[jinzo]

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).

[jacquesm]

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.

[prepend]

They have no stats because the entire platform is new and different. I would guess they have a very poor prediction model.

[seec]

Well, he buys them for the same reason people buy Apple products: very performant, look good, and carry a lot of social status.

Otherwise, they make some very questionable engineering decisions for sure. On their motorbikes, you often have to disassemble half the bodywork just to change the battery; that's just beyond stupid. But like Apple, their products are kind of unique, so people deal with it.

[tengwar2]

BMW bikes have improved. It used to be with the last of the dry clutch flat twins that when the clutch failed (and it would fail), you had to remove the back half of the bike. Literally. As in not figuratively, to avoid doubt. The front half would be left standing, like some bisected cow artwork. Apparently it was a two day job.

[jacquesm]

Funny, I posted a pic to exactly that further down in the thread.

[seec]

I mean, they are generally excellent motorcycles. Their monocylinders are super smooth with great handling.

But often you have to deal with those weird engineering decisions that make repairs annoying. My local garage is a BMW car specialist, and it appears that it's basically the same deal.

Funnily enough, in my youth I visited the BMW factory in Munich, and I was amazed back then. But the maintenance fails to amaze as much, haha.

[lazide]

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.

[jacquesm]

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.

[bradfa]

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.

[jinzo]

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.

[20after4]

The lift costs about as much as one of their repair bills. That can hardly justify the cost.

[taneq]

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.

[11mariom]

> Fuses are not items that should be replaced normally - they are self-destroying emergency protections for the electrical system.

Next time when the fuse switch in my home I'll buy new home. I shouldn't normally switch on auto-fuse again!

Fuse blows, so you know something went wrong, you check corresponding part, fix it, and enable/change fuse. Nothing special. In home perspective - it could be plugging too many energy needy receivers into one outlet.

[lazide]

That is literally exactly what I’m saying.

In that situation, if you bypassed the fuse, or just kept replacing them without figuring out why it blew (too much load on a specific circuit), you very well might burn your house down by catching the wiring inside your walls on fire.

If it’s something that it is easy to connect loads too, then that is probably not super unusual and easy to fix, because people do that all the time, and you know what is happening and how to fix it. But you do need to fix it.

If it isn’t, then that is very concerning, because something caused that overload, and without that fuse your wires would have caught on fire instead of the fuse blowing. Inside your walls.

Either way, fuses are an emergency measure to stop the wires from destroying themselves from overload. They are destroyed in the process of saving your wires.

And if you are doing this all the time? You’ve got a very big problem brewing.

[torginus]

Ladies and gentlemen - behold the perfect consumer

[potato3732842]

Then why name it a goddamn fuse then?

[prepend]

The article gave examples for why the fuse blows - it falsely thinks the vehicle was in an accident and trips. Hitting a pothole or a rabbit.

It is unlikely to blow again under normal use.

[kristjank]

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.

[jinzo]

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.

[LorenPechtel]

The problem is not that the pyrofuse blows. Safer to be paranoid when it's the the battery pack. The insanity is what it takes to replace it, including throwing away perfectly good parts because of the anti-theft protections.

[idiotsecant]

Pyrofuse will definitely blow on overcurrent.

[jacquesm]

Usually not by itself though, and if it does that makes it a hybrid fuse, one that has both a pyrotechnical disconnector and a thermal/overcurrent one.

[lazide]

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.

[kristjank]

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.

[taneq]

It’s not a fuse. It’s a fuse plus guarantee plus liability.

[jacquesm]

> 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.

[monegator]

They'll refuse warranty on the XDrive if you don't use approved brand and model of tyres so... my bet is on them wanting to extort all the precious money they can from their poor customers

[OptionOfT]

They'll refuse warranty if the difference between thread is too much between front and back as that causes wear of the clutches. Just like you should have the same tire on the same axle.

Or if the tires are not the right size, especially in staggered setups.

If you come from a car that is FWD with AWD capabilities, it doesn't matter as much.

But BMW (at least the ones with the engine mounted longitudinally) which have xDrive are permanent AWD.

[petre]

This is why the Chinese brands will eat their cake.

[jinzo]

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.

[Glawen]

Do you realise 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

[amelius]

Yeah, what is the max voltage of these batteries?

[jinzo]

What are you talking about? Yes I know how quickly I can get electrocuted when the battery pack is open. I just need to touch two exposed busbars ~30cm apart. Or my tool needs to touch them.

[ricardobeat]

They mention in the article that replacing the same fuse on a Tesla cost €11.

[jacquesm]

Given that I've tried to hold BMW to their warranty and was shafted I would not bet on that.

[semanticist]

There's a difference between BMW ignoring their warranty and who gets found liable during the wrongful death lawsuit after the mechanic gets electrocuted due to poor/unsafe EV design.

I'm sure BMW would love to not be liable in those cases if they could just decide not to be liable, but inspections and fuses presumably turn out to be cheaper than the settlements they'd otherwise be paying.

[close04]

> 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.

[jinzo]

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.

[close04]

> Yes, as changing a tire is completely the same tool-and-knowledge level than repairing a EV Battery.

I think you are intentionally misrepresenting this and moving the goalposts to make your point. GP blamed safety and liability for the way the process looks like, not the complexity of the task. When it comes to safety you bet that an improperly installed or inspected wheel or tire can be dangerous.

A short internet search tells me [1][2] that some sort of tire malfunction causes tens of thousands of accidents and kills hundreds of people every year in the US alone. That doesn't include wheel malfunctions (e.g. wheel coming off). Yet this isn't locked behind some manufacturer approval and proprietary tools.

How BMW chose to approach this is profit driven. The old money printing machine from ICE maintenance, repairs, and spare parts is slowing down so they come up with new ways of extracting money. Like making the lives harder and more expensive for any non-BMW shop to do repairs. They're not alone in this, other brands do the same.

> If you would see how EV Clinic "repairs" Tesla batteries, you would not say they have any concern for liability.

More moving of goalposts mixed with not understanding what liability is, and where it belongs. So you tell me what's Tesla's liability when EV Clinic "repairs" a battery.

[1] https://www.smithlawcenter.com/practice-areas/defective-tire...

[2] https://www.safetyresearch.net/nhtsa-gets-real-on-tire-fatal...

[jinzo]

> I think you are intentionally misrepresenting this and moving the goalposts to make your point. GP blamed safety and liability for the way the process looks like, not the complexity of the task. When it comes to safety you bet that an improperly installed or inspected wheel or tire can be dangerous.

Sorry that you feel that way, it was not my intention. But improperly installed or inspected wheel or tire is A LOT less dangerous than crashed EV Battery. And in EU you have a lot of effort going even into this, Police can inspect (and does) the tire from the outside (+ regular mostly yearly MOTs). All new cars have to have pressure sensors in the tire. So I would say EU (where EV Clinic is present) is making a lot of the same strides to make everything around tires safer. And believe it or not, if you go buy any new car in EU, drive it 5 minutes and swap the wheels yourself, it'll flag an error! As the wheels need to have appropriate pressure sensors - that also need to be programmed into the vehicle for a lot of makes.

You think it's profit driven, I don't. Agree to disagree.

> More moving of goalposts mixed with not understanding what liability is, and where it belongs. So you tell me what's Tesla's liability when EV Clinic "repairs" a battery.

I was aiming at EV Clinics liability, not Teslas. And I can guarantee you that both Tesla and BMW take into consideration the bad press if someone, even non official mechanic, repairs their cars and then they kill someone/catch fire. Of course Tesla a lot less than BMW, I even have a feeling that this contributed more to how BMW does things, than profit.

[torginus]

If you and BMW are correct - if we take it for a fact that a simple fender-bender can make batteries develop life-threatening faults, which absolutely require a 4k euro inspection that involves complete disassembly and specialist equipment, then that means that EVs are unsuitable for public use.

So either all EVs need to be scrapped forever, or BMW needs to engineer a more tractable solution to the problem, or BMW is overreacting and overcharging customers.

[jinzo]

No, from my experience, a simple fender-bender does not cause this.

[RealityVoid]

Yeah, that's OP's point then, that a fender bender causing this is an overreaction from BMW

[jinzo]

We don't have the full picture. Like I mentioned too many times in this thread, I know EV Clinic head boss Vanja likes to overreact and twists stuff to fit into his narrative. Not saying this one was not a fender bender, but I take all his stuff with a grain of salt. Mostly because I worked with him AND work on the same stuff he does - and it usually doesen't match up to what I'm seeing to the degree he 'dramaticizes'.

[torginus]

In the article, it was mentioned that the issue can be caused by hitting the curb, there's a guy in the comments who says his VW grenaded itself this exact way just while charging (luckily his car was in warranty).

[bluescrn]

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.

[jacquesm]

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.

[jandrese]

Depends on the parts situation. As someone who works on my own cars I've become increasingly distressed at the car parts industry. Even OEM parts, when they are still available, seem to have had a dramatic decrease in quality over the past couple of decades. This is even assuming the correct part is shipped in the first place, which is another problem that has become entirely too common, especially in an age where everything is computerized. So many times you get a box with the correct part number on the outside but the wrong part inside.

If you have the parts and the will it's possible to keep any car running close to forever. That said if you've gotten to the point where the frame is totally rusted out then maybe it's time to consider moving on.

[jacquesm]

Plastics. Those are the hard to source bits. Plastic doesn't stay plastic for ever and NOS can be dried out just as much as the bits that are in the car.

Most other things are easy to source, and anything made of steel can be fixed (zero rust, so far).

[jandrese]

1997 car with no rust? I'm guessing you don't live in an area that knows snow.

[jacquesm]

NL, not a lot of snow but they do put salt on the roads here and it hasn't affected the body at all as far as I can see. My son drives a similar vintage E320 station and it too is still mostly rust free, the only part that seems to suffer on his car is the rear hatch.

[torginus]

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.

[fnord77]

ICE bans are going to cause the value of old cars to skyrocket

[close04]

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.

[entrox]

> 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.

[close04]

> BMW refuses to provide training access for ISTA usage

Refusing access to training isn't a BoM issue by any means. Neither is a repair process that's so error prone that it can do even more damage to the car. We are surrounded by evidence that manufacturers in every field are taking decisions that are hostile towards their customers in the chase for profits. With the rise of EVs with far fewer moving parts needing constant maintenance, the manufacturers had to shift to different revenue streams, like killing repairability and locking everything behind manufacturer approval.

This is a professional shop voicing the complaints, not a random guy trying to do a fix on the side of the road.

Imagine someone told you they work for Apple and the reason everything is soldered, glued, stacked in a way it will never survive disassembly, and every bit of software and hardware in the device needs the manufacturer's blessing to be replaced or just keep running is because it was cheaper and safer this way.

> it becomes a very tricky problem to solve.

It was a solved problem for everything mechanical where locking it down or preventing people from learning wasn't really an option. How did it become tricky again just now when we deal with far more flexible software and possibility to lockdown?

[entrox]

I likely did not communicate clearly enough: it is tricky because of organizational reasons, not technical. There are many trade-offs that have to be made and it involves different business units with their own targets and incentives.

To take a few examples from the article with likely causes (note I don't work for BMW, so this is pure speculation based on my own experience):

> BMW has over-engineered the diagnostic procedure to such a level that even their own technicians often do not know the correct replacement process.

The ECU, diagnostic procedures and service methods are being developed by a different org-units. One is engineering, which works towards their own development use cases. They might develop the on-board diagnostic interfaces. The service unit develops their own tester and have to develop their own procedures.

Engineering is usually late with providing real hardware & software samples, let alone a fully integrated car. The service unit might only get a working test car very late in the process and discover that the procedure is super complicated. By that point the car development is already too far along for major changes. Remember that most components have been specified and awarded to suppliers years ago by this point.

> And it gets worse: the original iBMUCP module, which integrates the pyrofuse, contactors, BMS and internal copper-bonded circuitry, is fully welded shut. There are no screws, no service openings, and it is not designed to be opened, even though the pyrofuse and contactors are technically replaceable components.

Engineering is not concerned with these issues, it's usually the service unit which needs to bring in maintenance requirements. A judgement call is being made whether an assembly that you source as a single part needs to be split up further. For example, if you split it up further, you now have more parts to manage. You need to provide logistics and must allocate space in your spare parts warehouses for these new parts.

That usually makes sense for expensive components. Here's another fact: the manufacturer allocates a warranty & goodwill budget for each car line, because the manufacturer has to pay dealers for these repairs if it falls into the warranty period or is judged to fall under good will. It's usually not in the interest of the manufacturer to have expensive repairs because of that.

It might also be that the repair is being deemed to dangerous, because it is a high-voltage component. Opening it up and tinkering with it might increase the risk of an electrical fire in the battery. It might be that this risk was judged to be higher than the repair cost.

> Additionally, the procedure requires flashing the entire vehicle both before and after the replacement, which adds several hours to the process and increases risk of bricked components which can increase the recovery cost by factor 10x.

No service unit wants these long flashing times, because it blocks a repair bay in the workshop. But it's usually because the EE integration has been developed in this way. It might need coding, calibration or just bringing up everything to the latest release.

Vehicle SW is super regulated, you need to fulfill a staggering amount of regulations. Look up UNECE-R156 SUMS as an example. It might be that the new parts comes with a newer SW version, which has only been verified and approved in combination with newer SW in the other components. This would require flashing ancillary ECUs as well even if they have not been changed to ensure release compliance.

> Even after we managed to open the unit and access everything inside, we discovered that the Infineon TC375 MCU is fully locked.

Look up UNECE-R155. Things like these are mandated, if not directly in the regulation then indirectly by making the manufacturer liable for any modification that somebody did to their car. It is practically required to lock it down.

Just a few points off the top of my head, the comment got too long anyway.

[ptsneves]

Thanks for your comment. It looks to me that most of the people who work in engineering area express some form of understanding or give the benefit of the doubt to the situation while people from outside the field borderline call for malice in the side of BMW.

I think both are right. Engineering a modern car is really complex as you pointed out but the customer also has the right to say, "well that is what you are paid for". In the end the customer can just go to the next car brand.

I own a relatively recent BMW but it is only a mild hybrid diesel (4 year old M340D) and before I even received the car, they changed the whole engine and did not release the car until that was executed. That was done by the dealer, and i never knew what was the reason.

On the flip side of modern car engineering I once had a check engine light called the dealer and with authorization prompts on my side they were able to tell me some gas exhaust sensor was malfunctioning and I would be able to go there at my leisure, as it was not urgent. That was nice. When i bought the car I had 5 years of maintenance included and this is one of the nicest things about owning a car in modern times. They even call me when it is about time to do the maintenance asking for when I am available. I never owned top brand cars before but this is for me worth the premium so far as it is one less thing to organize.

Apart from the normal maintenance and the above I never had any issue with the car, and it is a very big difference between a 2001 Passat TDI(my youth car) or a Ford Torneo Connect(the car i am aiming to exchange for due to family reasons).

[close04]

But that’s a very long way to say that yes, BMW is to blame for making something that’s hard to repair and doesn’t do anything about it because it makes them money. Other companies got it far better so your explanation is superficial.

When a system “malfunctions” only to the benefit of one side it’s not “an issue” as much as design.

Why don’t you run the same careful reasoning against any hostile action from any big tech company and see how it sounds? All the actions of Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon are just the result of unfortunate misalignment between teams.

If a flipped coin always lands how the person flipping wants it to land, it’s loaded, not misalignment between hand and coin.

I’ve seen how the sausage is made in corporations with more money and higher stakes than BMW. Once you get off the ground and see more of the bigger picture, you can’t unsee the hostile decisions that are compartmentalized from the people who just see the tiny bit in front of them and it’s easier to sell them that they aren’t doing anything wrong and it’s not a problem.

[actionfromafar]

It's like the manufacturer discovering to their complete surprise they are building a car. :-D

[gmueckl]

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.

[close04]

> 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.

[jinzo]

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

[gmueckl]

My experience with many German mechanical and electrical engineers is that they have a tendency to think of software like a magical cheap and malleable part on a BOM that can make their arbitrary design work. Especially the mechanical engineers like a nice little black box that they screw on and wire into their machine to make it go brrr once they turn it on.

That kind of thinking along with some calcification of organizational structures in/around R&D teams seems to be the cause for the rather dysfunctional software development at the German car companies. Software dev doesn't thrive in this environment.

Volkswagen probably had the right idea on paper when they created Cariad as a subsidiary software development company to isolate the devs, but then they ruined it by importing their own culture into it again.

[RealityVoid]

Yes, it's insane. People working in the field have their perception warped by what they see around them.

[jinzo]

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.

[neuralRiot]

I also work in this field, and I feel manufacturers like to exaggerate the dangers as a liability umbrella, aside of disassembling the battery itself it’s very hard to even access the HV components in a dangerous way, every HV connector has an interlocking line that opens the battery internal contactor so other than hacking the HV line with a saw I don’t see how you could “touch” the live wires.

[potato3732842]

You, you are the problem.

It's not excusable to do this to the product because of some hand wavey napkin math about liability.

Understand how people will interact with your product and then use that information to avoid doing things like routing power where firefighters want to cut and you'll accomplish the same thing without a stupid expensive hair trigger fuse.

[jinzo]

I am a problem, but on the other spectrum - OEMs ain't getting the repair €€€ because people like me repair stuff (but a different approach than Vanja).

Then, almost no manufacturer that sells in the EU knows how to do this (Renault is almost the only one that doesen't have pyrofuses in the battery, almost everyone else has). The catch is, the routed power is not problematic, the problem is when something gets squished and redirects that routed power to somewhere else. Which tends to happen in a metal tincan.