I'm running a small service, sub 150 users, no online signup kind of business, B2B. Small EU country. 95% of users ask 'do you have an mobile app?' in first 5 minutes of onboarding. Telling them how to install a PWA (and what it is and so forth) is an uphill battle. Unfortunately App Stores rule the non technical crowd.
Sorry I have no idea about this goalpost moving, maybe it's a language barrier. I'm just saying working on it is quite dangerous. But you can easily get electrocuted by shoddy remanufacturing (especially if someone drilled into the battery to replace a single cell - as EV Clinic shows in their videos), that's why there are additional safeties with regards to bad isolation. So I stand by both takes.
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'.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
15+ years ago I was doing a CS undergrad (or Bachelors? not sure how it translates) at the local uni in a small EU Country and this approach was the standard across all subjects as part of 'lab work'. There were people there to do that, not the prof himself, but approach was exactly the same. And after a few months they had a really good picture on what level everyone is ect.
On the other hand, I had a neighbour ask me if he can make his 1 month apprenticeship when he finished his 3rd year of CS High School (eg ~18 years old, 3 of 4 years of 'CS trade school') 6 months ago or so. I was totally gobsmacked by his lack of basic understanding of how computers work, I am confident that he did not confidentially know the difference between a file and a folder. But he was very confident in the AI slop he produced. I had a grand plan of giving him tasks that would show him the pitfalls of AI -> no need for that, he blindly copied whatever AI gave him (he did not figure out Claude Code exsists), even when the results were very visibly bad - even from afar. I tried explaining stuff to him to no avail. I know this is a sample size of 1, but damn, I did not expect it to be that bad.
I would very much like something other than a Pixel for GrapheneOS. But let's not get wild expectations based on false pretenses.