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.
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.
€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.
PHEV is plug-in hybrid, for those not familiar with terminology.
> 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
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.
The proper BMW oil change procedure is to remove the engine and flip it upside down.
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.
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.
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).
Sadly, they’re close to 100% caught up to automatic transmissions in North America.
Are they switching to monthly subscriptions?
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.
/s or /$ What's the best tag for your post?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
I am, perhaps naively, hoping the Slate pickup can be better about this.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Still got my E46!
4th gen 4Runner w/ a 2UZ-FE
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.
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.
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.
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.
Slate?
They're talking about this I'm pretty sure!
Maybe Slate? https://www.slate.auto/
A new 1980's mini truck would be awesome. If only...
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
[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.
> 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.
The complete lack of awareness with which some people operate cars never ceases to amaze me.
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.
[dead]
I think the (negative) point is the cost of ownership. European cars are very cool, if you can afford to keep them running
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.
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
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)
> 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.
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.
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.
[flagged]
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.
erste mal?
[flagged]
[flagged]
> Theoraticaly
> missleading
Please check spelling before posting
Just buy a Tesla, it's the most sane thing you could do for peace of mind
