel to reset it. We tried a bunch of things, megger-ing the motor, testing peak startup current on each phase with a fancy meter, checking phase-to-neutral current (Larger than you’d think! But this was normal, apparently.)
Everything was normal. In the end all we could think something was weird about the contactor. They took it out (I was off site at the time) and took it down to the substation to test it out.
With three phases connected to the contactor (and nothing connected on the other side) they energised the coil, and with an almighty bang it tripped the main incomer and took the entire sub offline.
Turns out there was a manufacturing defect in the contactor and sometimes for a millisecond, if the phase of the moon was right, it dead shorted two phases.
So there, even when you know everything, you don’t know everything.
Many people drive older cars worth less than £4000.
Sticking to old/cheap cars seems like an increasingly good option with so many scare stories about the pain and extreme expense of getting modern cars, particularly EVs, repaired.
And the impending ban on new ICE vehicles seems likely to lead to more older cars being kept on the road for a lot longer.
Yeah - a car hits a similar valuation around ~15 years of age, meaning a failure of this component limits the financially viable lifespan of a car to this amount - mechanics do engine rebuilds for less money.
I mean, I don't think my perception is warped by what I see. But by "am I willing to risk that my repair will kill someone, because they wanted cheaper repair"? Or even if not kill, maybe just burn down their car (+ house,...). "Am I willing to use cheap tools, not rated for 800V (or 400V) god knows how many Amps?". Because this is not software development - you can be killed REALLY quickly working on a HV EV battery pack. It's no joke. For sure it'll cost more than working on a regular car, where there is danger, but a lot less. And that's just the basic thinking, without going deeper into why its more expensive to repair stuff like this.
The article and comment aren't debating whether the fuse plays an essential role. There's no reason to make the process of fixing the issue after a minor incident expensive, extremely convoluted, and very prone to error.
Making it a very complicated and expensive fix isn't what's saving your rescuer or mechanic from getting electrocuted while working around your car.
> There's no reason to make the process of fixing the issue after a minor incident expensive, extremely convoluted, and very prone to error.
Yes there is. Either nobody is engineering towards that aspect or it is a conscious decision, deliberating between two different buckets: bill-of-material cost per unit and estimated impact on your warranty & goodwill budget. Whatever is deemed to be cheaper will win.
Source: I work at an automotive OEM and one of my first projects almost two decades ago was how to anchor after-sales requirements into the engineering process. For example, we did things like introducing special geometry into the CAD models representing the space that needs to be left free so a mechanic can fit his hands with a tool inside. These would then be considered in the packaging process. If you consider these are two completely different organizations, it becomes a very tricky problem to solve.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that the battery pack status after a crash is essentially unknown. It should go through a thorough and competently conducted safety inspection or it may kill someone in the future. Of course, this doesn't excuse extra red tape tacked into the procedure, but the core idea of an inspection is just unavoidable.
> 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 in an authorised service centre, system can accidentally delete the configuration and end up needing not only a new iBMUCP, but also all new battery modules.
> BMW refuses to provide training access for ISTA usage
Everything about this screams greed driven over-engineering. Since when are error prone processes and lack of access to information better for safety?
We live in a world where everyone justifies taking user hostile actions with some variation of "safety". Software and hardware are locked down, backdoored, need manufacturer approval to operate even when original parts are used, etc.
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 agree, I don't think that the over-engineering is greed driven - but the EU Manufacturers (but honestly, even other ones) have a really hard time with anything software based. Be it in car or outside of it. But BMW is far from the worst on that front.
P.S: VW ODIS original diagnostic is based on Eclipse :D
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 repair cost.
If you're in Europe, you can consider Dacia. A lot of their stuff is old Renault parts that they've bought a license to use/manufacture. Get a pre-2023 model with the 1.6 non-turbo non-hybrid petrol engine - it's actually a Nissan HR16DE, which has been in use since 2004. Very reliable and low complexity.
Crash safety has become grossly exagerrated because the standards have been sharply rising last few years. Most 15yo cars will keep you safe just fine in a median crash.
A 15 year old car currently is going for 5 figures - not a shitbox. Not unless it’s a shelll of rust held together by bondo. Then your crash standards or whatever year are meaningless as the chassis may have 25% or less of its design strength.
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.
I've got a '91 Toyota Carina and can attest that it's very easy to work on, my friend and I pulled the engine and gearbox in under two hours with hand tools, but I can't really speak for anything modern.
As a lifelong Toyota fan, I agree they are miserable to work on, especially the electronics. I have a stoplight switch issue in my 86 (from being rear-ended) that I have neglected because it would require pulling out the trunk assembly to fix.
The engineering praise comes from the fact that if you are taking care of it, you will probably never have to work on it until it's well into 6-digit mileage. This remains consistent through pretty much their entire line with the one exceptional black mark really being the RAV4.
I occasionally like to see what the highest mileage Toyota Prius I can find for sale is. They are obviously used as taxis and it's common to find one for sale with half a million miles.
Usually at that point someone puts in a new hybrid battery and sells it to someone else starting out driving Ubers.
Oh yes, the Prius gets even better lifetime because the hardest strain on the engine components is completely negated by the electric motor. If I ever ditch the little mini sports car, I will most likely replace it with another Prius.
In fairness most cars get taken for scrap with an engine which starts and runs. Even when they are running a bit rough it's more often fueling and ignition components than a mechanical problem with the engine components.
That said, the synergy drive is by design a very robust mechanical system. It has no dog gears, clutch or torque converter. I'm sure this contributes a lot to their long life.
> As a lifelong Toyota fan, I agree they are miserable to work on, especially the electronics.
I had a Toyota Yaris a couple of decades ago. Very reliable, very few issues. But some routine things like replacing headlights were completely bonkers. You had to wiggle your hand between some sharp metal parts to unscrew the back end of the armature. Sheesh, would it have been that prohibitive to add a few cm of extra space there?
I am affacted by this as well: the rear knuckle uniball bearing was broken after 3 years (Achsschenkel). Many MY here in Europe have this issue, due to bad parts or too hard suspension.
But there are two other things that make it a bit unfair for Tesla in comparison to other brands:
Often the cars fail official inspections because of rotten breaks - this happens when your drive carefully and the Tesla is using regenerative breaking instead of the real breaks. Simple solution is to force breaking from time to time (I.e. breaking in neutral). Another aspect is, that all the other brands have a mandatory inspection from the manufacturer before the cars will be tested by the independent check. This avoids that they will fail it, because the car will be repaired before it is checked by the independent inspection. This is not mandatory for Teslas.
Service intervals. Other OEMs will prompt a service interval at X thousand miles/km to go pop in and have it looked at by a dealer, probably swap out your cabin air filter, upsell you on some new wiper blades, etc.
ICE vehicles would normally catch these issues sooner because you'd be pulling in a lot more often for oil changes (and a quick mechanical inspection is typically a courtesy at that time).
> Often the cars fail official inspections because of rotten br[e]ak[e]s - this happens when your drive carefully and the Tesla is using regenerative breaking instead of the real br[e]ak[e]s.
That's something that they should have taken into consideration when designing the car.
>Often the cars fail official inspections because of rotten breaks - this happens when your drive carefully and the Tesla is using regenerative breaking
Huh? Every EV uses recuperative braking, how is this special to Tesla?
> Huh? Every EV uses recuperative braking, how is this special to Tesla?
It‘s not. But there are some newer EVs (e.g. Mercedes and VW) that track brake usage and will periodically switch to using the disk brakes when there‘s danger of corrosion.
German TUV thinks Teslas are horrible because apparently nobody is servicing their brakes on a regular enough interval so every time Teslas get pulled in for their 2 year inspections after 3 years of ownership they keep failing out on brakes and suspension, but VWs are the pinnacle of perfection because they slam 10K service intervals in your face.
(Of note: I drive a hybrid vehicle, and over 125,000+ miles of ownership I have replaced my front brakes once and my rear brakes three times now in five years.)
I am no Tesla fanboy. But let’s face the truth. Teslas leave factory with end of line check. Then they are driven more than average cars for 3 years without any maintenance. Then go for check. And surprise surprise, the first model Ys were not well made. I bet with 1000-1500€ maintenance cost over these 3 years the TUV result would be dramatically different.
Btw, my petrol car had ugly rusty rear brakes. No way to pass the check. The car had manual handbrake and I used in every highway exit to slow down and removed rust.
Not 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.
Interestingly 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.
You can replace the fuse (not that easly) but for approximately the same price in a BMW. You do have to put in more work but the problem is with re-certifying the battery. Tesla does not care if the battery was damaged in the crash, they will (more or less) happily re-enable it. BMW decided that the only safe way is to re-certify the whole battery. I'm not saying it's the right decision, I think they over did it and VW does it better - but I do understand WHY they chose to do it so, and the WHY is not nearly as outrageous as a lot of people here think.
Yes mostly propaganda and being first/having a big driving base. They are notoriously closed/locked down from the diagnostic/reprogramming perspective.
After reading the blog post I had the same thought. Doing an oil change on my F650GS motorcycle required removing the plastics, draining the oil from both the top and bottom of the motorcycle, removing a plate on the side of the engine after install the BMW specified oil redirection funnel, extracting the filter and reinstalling. The oil funnel had a legit BMW part number. Most of us either just made a mess or used a piece of a milk jug. Probably 15 fasteners and 2 drain plugs.
Comparable process on my Sv650: drain plug out. Drain plug in. Screw off filter. Screw on filter. Fill.
That reminds me of the Popular Science garage hint from 1963, explaining how to easily dispose of used motor oil: Dig a hole in the ground and fill it with fine gravel. Pour in the oil, and it will be absorbed into the ground before your next oil change.
The Swedish government created this informational video in 1964 on how to properly dispose of your trash when at sea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t03saJVFkv4. Apparently the trick is to make the trash sink rather than float.
Not too bad though all things considered, there are worse examples out there, like my old KTM adventure bike.
Interestinlgy, the BMW R1200/1250/1300GS is actually simpler due to the boxer engine design.
You win some, you lose some. Comparable process on my E46 and E39: Drain plug out (potentially flipping a little dust cover out of the way). Drain plug in. Stand up because everything else happens up top. Unscrew filter housing. Replace filter element. Replace filter housing. Fill.
Hello, fellow E39 owner. Mine is my first BMW, and for all I hear about over-engineering from them, this has been a pretty straightforward car to work on. As "complicated" as the suspension is, for example, it was pretty simple to replace everything. I suppose that reputation has been earned from their more modern cars.
I won't argue with non EV engineering, but high voltage stuff in an EV is a lot harder problem to make safe in event of a crash and subsequent repair. I come out as a BMW apologist, but Vanja (evclinic Head boss) likes to be overly dramatic. BMW (and almost all other brands) are very afraid that someone will die when repairing/driving/rescuing someone from an EV and they go to great (and expensive) lengths to make sure the battery and the vehicle is as safe as possible. The fuse here is a small part, checks and certifications that go into making the battery truly safe (in scale, all edge cases ect) are a lot more than just the fuse. And that is expensive.
Thanks for pointing that out - at first I thought this was an act designed to turn cheap repairs impossible to drive new car sales, and force people into BMWs hugely expensive service network, but after learning this is for my own good, I'm relieved and happy to learn BMW is looking out for me.
I worked with Vanja before EVs were mass produced, he is very driven and smart, but also eccentric. With his previous experience with Mercedes Electric repair he figured out that, sooner or later repair/knowledge/tools will get commoditized, so push at the start and try to get a big foothold/mindshare before this happens. Very few people actually have the knowledge to judge your work early on, so you can get very far if you are intentionally promoting yourself and behaving very confident.
His Tesla Battery cell repair stuff, anyone that was near a open battery knows it's fucking dangerous thing that has VERY low chance of actually working in medium term - but it gets him a lot of respect by clueless people. But he also does good stuff, but his image and reality are VERY different things.
Exactly, these are intentional decisions for German cars. They’re gorgeous, over-engineered, cutting edge pieces of machinery and the expense of being practical or repairable. The common understanding for decades has been if you’re buying a German luxury car as a daily driver and repair costs are something you even have to consider, you’re buying the wrong car.
Old BMW is nothing like new BMW - I know a few older folks who drive 20+year old BMWs and Audis with 500k+ km they drove off the salon parking lot - not because they can't afford a new one, but they like the current ones.
These old cars were engineered to a high standard, and designed to be maintained - while maintenance isn't cheap, with proper servicing and car, they could last forever.
This is entirely different - in the past few years BMW has become infamous for using low quality plastic fasteners that become brittle and break eventually, and all around penny-pinching everywhere.
It seems they even took the logical next step and installed draconian repair and service prevention measures.
They took the stance that once the car is out of the warranty period and isn't brough to an official service center, they stand to make no profit on it, so it should end up in the scrapyard in the shortest time possible.
This proves to me they don't understand their own market - people who buy expensive (70k+ish EUR) BMWs are all financial wizards who lease their cars, tax optimize them to the gills through legally grey methods and other schemes, and then resell them at the end of the lease.
This means they're able to drive them for like 300-400 euro a month cost - but only because of resale value. If they kill resale, then people won't buy them.
The amount of people who will put down 70k+ in cash at the salon is exceedingly small.
Yet 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).
My understanding is that the hardware is always installed but the dealer will not fill the liquid reservoirs unless the customer specifically requests (and pays) for it.
They have not over-engineered anything in this case - they have deliberately taken user-hostile actions, going out of the way to prevent repair, and turn cheap repairs into very expensive ones.
- They welded the case: even the engine block that experiences combustion pressures and temps is just bolted together - why?
- They even outdid (pre-R2R) Apple in every aspect - proprietary components, everything put together on the same PCB, with third party replacements impossible, replacement parts locked out cryptographically, and 'anti-theft' (anti-repair) systems installed so even authorized dealers are at a risk of bricking the vehicle - and third party shops can't even repair it.
- They are German so in the EU they are above the law (or more accurately they write the law) - but it'd be nice if us Europeans had their own Louis Rossmans and actionable right to repair laws, and the EU did something beyond bullying foreign tech companies, and applied the same level of scrutiny to domestic ones as well.
This is a comical level of evil - they know that due to the proprietary components (that you can't get at an auto parts store), when these vehicles become 10-15 years old, they will be either uneconomical to repair, with repair costs exceeding the value of the vehicle, no third party parts, no possibility of third-party service - people will resort to stealing these cars to source replacement parts.
So they installed a system that bricks the vehicle should it detect tampering - which might happen if somebody tries to fix their own vehicles.
And let me reiterate, Germans are above the law in the EU - the only reason Dieselgate became a huge scandal is that the US found out about it - please, American friends, could you do another 'gate' about this - its for the good of all.
I think it's a German thing to be honest. I've wrenched on Mercedes Benz and VW personally, and I've heard horror stories from Audi as well.
My merc exposure is both on very old (70s) and modern. So I would actually argue that over engineering shit is in their DNA, they don't know how not to do it.
My brother had an old W123 body Merc for a while. It had fucking vacuum lines running to all the doors for central locking. I had a SsangYong with an old-school Merc OM617 diesel engine in it. Great engine, and it was relatively easy to work on, but the oil filter was positioned such that you can't replace it without spilling oil all over the engine bay. Infuriating!
I love this take. Thanks for sharing it. Puts into words why sometimes I can spend a lot of time thinking about how to improve a system: trying to save future effort.
People get upset when a BMW is expensive to repair, but they're misunderstanding the sophisticated German engineering. You're not supposed to repair it. You're supposed to throw it away and buy a new one.
In Germany BMW's target market are company cars. Having the company pay for your car has tax benefits here even if you also use it outside work, so the company giving you a nice car that gets replaced by a new model every three years is a sought-after benefit. Those cars are indeed sold to the next idiot before they develop any issues
I missed the memo when putting everything together on one impossible to repair PCB and then gluing/sealing it permanently became 'sophisticated German engineering' instead of bottom-shelf junk.
The sophisticated engineering works (or worked?) mostly fine if the piece of machinery is operated in the extremely narrow "just right" operating ranges the sophisticated engineer defined. To much dust in the air? One too many potholes? Not the premium brand oil? There goes your sophisticated machinery.
Times have changed and now the fuse replacement is not just a mater of over engineering, something someone put together thinking it's a technically perfect process. It became a revenue stream. Car designed also by accountants.
The 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.)
It 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.
UN 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.
What I meant more is that you need more and more specialized tools (according to the manufacturers). My previous ford needed a special (expensive!) bracket to keep the drivetrain in place if you want to do anything on the engine which makes home service less likely.
These regulations do not mean you need 25k in tooling, but that is what it has come to. And thus there is a blooming (mostly Chinese/Russian) aftermarket tooling business with sketchy software you want to run in a VM.
This 2022 BMW X1 my wife drives is the last BMW we will ever own. £395 for an oil change. £180 for brake fluid. £500 a year road tax.
Meanwhile my 2011 Prius continues to pass its MOT without fail, needs just the usual very affordable consumables, gets 50% higher MPG and actually has a larger cargo capacity than the X1.
You have just discovered that SUVs are large because some people want their cars to be large. They come with all the downsides of that and not much of the upsides.
They don't come with all the downsides. They externalise the reduced forward visibility for people behind you, the headlights spinning onto other users' cabins, the running over of toddlers, and, my favourite, the driving in the middle of the road rather than risk getting mud on their fucking tyres
No tax rate is too high. Rebates for agricultural workers maybe.
Sounds like you're getting it serviced by a BMW dealership? I take my PHEV 3-series to a local independent mechanic, and the entire cost is usually less than you're paying for oil alone. Also, because it's a hybrid, the road tax rate is very advantageous.
I 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.
1. The EU de facto mandates the car manufacturers have to develop and sell cars that produce less CO2 (mostly by the way of fines for higher polluting vehicles). This led to the development of hybrid ('mild-hybrid', 'full-hybrid', and PHEV) and EV vehicles.
2. The manufacturers tend to both complicate the technology and lock the stuff down, so it's not easily repairable. This has its own enviromental price, and EV Clinic says this is not accounted for. That's not completely fair as on one hand there are EU repairability directives that address this but on the other we still want to have some degreee of market competition and in the end the market should punish those manufacturers (as it is already doing, I think).
One thing I want to add is that the EU also mandates real-world-fuel-consumption-measurement (OBFCM) devices in new cars and if that is followed to its logical conclusion and the manufacturers pressure is resisted, this will mean the end of hybrids as the real-world data is horrible for them.
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.
It's like the S60, VW W12, old V12 Continentals, etc. If it's expensive to maintain no one wants to buy it off you so you get hit with massive depreciation costs. You can get a 20y/o 'no issues' 500+hp V12 Continental for 10k where I'm at. They've had a brutal cost/year and cost/mile.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
EV 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.
Many 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
My 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.
Yeah, 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.
Teslas 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.
As 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?
The 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/. 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.
+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.
> I wonder how we can make automakers make more repairable cars.
New mandatory test suite: Have executives/leading personnel do common repairs and time it. Publish min/max/avg time next to fuel efficiency and safety rating.
On the Model 3, you have to drop the HV battery pack to replace the brake lines that prematurely rust in wintery climates, so Tesla is not fully immune either.
And check some videos of what you have to do to swap the door-actuating motor (which gets guaranteed water ingress) in the front doors (yes, not the gullwings) of a Model X.
EVs 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)
None 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.
One 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.
PHEV 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.
And 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.
Probably the one type of PHEV that should survive is basically a BEV with builtin backup generator. One that's not necessarily powerful enough to drive you directly at full speed, but enough to basically eliminate range limitation of a (cheaper and smaller) battery by continuously charging it when needed. Maybe this 'backup generator' can even be made as a removable option.
I'm thinking of a semi-rural use case, when your typical daily trip is 20-50 km, but the charging infrastructure is poor and occasionally you do need to drive 200-300 km in winter.
Your 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.
Plus 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!
Does 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.
Well 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.
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
The 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.
The 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.
You'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.
PHEVs 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.
This 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.
Absolutely, 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.
The 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.
This 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.
I would argue peak car was a little earlier, maybe the 2000-2010 decade. Fewer screens to fail, analog buttons and dials. Airbags, and ABS for safety but without the additional computers/screens.
Entirely agree, although I think it varies by make / model. Roughly look for whenever a particular car got OBDII, which makes diagnostics way easier (and was kinda the perfect level of digitization, again in my opinion), through (as you say) whenever they started digitizing the cockpit and/or (which oddly - maybe? - coincide, in my experience) manufacturers stopped considering ease of maintenance in engineering decisions. In general late-1990s through 2005-2010. Cars since that decade (or so) are more sophisticated, at the expense of far, far shorter useful lifespans.
Nobody is currently selling new, small pickups. Maybe if the Slate materializes, that'll prove the market and we'll see them again.
In the meantime, 200x Ford Ranger or 200x Chevy S-10 are the last of the small pickups where you can get a 6 foot bed and a single row of seats. (Afaik)
I sold my small white pickup once, and ended up with a different small white pickup a few years later. I do enough (small) truck things that having a truck on hand just in case is worth it for me; but even with minimal miles per year there's certainly added expense from maintenance some of which ends up being time based, registration fees, and incremental costs for liability insurance on another vehicle. For quite a while, my family vehicles were a 4-door car/wagon and a small pickup, but that doesn't work for everyone; I feel better served with a minivan, a 4-door phev, and a pickup (and a silly old rear engined vw van with only the front seats, mostly for midlife crisis, but also handy for picking up large items that don't want to be inside for transport)
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 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.
You might consider acquiring a used model that meets your needs, then spend $ to zero-time the important stuff. In 2023, I decided not to buy a new car, but to re-engine (and other stuff) my 1999 4Runner. Really happy I did.
I would like a pickup (spouse -> serious gardener), have decided to get something simple & used, then put another $20K into it.
> 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.
There's no market for new small work trucks because nobody is willing to sell them. Not because nobody is willing to buy them.
People who need work trucks end up getting f-150 or similar, work vans, or buying used. There was a used car lot in my old neighborhood that specialized in work trucks. It would be 75% white single cab trucks, 20% white panel vans, and then 5% work trucks and vans in colors.
Well CAFE standards say don't bother making small vehicles. And manufacturers say oh darn, we have to make the vehicles with lots of profits? Well sorry small truck buyers, we're out.
CAFE standards have made that pretty hard. The trucks got bigger to hold more complex engine setups to boost mileage, coinciding with preferences shifting to super crew cabs because buying a new truck is basically the same price as buying a luxury vehicle.
I did own a 1994 Dodge ram up until a few years ago, but it needed new brake lines and there was so much rust coming off the frame I honestly wasn't sure I trusted it anymore, and the cost of the brake lines was probably more than it was worth at that point.
Frame damage apart, brake lines (in general, though I haven't worked specifically on a Dodge) are a reasonably straightforward DIY job. Not at all saying you made the wrong decision abandoning that particular car, just encouraging others reading this to evaluate the cost of a brake system replacement more, um... creatively, and least do some research. Basic car repair is an immanently nerdy pastime, and can save one an immense amount of money - especially on that particular era of automobiles, which are typically pretty satisfying to wrench on.
Right 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.
It 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.
If 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.
Bumping this. Mat went through the exact same crazy process with the Revuelto. Audi/Lamborghini overengineers the heck out of these cars its really absurd.
100%. 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.
The 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.
Yeah 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.
my 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...
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.
None 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.
I 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.
There 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.
I 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.
Lots of the traditional car manufacturers now have good options: Renault, Nissan, Kia, and Hyundai's EVs seem to be particularly well regarded. I'd definitely opt for any of those over a Tesla given Tesla's reputation with regard to quality and repair costs.
If you ignore cost, then Tesla's cars are probably still better at this point, but the gap doesn't seem that large.
Even BMW has a few electrical cars that aren't half bad. The main problem is that they are compromise cars that can be sold as ICE, PHEV, or full EV.
That means more complexity, sub optimal design, less efficiency, etc. However, competition is indeed brutal right now. Tesla did something that only some other manufacturers have managed to copy so far: make cars that are EV only from the ground up. Love them or hate them, they don't make any design compromises to allow space for a combustion engine, a generator, or whatever. There's no room for a transmission, a fuel tank, or even an engine compartment. That's where the Frunk goes. The result is a car that's simpler, more efficient, and more optimal for what it does.
BYD did the same. Kia and Hyundai are having a lot of success with their electric only line of cars. And in the EU Renault and the Stellantis group have some decent and competitive low cost models on the market. Tesla's advantage is rapidly evaporating here.
Japanese car makers have been more conflicted on this. But Nissan's collaboration with Renault is giving them access to the right tech to adjust course. And even Toyota is now using a lot of Chinese made drive trains and components to finally offer EVs that are actually not that bad. The danger is of course that "made in Japan" has very limited value in this world if all your core tech is effectively Chinese and European. That's something that might change in the next years of course.
Cost wise, buying a compromise car means having to deal with more that can break, more components that may need replacing, and a lot of increasingly obsolete parts and components that are no longer being modernized. Combustion engine R&D ground to a halt about fifteen years ago. All those fuel injection systems, and other computer intensive hardware that keeps them going is aging fast and not really being invested in a lot at this point. Sourcing replacement parts might get harder and more expensive over time.
> Tesla's reputation with regard to quality and repair costs.
Tesla lives in the limelight 100x more than any other car brand. Every mistake or possible scandal gets insanely amplified. They are by far the most repairable EV car and have the most durable engines. What they do not tell you is that in an EV the engine giving out is the more common scenario not the battery pack.
I think Nissan is a bit underrated here. I’m leasing an Ariya which has been great (including its charging curve, which is better than much of the competition) and feels more premium than you’d expect from the brand (to the point that the top trim is sometimes referred to as a “baby Infiniti”) with things like dual pane windows to cut down on road noise, as well as a proper heat pump where many still only have resistive heaters.
The 2026 Leaf takes many of the Ariya’s good qualities and one ups them at one of the lowest price points in the industry.
And both can be parked in spots that no model of Tesla will fit. The 3, Y, etc aren’t even a consideration for me since they won’t fit my garage. Tesla badly needs a proper small hatch option.
> The 2026 Leaf takes many of the Ariya’s good qualities and one ups them at one of the lowest price points in the industry.
Still costs $30k+ USD for base trim. Chinese cars are going for sub-$20k. Few governments want a repeat of the Japanese disruption of US/European car manufacturing, so they were banned before getting the opportunity.
I’d love to see a ~$20k EV too, but it’s gonna be tough to pull that off without China’s cheap labor and materials, at least until EVs start moving at the kind of volumes that traditional ICE and hybrid vehicles sell at.
We're never going to see a $20k car in the US again. Why would they sell any car for $20k, when they could sell it for $30k like they are doing now? They make more money selling fewer cars at higher prices, so no manufacturers are interested.
Prices are always set in a manner in order to optimize for margins.
Heck, the Volvo EX30 is for all intents and purposes a Zeekr X, yet sells for US$40k a year in Australia despite Australia having an automotive FTA with China (ie. no tariffs against Chinese exported cars).
On the other hand, a similarly specced Zeekr X sells for US$24k a year in Mainland China.
Tl;dr - you will never see a $20k EV in the US or Canada because even if a Chinese firm was allowed to export into the market, they would be leaving too much money on the table.
Household incomes are also much lower in China compared to Western countries. The kind of upper line BYD EV model that would appear to be a discount to a Western buyer is fairly unaffordable in a country where the median household incomes are around Yuan 2-3k (US$300-500) a month.
A US$15,000 car is equally as unaffordable for most Chinese just as a US$100,000 car is for most Americans.
Heck, the median household in China only spent Yuan 4k (~US$550) a year [0] on transportation and telecom (the Chinese government chose to club both into a single bracket) in 2024 - meaning at least 50% of Chinese households cannot afford the vast majority of EVs domestically sold in China.
as long as you don’t compare them to any car. teslas in 2025 belong in a museum lol
I own tesla s 2014, my neighbour has 2025, same car. tesla x was cool… in 2017. tesla 3 is like a worse looking kia and model y is like if you took tesla 3 and pumped some air in it.
2025 S is the same as your 2014 S? That’s some hilarious cope. Stop lying. You know it’s completely different. Yes, a model S is still a model S. And the F150 is still a pickup truck. Surprise!
If all you care about is looks, that is. Get out of any other car and you forget you can't just walk away from it and it'll shut itself off and lock the doors. I've had my Tesla driving friends drive my ICE car, and then not even turn off the engine when they go into the store because you don't need to do that with a Tesla.
> Get out of any other car and you forget you can't just walk away from it and it'll shut itself off and lock the doors.
A lot of cars have that. My (gulp) BMW EV for instance. Newer BMW ICE cars too.
But sure, some brands have had problems getting it to work for some dumb reason, recently, even the keyless entry part, which really has been a solved problem since at least the 2010s.
Seeing the BYD trucks and other BYD vehicles around where I live in Australia, as well as the other Chinese and Korean brands, they outnumber the Teslas on the street now.
BYD targets a different market. Tesla should compete with the likes of Polestar, Rivian, maybe Porsche if they dare but I'd take any of those before a Tesla any day of the week.
From what I can tell the Chinese are targeting the bottom of the market with cars that are essentially disposable. The ones to watch, IMO, are Hyundai/Kia. If they can sort out the reliability issues there's a lot of potential there.
Honestly I'm cautiously optimistic about VW, especially after they've started backing away from those awful capacitive buttons.
Sure - you start on a segment. Tesla started at the top of the market and got stuck trying to work down. BYD is starting at the bottom but they are making it pretty clear that’s a choice not a constraint.
Disposable as in unrepairable or difficult to repair, not disposable as in slow. Honestly, aside from people making bad faith arguments who would use disposable to imply slow?
Do me a favor and stop responding to my comments. Thanks.
I 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]).
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)
I 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.
Plug-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.
Manufacturer 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.
>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.
€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.
Is it insane? I'm working in this field, and I know how quickly you can come up with such a number if you are BMW and you are deathly afraid that someone will get electrocuted while working on your car, driving it or rescuing someone in a crash. It's a safety and liability issue, where they go to great lengths to actually re-certify a battery after crash. The whole thing is setup so, that even the dummy electricians in an average BMW shop can safely certify that this battery is still safe. It's a lot easier to kill yourself (or someone else) when working on a EV Battery than wet belt. Also a lot harder to repair said battery than wet belt. And that goes for all EVs and manufacturers that actually care about people (Tesla, demonstrably does not).
Yes, it is insane. It's a fuse. They must have some stats on how often those things need replacing and it should have been accessible. The customer has - when they buy the car - absolutely no way of knowing what kind of surprises like this there are hidden in the vehicle and besides, it kills the second hand market so you can only trade your vehicle to a BMW dealership where they can absorb those costs for a fraction of what it will cost an end user. BMW is a crap brand in spite of their reputation, we've had one leased Mini in our company and it is the very last time we do business with BMW, that thing was more in the shop than out of it with electrical issues. A friend had pretty much every BMW ever made since he got wealthy enough to afford them (car enthusiast) and his experience is much the same, but he keeps buying them.
It’s not a fuse. It’s a fuse plus guarantee plus liability.
> It’s a fuse plus guarantee plus liability.
This is BMW we're talking about. Their guarantees are worth absolutely nothing if my experience is anything to go by and them accepting liability is not something you should have to pay 4K for if other brands can do the same thing under $100.
I'm sure it depends on market, but I also know 100% that if they will certify the battery as safe, and then you get electrocuted when entering your car because the battery was not safe - they will be on the hook, in all developed markets. No one else, that cares about people safety, do the same thing for under $100. Even Tesla, that almost completely disregards any safety - be it "Full Self Driving" or "let's just change this, without checking if the battery is actually safe", does not do it under $100.
Do you know how difficult it is to get "electrocuted" in a battery powered vehicle ? I suggest you document yourself on the matter.
The only real issue in reality is thermal runaway
Given that I've tried to hold BMW to their warranty and was shafted I would not bet on that.
> It’s a fuse plus guarantee plus liability.
If that was the issue you wouldn't be allowed to change your wheels on the side of the road. They'd be locked down to the car and require a complex software procedure to guarantee they were swapped correctly and won't endanger lives.
This is a professional shop raising the issues. They are liable for how the repair is done. BMW is just liable to lose money if people can easily fix their car at some other, cheaper, professional garage.
Yes, as changing a tire is completely the same tool-and-knowledge level than repairing a EV Battery.
If you would see how EV Clinic "repairs" Tesla batteries, you would not say they have any concern for liability.
Fuses are not items that should be replaced normally - they are self-destroying emergency protections for the electrical system.
If it is protecting that end users can plug arbitrary loads into, that is one thing - but this doesn’t sound like that?
Why did that fuse blow? Because if that is not addressed, it’s likely to just blow again.
I think the people that replace fuses are aware of the potential issues around them. The article - which I'm sure you've read so don't take this as commentary on your comment - details that in other electric vehicles, for instance Tesla this is handled quite differently:
"While Tesla’s pyrofuse costs €11 and the BMS reset is around 50€, allowing the car to be safely restored, BMW’s approach borders on illogical engineering, with no benefit to safety, no benefit to anti-theft protection — the only outcome is the generation of billable labour hours and massive amounts of needless electronic/lithium waste."
It's not a choice between 'ridiculously inaccessible with the potential to create more damage than your car is worth' and 'push to reset'. There are many options in between, some of which would be a happy medium between the two that protect both safety, the environment and the customers' wallet. Which BMW's solution clearly isn't.
1) a lot of people aren’t aware of that issue with fuses, and just keep replacing them while burning up wiring/ignoring actual problems. Or even worse manually bypass. It may be the case in this scenario (a crash), which is why they are forcing an inspection because the car might actually burn to the ground.
2) ridiculous repair procedures are the norm for BMW. The only brand I’m aware of that is somewhat common and worse is Jaguar.
I get the complaint, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a bit like a Lotus or Lamborghini owner complaining about the rough ride.
Like what did you expect bro?
I'm getting a bit tired of your low grade trolling so welcome to my block list.
This fuse blows because a crash was detected and it is to protect the people inside the car and rescuers. The article argument is that it can blow even for small crashes where no damage to the battery occurs but rehabilitating the vehicle still incurs an outrageous cost. This is not a simple over current protection fuse.
$1000 for the module with the fuse seems ok to me. Another $3000 to link the module to the vehicle is the outrageous part.
They are not only linking it to the vehicle, they are doing a LOT of other checks on the battery - that it's not damaged in non-obvious ways. For that you need trained people (it's really high voltage and amperage stuff), tooling AND you really need to be sure you guarantee everything is OK.
Even the basic mechanical disconnect and lowering of the battery is far from simple (and requires A LOT more expensive tools than changing a wet belt - not because they are greedy, but because a lift that can lower such hevy battery costs a lot of money, mostly in materials), and that's not even opening it, making sure you don't get electrocuted when you work on it ect.
Ladies and gentlemen - behold the perfect consumer
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.
Pyrofuse will definitely blow on overcurrent.
What sort of cars do you drive?
I’ve never had a fuse blow on a car less than 20 years old, and then it was due to shorts due to damaged insulation and bad grounds due to corrosion, which are legit problems that need to be corrected.
Also, unlike breakers, fuses are generally immune to issues with HF interference and the like - they work through basic thermoelectric effects which iron out all but the most extreme issues. If you’re moving multiple amps in a situation described as ‘RF’, or ‘high frequency’ in a DC system that’s not just noise!
That’s a real problem that needs fixing!
Not fixing the underlying problem behind a blown fuse (or constantly tripping breaker) is how your car (or house or whatever) burns to the ground.
Or you have a Lucas, in which case my condolences.
I'll grant you that, I had a lot of beaters. A typical thing was that a lock solenoid pulled too much current in cold weather and consistently blew the central locking fuse.
Yep, might be there was a known issue that was addressed, at which put in a new one. But just replacing a fuse (or, simultaneously worse and better, just resetting a breaker) without further investigation is just kicking a very spicy can down the road.
I had a doozy of a trip issue on one project, a motor would occasionally (not always, no real pattern, hot/cold/etc. didn’t matter) trip the breaker, requiring a sparky to come out and open up the panel to reset it. We tried a bunch of things, megger-ing the motor, testing peak startup current on each phase with a fancy meter, checking phase-to-neutral current (Larger than you’d think! But this was normal, apparently.)
Everything was normal. In the end all we could think something was weird about the contactor. They took it out (I was off site at the time) and took it down to the substation to test it out.
With three phases connected to the contactor (and nothing connected on the other side) they energised the coil, and with an almighty bang it tripped the main incomer and took the entire sub offline.
Turns out there was a manufacturing defect in the contactor and sometimes for a millisecond, if the phase of the moon was right, it dead shorted two phases.
So there, even when you know everything, you don’t know everything.
Many people drive older cars worth less than £4000.
Sticking to old/cheap cars seems like an increasingly good option with so many scare stories about the pain and extreme expense of getting modern cars, particularly EVs, repaired.
And the impending ban on new ICE vehicles seems likely to lead to more older cars being kept on the road for a lot longer.
Yeah - a car hits a similar valuation around ~15 years of age, meaning a failure of this component limits the financially viable lifespan of a car to this amount - mechanics do engine rebuilds for less money.
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.
Yes, it's insane. People working in the field have their perception warped by what they see around them.
I mean, I don't think my perception is warped by what I see. But by "am I willing to risk that my repair will kill someone, because they wanted cheaper repair"? Or even if not kill, maybe just burn down their car (+ house,...). "Am I willing to use cheap tools, not rated for 800V (or 400V) god knows how many Amps?". Because this is not software development - you can be killed REALLY quickly working on a HV EV battery pack. It's no joke. For sure it'll cost more than working on a regular car, where there is danger, but a lot less. And that's just the basic thinking, without going deeper into why its more expensive to repair stuff like this.
The article and comment aren't debating whether the fuse plays an essential role. There's no reason to make the process of fixing the issue after a minor incident expensive, extremely convoluted, and very prone to error.
Making it a very complicated and expensive fix isn't what's saving your rescuer or mechanic from getting electrocuted while working around your car.
> There's no reason to make the process of fixing the issue after a minor incident expensive, extremely convoluted, and very prone to error.
Yes there is. Either nobody is engineering towards that aspect or it is a conscious decision, deliberating between two different buckets: bill-of-material cost per unit and estimated impact on your warranty & goodwill budget. Whatever is deemed to be cheaper will win.
Source: I work at an automotive OEM and one of my first projects almost two decades ago was how to anchor after-sales requirements into the engineering process. For example, we did things like introducing special geometry into the CAD models representing the space that needs to be left free so a mechanic can fit his hands with a tool inside. These would then be considered in the packaging process. If you consider these are two completely different organizations, it becomes a very tricky problem to solve.
It's like the manufacturer discovering to their complete surprise they are building a car. :-D
You seem to be ignoring the fact that the battery pack status after a crash is essentially unknown. It should go through a thorough and competently conducted safety inspection or it may kill someone in the future. Of course, this doesn't excuse extra red tape tacked into the procedure, but the core idea of an inspection is just unavoidable.
> 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 in an authorised service centre, system can accidentally delete the configuration and end up needing not only a new iBMUCP, but also all new battery modules.
> BMW refuses to provide training access for ISTA usage
Everything about this screams greed driven over-engineering. Since when are error prone processes and lack of access to information better for safety?
We live in a world where everyone justifies taking user hostile actions with some variation of "safety". Software and hardware are locked down, backdoored, need manufacturer approval to operate even when original parts are used, etc.
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 agree, I don't think that the over-engineering is greed driven - but the EU Manufacturers (but honestly, even other ones) have a really hard time with anything software based. Be it in car or outside of it. But BMW is far from the worst on that front.
P.S: VW ODIS original diagnostic is based on Eclipse :D
> 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.
Talk to car guys who are into ~2000s era or before cars. They usually have pretty solid recommendations.
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 repair cost.
If you're in Europe, you can consider Dacia. A lot of their stuff is old Renault parts that they've bought a license to use/manufacture. Get a pre-2023 model with the 1.6 non-turbo non-hybrid petrol engine - it's actually a Nissan HR16DE, which has been in use since 2004. Very reliable and low complexity.
And parts are ridiculously cheap and widely junkyard-available.
> Most people need a recommendation for something more current
Bless them, I would rather buy 10 shitboxes than one modern car (and that cost is about the same).
I’d rather not die in a very survivable crash.
Crash safety has become grossly exagerrated because the standards have been sharply rising last few years. Most 15yo cars will keep you safe just fine in a median crash.
A 15 year old car currently is going for 5 figures - not a shitbox. Not unless it’s a shelll of rust held together by bondo. Then your crash standards or whatever year are meaningless as the chassis may have 25% or less of its design strength.
Sorry for asking, are you in the USA? That might explain the 5 figures thing.
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.
I've got a '91 Toyota Carina and can attest that it's very easy to work on, my friend and I pulled the engine and gearbox in under two hours with hand tools, but I can't really speak for anything modern.
As a lifelong Toyota fan, I agree they are miserable to work on, especially the electronics. I have a stoplight switch issue in my 86 (from being rear-ended) that I have neglected because it would require pulling out the trunk assembly to fix.
The engineering praise comes from the fact that if you are taking care of it, you will probably never have to work on it until it's well into 6-digit mileage. This remains consistent through pretty much their entire line with the one exceptional black mark really being the RAV4.
I occasionally like to see what the highest mileage Toyota Prius I can find for sale is. They are obviously used as taxis and it's common to find one for sale with half a million miles.
Usually at that point someone puts in a new hybrid battery and sells it to someone else starting out driving Ubers.
Oh yes, the Prius gets even better lifetime because the hardest strain on the engine components is completely negated by the electric motor. If I ever ditch the little mini sports car, I will most likely replace it with another Prius.
In fairness most cars get taken for scrap with an engine which starts and runs. Even when they are running a bit rough it's more often fueling and ignition components than a mechanical problem with the engine components.
That said, the synergy drive is by design a very robust mechanical system. It has no dog gears, clutch or torque converter. I'm sure this contributes a lot to their long life.
> As a lifelong Toyota fan, I agree they are miserable to work on, especially the electronics.
I had a Toyota Yaris a couple of decades ago. Very reliable, very few issues. But some routine things like replacing headlights were completely bonkers. You had to wiggle your hand between some sharp metal parts to unscrew the back end of the armature. Sheesh, would it have been that prohibitive to add a few cm of extra space there?
>Tesla is remarkably well done. Simplicity is under rated.
https://electrek.co/2025/12/03/tesla-model-y-named-worst-car...
>So much so i bought one with the intention to keep for a looooong time.
Good luck with that.
I am affacted by this as well: the rear knuckle uniball bearing was broken after 3 years (Achsschenkel). Many MY here in Europe have this issue, due to bad parts or too hard suspension.
But there are two other things that make it a bit unfair for Tesla in comparison to other brands:
Often the cars fail official inspections because of rotten breaks - this happens when your drive carefully and the Tesla is using regenerative breaking instead of the real breaks. Simple solution is to force breaking from time to time (I.e. breaking in neutral). Another aspect is, that all the other brands have a mandatory inspection from the manufacturer before the cars will be tested by the independent check. This avoids that they will fail it, because the car will be repaired before it is checked by the independent inspection. This is not mandatory for Teslas.
> that all the other brands have a mandatory inspection from the manufacturer before the cars will be tested by the independent check.
I'm in Europe. Never heard of mandatory inspection before independent checks. How would that even work, or be enforced.
Service intervals. Other OEMs will prompt a service interval at X thousand miles/km to go pop in and have it looked at by a dealer, probably swap out your cabin air filter, upsell you on some new wiper blades, etc.
ICE vehicles would normally catch these issues sooner because you'd be pulling in a lot more often for oil changes (and a quick mechanical inspection is typically a courtesy at that time).
> Often the cars fail official inspections because of rotten br[e]ak[e]s - this happens when your drive carefully and the Tesla is using regenerative breaking instead of the real br[e]ak[e]s.
That's something that they should have taken into consideration when designing the car.
>Often the cars fail official inspections because of rotten breaks - this happens when your drive carefully and the Tesla is using regenerative breaking
Huh? Every EV uses recuperative braking, how is this special to Tesla?
> Huh? Every EV uses recuperative braking, how is this special to Tesla?
It‘s not. But there are some newer EVs (e.g. Mercedes and VW) that track brake usage and will periodically switch to using the disk brakes when there‘s danger of corrosion.
German TUV thinks Teslas are horrible because apparently nobody is servicing their brakes on a regular enough interval so every time Teslas get pulled in for their 2 year inspections after 3 years of ownership they keep failing out on brakes and suspension, but VWs are the pinnacle of perfection because they slam 10K service intervals in your face.
(Of note: I drive a hybrid vehicle, and over 125,000+ miles of ownership I have replaced my front brakes once and my rear brakes three times now in five years.)
I am no Tesla fanboy. But let’s face the truth. Teslas leave factory with end of line check. Then they are driven more than average cars for 3 years without any maintenance. Then go for check. And surprise surprise, the first model Ys were not well made. I bet with 1000-1500€ maintenance cost over these 3 years the TUV result would be dramatically different.
Btw, my petrol car had ugly rusty rear brakes. No way to pass the check. The car had manual handbrake and I used in every highway exit to slow down and removed rust.
Not 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.
Interestingly 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.
You can replace the fuse (not that easly) but for approximately the same price in a BMW. You do have to put in more work but the problem is with re-certifying the battery. Tesla does not care if the battery was damaged in the crash, they will (more or less) happily re-enable it. BMW decided that the only safe way is to re-certify the whole battery. I'm not saying it's the right decision, I think they over did it and VW does it better - but I do understand WHY they chose to do it so, and the WHY is not nearly as outrageous as a lot of people here think.
Tesla is the DIY's EV enthusiast car for a reason.
Yes mostly propaganda and being first/having a big driving base. They are notoriously closed/locked down from the diagnostic/reprogramming perspective.
> 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.
After reading the blog post I had the same thought. Doing an oil change on my F650GS motorcycle required removing the plastics, draining the oil from both the top and bottom of the motorcycle, removing a plate on the side of the engine after install the BMW specified oil redirection funnel, extracting the filter and reinstalling. The oil funnel had a legit BMW part number. Most of us either just made a mess or used a piece of a milk jug. Probably 15 fasteners and 2 drain plugs.
Comparable process on my Sv650: drain plug out. Drain plug in. Screw off filter. Screw on filter. Fill.
It's basically the plot of the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Back then they should just let the oil go on the side of road. No need to capture it
That reminds me of the Popular Science garage hint from 1963, explaining how to easily dispose of used motor oil: Dig a hole in the ground and fill it with fine gravel. Pour in the oil, and it will be absorbed into the ground before your next oil change.
https://books.google.com/books?id=myADAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA166#v=on...
Different times indeed.
The Swedish government created this informational video in 1964 on how to properly dispose of your trash when at sea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t03saJVFkv4. Apparently the trick is to make the trash sink rather than float.
People were doing it, at least make sure they do a good job.
Not too bad though all things considered, there are worse examples out there, like my old KTM adventure bike. Interestinlgy, the BMW R1200/1250/1300GS is actually simpler due to the boxer engine design.
The proper BMW oil change procedure is to remove the engine and flip it upside down.
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_...
You win some, you lose some. Comparable process on my E46 and E39: Drain plug out (potentially flipping a little dust cover out of the way). Drain plug in. Stand up because everything else happens up top. Unscrew filter housing. Replace filter element. Replace filter housing. Fill.
Hello, fellow E39 owner. Mine is my first BMW, and for all I hear about over-engineering from them, this has been a pretty straightforward car to work on. As "complicated" as the suspension is, for example, it was pretty simple to replace everything. I suppose that reputation has been earned from their more modern cars.
E90 is the same but you’re supposed to loosen the filter because otherwise some vacuum holds in an extra 0.5L of oil.
I like the top mount oil filters, less mess.
I won't argue with non EV engineering, but high voltage stuff in an EV is a lot harder problem to make safe in event of a crash and subsequent repair. I come out as a BMW apologist, but Vanja (evclinic Head boss) likes to be overly dramatic. BMW (and almost all other brands) are very afraid that someone will die when repairing/driving/rescuing someone from an EV and they go to great (and expensive) lengths to make sure the battery and the vehicle is as safe as possible. The fuse here is a small part, checks and certifications that go into making the battery truly safe (in scale, all edge cases ect) are a lot more than just the fuse. And that is expensive.
Thanks for pointing that out - at first I thought this was an act designed to turn cheap repairs impossible to drive new car sales, and force people into BMWs hugely expensive service network, but after learning this is for my own good, I'm relieved and happy to learn BMW is looking out for me.
evclinic overly relies on drama for their content
I worked with Vanja before EVs were mass produced, he is very driven and smart, but also eccentric. With his previous experience with Mercedes Electric repair he figured out that, sooner or later repair/knowledge/tools will get commoditized, so push at the start and try to get a big foothold/mindshare before this happens. Very few people actually have the knowledge to judge your work early on, so you can get very far if you are intentionally promoting yourself and behaving very confident.
His Tesla Battery cell repair stuff, anyone that was near a open battery knows it's fucking dangerous thing that has VERY low chance of actually working in medium term - but it gets him a lot of respect by clueless people. But he also does good stuff, but his image and reality are VERY different things.
Exactly, these are intentional decisions for German cars. They’re gorgeous, over-engineered, cutting edge pieces of machinery and the expense of being practical or repairable. The common understanding for decades has been if you’re buying a German luxury car as a daily driver and repair costs are something you even have to consider, you’re buying the wrong car.
Old BMW is nothing like new BMW - I know a few older folks who drive 20+year old BMWs and Audis with 500k+ km they drove off the salon parking lot - not because they can't afford a new one, but they like the current ones.
These old cars were engineered to a high standard, and designed to be maintained - while maintenance isn't cheap, with proper servicing and car, they could last forever.
This is entirely different - in the past few years BMW has become infamous for using low quality plastic fasteners that become brittle and break eventually, and all around penny-pinching everywhere.
It seems they even took the logical next step and installed draconian repair and service prevention measures.
They took the stance that once the car is out of the warranty period and isn't brough to an official service center, they stand to make no profit on it, so it should end up in the scrapyard in the shortest time possible.
This proves to me they don't understand their own market - people who buy expensive (70k+ish EUR) BMWs are all financial wizards who lease their cars, tax optimize them to the gills through legally grey methods and other schemes, and then resell them at the end of the lease.
This means they're able to drive them for like 300-400 euro a month cost - but only because of resale value. If they kill resale, then people won't buy them.
The amount of people who will put down 70k+ in cash at the salon is exceedingly small.
It'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).
Yet 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).
That's just because literally everything is an optional add-on on a BMW.
So many BMWs out there on the road without the indicators package because the owner cheaped out when buying it.
I didn't even know that was an option, never seen one that had it fitted.
My understanding is that the hardware is always installed but the dealer will not fill the liquid reservoirs unless the customer specifically requests (and pays) for it.
Sadly, they’re close to 100% caught up to automatic transmissions in North America.
Are you advocating for manual transmissions?
Are they switching to monthly subscriptions?
They have not over-engineered anything in this case - they have deliberately taken user-hostile actions, going out of the way to prevent repair, and turn cheap repairs into very expensive ones.
- They welded the case: even the engine block that experiences combustion pressures and temps is just bolted together - why?
- They even outdid (pre-R2R) Apple in every aspect - proprietary components, everything put together on the same PCB, with third party replacements impossible, replacement parts locked out cryptographically, and 'anti-theft' (anti-repair) systems installed so even authorized dealers are at a risk of bricking the vehicle - and third party shops can't even repair it.
- They are German so in the EU they are above the law (or more accurately they write the law) - but it'd be nice if us Europeans had their own Louis Rossmans and actionable right to repair laws, and the EU did something beyond bullying foreign tech companies, and applied the same level of scrutiny to domestic ones as well.
This is a comical level of evil - they know that due to the proprietary components (that you can't get at an auto parts store), when these vehicles become 10-15 years old, they will be either uneconomical to repair, with repair costs exceeding the value of the vehicle, no third party parts, no possibility of third-party service - people will resort to stealing these cars to source replacement parts.
So they installed a system that bricks the vehicle should it detect tampering - which might happen if somebody tries to fix their own vehicles.
And let me reiterate, Germans are above the law in the EU - the only reason Dieselgate became a huge scandal is that the US found out about it - please, American friends, could you do another 'gate' about this - its for the good of all.
I think it's a German thing to be honest. I've wrenched on Mercedes Benz and VW personally, and I've heard horror stories from Audi as well.
My merc exposure is both on very old (70s) and modern. So I would actually argue that over engineering shit is in their DNA, they don't know how not to do it.
My brother had an old W123 body Merc for a while. It had fucking vacuum lines running to all the doors for central locking. I had a SsangYong with an old-school Merc OM617 diesel engine in it. Great engine, and it was relatively easy to work on, but the oil filter was positioned such that you can't replace it without spilling oil all over the engine bay. Infuriating!
Hard to maintain systems, whether it's hardware or software, are underengineered if anything.
I love this take. Thanks for sharing it. Puts into words why sometimes I can spend a lot of time thinking about how to improve a system: trying to save future effort.
People get upset when a BMW is expensive to repair, but they're misunderstanding the sophisticated German engineering. You're not supposed to repair it. You're supposed to throw it away and buy a new one.
In Germany BMW's target market are company cars. Having the company pay for your car has tax benefits here even if you also use it outside work, so the company giving you a nice car that gets replaced by a new model every three years is a sought-after benefit. Those cars are indeed sold to the next idiot before they develop any issues
I missed the memo when putting everything together on one impossible to repair PCB and then gluing/sealing it permanently became 'sophisticated German engineering' instead of bottom-shelf junk.
/s or /$ What's the best tag for your post?
The sophisticated engineering works (or worked?) mostly fine if the piece of machinery is operated in the extremely narrow "just right" operating ranges the sophisticated engineer defined. To much dust in the air? One too many potholes? Not the premium brand oil? There goes your sophisticated machinery.
Times have changed and now the fuse replacement is not just a mater of over engineering, something someone put together thinking it's a technically perfect process. It became a revenue stream. Car designed also by accountants.
The 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.)
It 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.
UN 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.
What I meant more is that you need more and more specialized tools (according to the manufacturers). My previous ford needed a special (expensive!) bracket to keep the drivetrain in place if you want to do anything on the engine which makes home service less likely.
These regulations do not mean you need 25k in tooling, but that is what it has come to. And thus there is a blooming (mostly Chinese/Russian) aftermarket tooling business with sketchy software you want to run in a VM.
You're going to have to explain dragging the UN in here.
This 2022 BMW X1 my wife drives is the last BMW we will ever own. £395 for an oil change. £180 for brake fluid. £500 a year road tax.
Meanwhile my 2011 Prius continues to pass its MOT without fail, needs just the usual very affordable consumables, gets 50% higher MPG and actually has a larger cargo capacity than the X1.
>actually has a larger cargo capacity than the X1
You have just discovered that SUVs are large because some people want their cars to be large. They come with all the downsides of that and not much of the upsides.
They don't come with all the downsides. They externalise the reduced forward visibility for people behind you, the headlights spinning onto other users' cabins, the running over of toddlers, and, my favourite, the driving in the middle of the road rather than risk getting mud on their fucking tyres
No tax rate is too high. Rebates for agricultural workers maybe.
Sounds like you're getting it serviced by a BMW dealership? I take my PHEV 3-series to a local independent mechanic, and the entire cost is usually less than you're paying for oil alone. Also, because it's a hybrid, the road tax rate is very advantageous.
Lol no way do BMW owners commonly know this. Most buy the car because it says BMW on it and they think that means quality.
I 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.
Yeah but they will wrongly justify for themselves that because BMW is quality, the repairs will not be so frequent.
Who dictates the EU regulation? Hello?
What they mean by the EU-bashing is two things:
1. The EU de facto mandates the car manufacturers have to develop and sell cars that produce less CO2 (mostly by the way of fines for higher polluting vehicles). This led to the development of hybrid ('mild-hybrid', 'full-hybrid', and PHEV) and EV vehicles.
2. The manufacturers tend to both complicate the technology and lock the stuff down, so it's not easily repairable. This has its own enviromental price, and EV Clinic says this is not accounted for. That's not completely fair as on one hand there are EU repairability directives that address this but on the other we still want to have some degreee of market competition and in the end the market should punish those manufacturers (as it is already doing, I think).
One thing I want to add is that the EU also mandates real-world-fuel-consumption-measurement (OBFCM) devices in new cars and if that is followed to its logical conclusion and the manufacturers pressure is resisted, this will mean the end of hybrids as the real-world data is horrible for them.
https://zecar.com/reviews/plug-in-hybrid%27s-real-emissions-...
It's clickbait, but at the very least it's not LLM slop, considering how they spelled the word "theoretically".
Correct, it isn't it's more a "German Boomer Engineering problem"
Though I'd say this is 80% of the problem, the safety fuse thing is needed but it probably takes a while for companies to get it right
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.
Is that $10k the list price, or have you actually seen a recent invoice from a mechanic for a Model 3 battery swap?
I'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...
https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/183if34/what_i...
https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModel3/comments/1blczt1/what_a...
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/tesla-battery-replace...
https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/tesla-model-3-battery-re...
I was quoted $15k in a Tesla service center for a Model 3 battery replacement, with parts and labor.
Wait another year. CATL is destroying the battery market with their new LFP and sodium batteries. Prices are collapsing.
Doesn't sound like a market being "destroyed" to me, it sounds like a market being a market.
It’s an urban legend.
EV Clinic identified some issues in Teslas too, for example this one: https://x.com/evclinic/status/1994876173277335745
> The moment you have any issue at all with it, the car will be considered totaled.
Huh? The taycan has an 8-year/100k mile battery warranty. How many 100k+ mile carreras do you see for sale on eBay?
Quite a few actually, regular 911s often end up being daily drivers and given Porsche build them to last there's plenty of high milers out there.
Carrera is not Taycan. Why would you equate both? Different cars with different targets.
It's like the S60, VW W12, old V12 Continentals, etc. If it's expensive to maintain no one wants to buy it off you so you get hit with massive depreciation costs. You can get a 20y/o 'no issues' 500+hp V12 Continental for 10k where I'm at. They've had a brutal cost/year and cost/mile.
The warranty isn't going to cover underside damages caused by going over a shallow bump
Last 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.
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. 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> electronic propulsion is pretty simple
So simple that it’s usually called electric propulsion.
EV 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.
Many 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
My 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.
EV 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?
Yeah, 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...
Article: https://www.motor.com/magazine-summary/vapor-tales-understan...
However when you advertise your car as eco friendly, you should be forbidden to create a non-repairable apple phone on wheels
Teslas 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.
As 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?
The 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/. 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.
+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.
Early 70s: Haynes hardcopy with oil stains, "... Reassembly is the reverse procedure thereof."
Reading in reverse is surprisingly hard
> I wonder how we can make automakers make more repairable cars.
New mandatory test suite: Have executives/leading personnel do common repairs and time it. Publish min/max/avg time next to fuel efficiency and safety rating.
Repairability would be top priority overnight.
> I wonder how we can make automakers make more repairable cars
Mandate longer warranty durations?
I mean, may not help with damage due to collisions, but there are plenty of other reasons why a car may need reparing..
“ I wonder how we can make automakers make more repairable cars.”
This is what insurance companies are supposed to do if they price things properly.
On the Model 3, you have to drop the HV battery pack to replace the brake lines that prematurely rust in wintery climates, so Tesla is not fully immune either.
And check some videos of what you have to do to swap the door-actuating motor (which gets guaranteed water ingress) in the front doors (yes, not the gullwings) of a Model X.
Battery drop in Tesla is 30 min job tho.
EVs 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)
None 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.
One 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.
PHEV in the title is plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. Different from a pure EV.
This is true. EVs are much simpler than ICE, and PHEV basically have all the complexity of EV+ICE.
PHEV 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.
And 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.
PHEVs 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.
Probably the one type of PHEV that should survive is basically a BEV with builtin backup generator. One that's not necessarily powerful enough to drive you directly at full speed, but enough to basically eliminate range limitation of a (cheaper and smaller) battery by continuously charging it when needed. Maybe this 'backup generator' can even be made as a removable option.
I'm thinking of a semi-rural use case, when your typical daily trip is 20-50 km, but the charging infrastructure is poor and occasionally you do need to drive 200-300 km in winter.
Your 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.
Plus 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!
Does 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.
Well 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.
I 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
In 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
It's not an EV issue. It's a modern car issue.
The 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.
In 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.
I 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).
I am, perhaps naively, hoping the Slate pickup can be better about this.
Are ICE cars really any better with BMW? The used values indicate they are very expensive to maintain.
The 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.
You'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.
What are the biggest overcomplicating issues with something like the Nissan Leaf? Especially on something like a 2018-2025 S trim?
PHEVs 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.
This 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.
Absolutely, 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.
The 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.
This 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.
I would argue peak car was a little earlier, maybe the 2000-2010 decade. Fewer screens to fail, analog buttons and dials. Airbags, and ABS for safety but without the additional computers/screens.
Entirely agree, although I think it varies by make / model. Roughly look for whenever a particular car got OBDII, which makes diagnostics way easier (and was kinda the perfect level of digitization, again in my opinion), through (as you say) whenever they started digitizing the cockpit and/or (which oddly - maybe? - coincide, in my experience) manufacturers stopped considering ease of maintenance in engineering decisions. In general late-1990s through 2005-2010. Cars since that decade (or so) are more sophisticated, at the expense of far, far shorter useful lifespans.
Depending on the make, rust-protection wasn’t quite there yet.
4th gen 4Runner w/ a 2UZ-FE
Still got my E46!
I 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.
Nobody is currently selling new, small pickups. Maybe if the Slate materializes, that'll prove the market and we'll see them again.
In the meantime, 200x Ford Ranger or 200x Chevy S-10 are the last of the small pickups where you can get a 6 foot bed and a single row of seats. (Afaik)
I sold my small white pickup once, and ended up with a different small white pickup a few years later. I do enough (small) truck things that having a truck on hand just in case is worth it for me; but even with minimal miles per year there's certainly added expense from maintenance some of which ends up being time based, registration fees, and incremental costs for liability insurance on another vehicle. For quite a while, my family vehicles were a 4-door car/wagon and a small pickup, but that doesn't work for everyone; I feel better served with a minivan, a 4-door phev, and a pickup (and a silly old rear engined vw van with only the front seats, mostly for midlife crisis, but also handy for picking up large items that don't want to be inside for transport)
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 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.
You might consider acquiring a used model that meets your needs, then spend $ to zero-time the important stuff. In 2023, I decided not to buy a new car, but to re-engine (and other stuff) my 1999 4Runner. Really happy I did.
I would like a pickup (spouse -> serious gardener), have decided to get something simple & used, then put another $20K into it.
> 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.
There's no market for new small work trucks because nobody is willing to sell them. Not because nobody is willing to buy them.
People who need work trucks end up getting f-150 or similar, work vans, or buying used. There was a used car lot in my old neighborhood that specialized in work trucks. It would be 75% white single cab trucks, 20% white panel vans, and then 5% work trucks and vans in colors.
That must be the invisible hand of the free market at work. ;)
Well CAFE standards say don't bother making small vehicles. And manufacturers say oh darn, we have to make the vehicles with lots of profits? Well sorry small truck buyers, we're out.
Slate?
They're talking about this I'm pretty sure!
https://www.telotrucks.com/
CAFE standards have made that pretty hard. The trucks got bigger to hold more complex engine setups to boost mileage, coinciding with preferences shifting to super crew cabs because buying a new truck is basically the same price as buying a luxury vehicle.
I did own a 1994 Dodge ram up until a few years ago, but it needed new brake lines and there was so much rust coming off the frame I honestly wasn't sure I trusted it anymore, and the cost of the brake lines was probably more than it was worth at that point.
Frame damage apart, brake lines (in general, though I haven't worked specifically on a Dodge) are a reasonably straightforward DIY job. Not at all saying you made the wrong decision abandoning that particular car, just encouraging others reading this to evaluate the cost of a brake system replacement more, um... creatively, and least do some research. Basic car repair is an immanently nerdy pastime, and can save one an immense amount of money - especially on that particular era of automobiles, which are typically pretty satisfying to wrench on.
Maybe Slate? https://www.slate.auto/
A new 1980's mini truck would be awesome. If only...
The sad part is that the plastics from around that time are starting to fail.
That E92 M3 LCI is now a 14 year old car.
I've got a supercharged E92 M3. I'll own that thing till I die, funnest car ever.
PHEV is plug-in hybrid, for those not familiar with terminology.
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Right 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.
It 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.
If 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.
Bumping 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
100%. 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.
The 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.
replacing 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.
This 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.
This behavior of locking down everything needs to be regulated, not only for car manufacturers but also for everything else
Let's start with smartphones.
Yeah 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.
my 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...
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.
None 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.
Tesla is leading in car privacy, look at mozilla's report.
I 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.
There 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.
The Ultimate Leasing Machine, as it were
I 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.
Lots of the traditional car manufacturers now have good options: Renault, Nissan, Kia, and Hyundai's EVs seem to be particularly well regarded. I'd definitely opt for any of those over a Tesla given Tesla's reputation with regard to quality and repair costs.
If you ignore cost, then Tesla's cars are probably still better at this point, but the gap doesn't seem that large.
Even BMW has a few electrical cars that aren't half bad. The main problem is that they are compromise cars that can be sold as ICE, PHEV, or full EV.
That means more complexity, sub optimal design, less efficiency, etc. However, competition is indeed brutal right now. Tesla did something that only some other manufacturers have managed to copy so far: make cars that are EV only from the ground up. Love them or hate them, they don't make any design compromises to allow space for a combustion engine, a generator, or whatever. There's no room for a transmission, a fuel tank, or even an engine compartment. That's where the Frunk goes. The result is a car that's simpler, more efficient, and more optimal for what it does.
BYD did the same. Kia and Hyundai are having a lot of success with their electric only line of cars. And in the EU Renault and the Stellantis group have some decent and competitive low cost models on the market. Tesla's advantage is rapidly evaporating here.
Japanese car makers have been more conflicted on this. But Nissan's collaboration with Renault is giving them access to the right tech to adjust course. And even Toyota is now using a lot of Chinese made drive trains and components to finally offer EVs that are actually not that bad. The danger is of course that "made in Japan" has very limited value in this world if all your core tech is effectively Chinese and European. That's something that might change in the next years of course.
Cost wise, buying a compromise car means having to deal with more that can break, more components that may need replacing, and a lot of increasingly obsolete parts and components that are no longer being modernized. Combustion engine R&D ground to a halt about fifteen years ago. All those fuel injection systems, and other computer intensive hardware that keeps them going is aging fast and not really being invested in a lot at this point. Sourcing replacement parts might get harder and more expensive over time.
> Hyundai's EVs seem to be particularly well regarded
lol.
you wanna search about kona's gearbox and iccu's beforehand.
i'm not going to get into software.
> Tesla's reputation with regard to quality and repair costs.
Tesla lives in the limelight 100x more than any other car brand. Every mistake or possible scandal gets insanely amplified. They are by far the most repairable EV car and have the most durable engines. What they do not tell you is that in an EV the engine giving out is the more common scenario not the battery pack.
I think Nissan is a bit underrated here. I’m leasing an Ariya which has been great (including its charging curve, which is better than much of the competition) and feels more premium than you’d expect from the brand (to the point that the top trim is sometimes referred to as a “baby Infiniti”) with things like dual pane windows to cut down on road noise, as well as a proper heat pump where many still only have resistive heaters.
The 2026 Leaf takes many of the Ariya’s good qualities and one ups them at one of the lowest price points in the industry.
And both can be parked in spots that no model of Tesla will fit. The 3, Y, etc aren’t even a consideration for me since they won’t fit my garage. Tesla badly needs a proper small hatch option.
> The 2026 Leaf takes many of the Ariya’s good qualities and one ups them at one of the lowest price points in the industry.
Still costs $30k+ USD for base trim. Chinese cars are going for sub-$20k. Few governments want a repeat of the Japanese disruption of US/European car manufacturing, so they were banned before getting the opportunity.
Australia managed to destroy its car industry on its own.
The latest BYD Atto 1 is AUD27K including all on-road costs.
Tesla 3 base model is AUD60K, BYD Seal base model is AUD50K.
You guys are missing out big time by not allowing Chinese cars.
Atto1 is like half size of model 3 tho.
I’d love to see a ~$20k EV too, but it’s gonna be tough to pull that off without China’s cheap labor and materials, at least until EVs start moving at the kind of volumes that traditional ICE and hybrid vehicles sell at.
We're never going to see a $20k car in the US again. Why would they sell any car for $20k, when they could sell it for $30k like they are doing now? They make more money selling fewer cars at higher prices, so no manufacturers are interested.
https://evmagazine.com/news/how-chinas-byd-is-using-ai-to-sc... , it's automation and vertical integration. It shows what was always possible if companies focused on product instead of stock buybacks. Fuck Jack Welch.
Nothing to do with cheap labor/materials and everything to do with a very integrated and highly sophisticated and competitive supply chain.
Prices are always set in a manner in order to optimize for margins.
Heck, the Volvo EX30 is for all intents and purposes a Zeekr X, yet sells for US$40k a year in Australia despite Australia having an automotive FTA with China (ie. no tariffs against Chinese exported cars).
On the other hand, a similarly specced Zeekr X sells for US$24k a year in Mainland China.
Tl;dr - you will never see a $20k EV in the US or Canada because even if a Chinese firm was allowed to export into the market, they would be leaving too much money on the table.
Household incomes are also much lower in China compared to Western countries. The kind of upper line BYD EV model that would appear to be a discount to a Western buyer is fairly unaffordable in a country where the median household incomes are around Yuan 2-3k (US$300-500) a month.
A US$15,000 car is equally as unaffordable for most Chinese just as a US$100,000 car is for most Americans.
Heck, the median household in China only spent Yuan 4k (~US$550) a year [0] on transportation and telecom (the Chinese government chose to club both into a single bracket) in 2024 - meaning at least 50% of Chinese households cannot afford the vast majority of EVs domestically sold in China.
[0] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202501/t202501...
"I think it continues to be under-appreciated how much of a lead Tesla still has in EVs".
As long as you don't compare them to BYD etc.
as long as you don’t compare them to any car. teslas in 2025 belong in a museum lol
I own tesla s 2014, my neighbour has 2025, same car. tesla x was cool… in 2017. tesla 3 is like a worse looking kia and model y is like if you took tesla 3 and pumped some air in it.
2025 S is the same as your 2014 S? That’s some hilarious cope. Stop lying. You know it’s completely different. Yes, a model S is still a model S. And the F150 is still a pickup truck. Surprise!
If all you care about is looks, that is. Get out of any other car and you forget you can't just walk away from it and it'll shut itself off and lock the doors. I've had my Tesla driving friends drive my ICE car, and then not even turn off the engine when they go into the store because you don't need to do that with a Tesla.
> Get out of any other car and you forget you can't just walk away from it and it'll shut itself off and lock the doors.
A lot of cars have that. My (gulp) BMW EV for instance. Newer BMW ICE cars too.
But sure, some brands have had problems getting it to work for some dumb reason, recently, even the keyless entry part, which really has been a solved problem since at least the 2010s.
> A lot of cars have that. My (gulp) BMW EV for instance. Newer BMW ICE cars too.
Yeah, the recent BMWs (both EV and ICEVs) have Apple/Android CarKey UWB support, which is much more reliable and precise than Bluetooth.
When my buddy got his first Tesla back in 2018 he had a ICE rental for some reason and he left it running in the driveway all day once on accident.
The complete lack of awareness with which some people operate cars never ceases to amaze me.
How is a persons behavior a positive feature for a car?
My understanding is that Tesla 16V LV batteries have a similar crash lockout in the BMS that also requires workarounds to reset: https://openinverter.org/wiki/Tesla_16v_li-ion_battery
The BMW neue klasse is far superior to the latest Teslas.
Both in software hardware and handing.
https://youtu.be/P-H-GJaGiUg?si=eq8YWy8gyJ5YS99X
I think it even surpasses Chinese brands.
i think they look absolutely horrible both inside and out. but, of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
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I think the (negative) point is the cost of ownership. European cars are very cool, if you can afford to keep them running
Seeing the BYD trucks and other BYD vehicles around where I live in Australia, as well as the other Chinese and Korean brands, they outnumber the Teslas on the street now.
Add to that because Tesla allows for access to its repair manuals and service tools unlike most OEMs.
BYD targets a different market. Tesla should compete with the likes of Polestar, Rivian, maybe Porsche if they dare but I'd take any of those before a Tesla any day of the week.
> Even BMW can't make something that is practical.
Hyperbole, but essentially true
The Japanese beat everybody when ICE ruled. Their cars were miles ahead on every measure except snob value.
In the the of EV it will be the Chinese. Tesla has no hope of keeping up, they are already fallen behind on snob value, their cars have none now.
I think the comment about BYD drivers preferring Tesla is out of date now. Ti e will tell, but my money is on China
From what I can tell the Chinese are targeting the bottom of the market with cars that are essentially disposable. The ones to watch, IMO, are Hyundai/Kia. If they can sort out the reliability issues there's a lot of potential there.
Honestly I'm cautiously optimistic about VW, especially after they've started backing away from those awful capacitive buttons.
BYD has the world’s fastest car now. I think they are targeting the market, not a market.
And 9 times out of 10 when BYD is brought up people are talking about their low priced cars like the Dolphin or Seagull, not their halo car.
Sure - you start on a segment. Tesla started at the top of the market and got stuck trying to work down. BYD is starting at the bottom but they are making it pretty clear that’s a choice not a constraint.
From what I can tell the Chinese are targeting the bottom of the market with cars that are essentially disposable.
What actual information or data leads you to believe this?
All wheel drive, 375mi range and sub 4 second 0-60mph is disposable to you? I'm guessing your car is disposable by comparison.
https://www.byd.com/us/car/han-ev
Disposable as in unrepairable or difficult to repair, not disposable as in slow. Honestly, aside from people making bad faith arguments who would use disposable to imply slow?
Do me a favor and stop responding to my comments. Thanks.
Disposable as in unrepairable
Again, what information or source or evidence leads you think this?
I 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
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41275593
[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41275541
China is also copying SpaceX's 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)
Uh have Tesla discovered how to make doors that align with the car body? All 4 of them in the same car?
[Note that this is not a BMW endorsement. I would only drive one if someone else pays for the car, insurance and maintenance.]
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what is phev?
I 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.
Plug-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.
PHEW!
Plug in hybrid.
Is this an issue with all BMW PHEVs or just one model from one year?
Manufacturer 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.
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erste mal?
> Theoraticaly
> missleading
Please check spelling before posting
Just buy a Tesla, it's the most sane thing you could do for peace of mind