I just bought an i3 REX ~3 months ago - it's the perfect car for driving in SF, especially with the range extender for reducing range anxiety.
Before purchasing, I had the exact same concerns as raised in this article. Here is what I found out:
- California mandates that PZEV certified vehicles be covered for 15 years/ 150k miles for all emissions related parts (i.e. the range extender engine).
- For batteries or energy storage devices of vehicles certified to the Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle (PZEV) emissions standard, they must be covered for 10 years or 150,000 miles, whichever comes first.
The i3 REX happens to fall into this PZEV category and so I've great warranty coverage. If the battery drops below 70% or outright fails, its fixed free of charge within this time frame.
This owner hadn't purchased an i3 with the Range Extender option - if they did however, they could move their car registration to CA and would get this repair for free. The warranty for BMW vehicles post 2011 is on the state a vehicle is registered in, not the state a vehicle was originally imported or last sold in.
I've seen this discussed heavily in Chevy Volt forums. People have bought Volts with the 150k mile warranty and left the state, and it would not be honored in the other state even though bought in a carb state.
People buying a non carb volt and then moving to a carb state were not able to get the warranty.
I have a feeling that note you have about the state mattering helps them disqualify a warranty, but they aren't going to GIVE you one just for entering the state with an out of state car.
There’s no way they would accept that. You can’t just declare that your vehicle is now in a different jurisdiction in order to take their money. That’s clearly fraud.
If there is anything that requires consumer protection its the batteries in these cars. The interface should not be proprietary. There should be no reason why you couldn't buy $7000 worth of batteries, put them together with BMS systems, and replace them yourself.
I think in many cases you can. If you replace with compatible cells, you can keep the BMS. For some batteries there are reverse-engineered or alternative BMSes.
However, cells need careful soldering, and the BMS must be working properly to prevent overcharging and overheating. Mistakes can cause nasty and expensive fires, so it's not a DIY job for anybody.
The only thing I can think of is the high voltage. I don't mind working with 220v but anything higher I tend to shy away with. I think some of the voltage systems in the battery packs can peak at 800v with most of them between 400v and 600v.
The voltages are not going to be high enough to cause things like arcing through air. Basic precaution is necessary.
The idea is not even that you yourself are going to replace it, its more for shops with equipment and skills to order individual cells, put together battery packs, and then just replace them in cars without worrying about compatibility.
My understanding is that DC currents are more dangerous as the effect is continuous. Whereas there is some electrician humour that at least with AC you have 50 chances per second to pull away (Americans get 60 chances per second)
I've been shocked by 300V DC @ 500mA and I'll take the equivalent AC any day. Obviously both can kill you, but the DC was far more painful and instantly gave me 3rd degree burns. Also made me ululate some kind of tone I didn't even know the human throat could emit.
The consensus I've heard from a few family members who work in airport maintenance is that HVDC will make you wish you were dead, while HVAC will make you dead dead.
You generally can. The problem is that the batteries are generally so specific to the car, you can't just swap them out with any random battery and expect the same performance. Additionally, given the immense power most battery packs put out, replacing individual cells (or banks) of batteries can cause an imbalance that will damage or degrade the pack over time. The best solution most of the time is to replace the entire pack at once if there's damage to a bank, and have the installer take the rest of your battery as a core rebate.
You Should have an evacuation system. Many people working on cars just vent it, similar to what happens in every semi serious car accident where the front ac condenser is damaged. Or what happens in most 15 year old systems that simply vent to the atmosphere from leaking seals and require a fillup. Not ideal, but a diy usually just goes for it.
You might want certification to stay alive, but again, tons of diys are making due on Chevy volts.
The headline sounds like yet another anti-EV scare, but surprisingly the article actually explains this is a fuck-you quote, and the real repair cost can be a fraction of that.
Yup. Not uncommon to get a really high quote when someone really does not want to do the work. We had a florescent light in a utility room that my Bride wanted to replace with another light fixture. She called a contractor who quoted $2k labor to swap in her new hardware - a 20 minute job for an amateur like me. Another contractor had offered to install 3 new toilets for about $6K labor. These prices were so far out of expectations they were really saying we don't want to do these gigs... nicely. (or take your money if you don't know any better... hard to say which)
I once had a gig where I was told to go directly to the airport. They booked one of the nicest hotels, nicest flights, half way around the world and charged them a small fortune for me to show them they ate an Exception. Apparently our company had really tried to say no, and charged them an unholy amount of money... and they still said yes.
Welcome to the new pricing structure of contractors. I blame YouTube and Facebook groups that basically all congratulate themselves for figuring out "charge 3x more, thus making 6x profits, and just do 1/6th the work!"
These prices seem very consistent with BMW's pricing practices in general for all its vehicles. They get very cheap secondhand around the 6 year / 100000km mark in my country, as that's when bits start breaking and you may as well just buy a new one.
The urban folk knowledge I was told is that a) Germans love leasing cars, not buying them and b) if you salt the roads in winter, cars will rust sooner rather than later, and that's only something you can delay, not prevent.
Ergo (so the folk knowledge goes), their cars are engineered for a short-term market. Amazingly reliable and fun in the designed for lifetime, after that, it's in God's hands.
I have no idea how true that is, but it feels kinda truth adjacent, from my compassionate listening to owners of secondhand BMWs.
Oh, and apparently, there's a bit of a European car part cartel in my country, so spares are even more expensive than they already are.
I've never had to deal in urban folklore when owning Toyotas though.
Live in Central Europe. Most of the people we know either own their cars outright or take public transportation.
Many companies north of the border (Germany) offer company cars as an incentive, which iirc are leased, but these eventually hit the resale market as one year or CPO vehicles.
Most cars also have a fairly long anti-corrosion warranty.
That said, reliability issues were more a matter of 1. US style cost cutting (remember Daimler Chrysler?) 2. getting caught by surprise by the horse power wars of the naughts and early teens. Engines and associated parts were rushed to market without proper testing.
These issues have largely been reversed. Modern BMWs are almost/as reliable as Japanese manufacturers while MB is starting to close the gap.
Chrysler knew they were toast. They either had to be bought out, mortgage everything for massive capital investment (which is what Ford did), or eventually go under.
Meanwhile, Daimler executives wanted a way to get American compensation. A ‘merger’ that would turn them into an ‘American’ company was their preferred option.
Of course, the Chrysler executive team was eventually shown the exit, the company was run from Germany, and it turned out that Daimler’s leadership was making a number of other major mistakes (this is around the time when reliability went down hill, and it had nothing to do with Chrysler).
Since when are corrosion problems still a thing? Unless your car gets it's paint coat damaged in an accident, it's not going to rust at all these days.
Here in Wisconsin the frames usually rust apart and become unsafe to drive well before the drivetrain fails. My last car made it just shy of 200k before the strut mount rusted through the unibody.
Now that I coat everything underneath with Woolwax I'm seeing much less rust, but still something you have to stay on top of.
Corrosion is still a problem anywhere they salt the roads (i.e places it snows). Much less of a problem than in the past, but still an expected thing at a certain vehicle age.
Normal driving results in tiny rock chips over enough miles and all it takes is the tiniest chip for the corrosion to take hold. Super common above the rear wheel wells, at least in my area. Under body corrosion is pretty inevitable as well because it isn't painted, and even if it were it still takes a lot of abuse from road debris. Coating can help significantly (Fluid Film, Woolwax, etc) but you can't coat everything 100% so it still happens.
However companies should be prohibited to propose such quotes at all. they do it because they will earn more on selling a new car, meanwhile what they wipe their mouths with are ecology slogans
Doesn’t hurt to shop around. From my research the replacement costs varied from $20k to $40k for electric vehicle batteries repair quotes. For city driving you charge to 80% so the batteries last quite a while.
Charging network still is bad. Many stations are broken but appear working in what I have seen driving with a friend who has an EV or looking up station reviews.
They didn’t need to charge but wanted to because of little time at home or hotel.
If we had a standard for the physical size of batteries, the electrical connectors, the voltages, and the data signals, then this would not be a problem.
Here's a made-up example:
• A standard battery should be 28 inches by 18 inches by 6 inches. The battery screws in with 4x 12mm bolts at the corners.
• The voltage across 2 terminals can vary between 200 V and 400 V DC, but one battery can function in a smaller range (e.g., 250 V to 400 V.)
• Signaling is done by a variant of CANBUS tunneled through Ethernet using automotive Cat 6 connectors.
• Multiple batteries can be connected in series, even if they have different battery chemistries.
• It is OK to have a battery or capacitor bank connected into the terminals through DC/DC converters. This allows capacitor banks to be used efficiently.
• Each battery is responsible for disconnecting itself from the voltage bus if it senses a wrong voltage or current. That means if a charged battery is plugged into a vehicle with a discharged battery in it, there is no arcing. The new battery stays disconnected until the 2 batteries are close enough in voltage to let them safely connect in parallel.
A standard for battery busses would make it much easier to build electric cars because there would be no need to reinvent the battery pack for every new car.
A standard for batteries would facilitate competition and lower the cost if building, buying, and maintaining EVs.
They invoiced me $15k for a refurbished battery AND took my "old" battery AND admitted the issue had notting to do with my usage of the car (the pack leaked water and a wire corroded; they refused to repair it)
In all seriousness, who would you contest it with? That's the kind of scenario that scares me with Tesla. You can't take to social media to put pressure on a local dealer because they don't exist, and say anything vaguely negative about Tesla and you'll be swarmed by Elons fan army.
Not only that, when things get stupid people often sue car dealerships and have surprisingly good odds at success if the story is at all reasonable against the dealer. (sold cars for 10 years, saw some very favorable outcomes for customers) and for that reason dealers also give in pretty easily if they've actually done wrong.
Before purchasing, I had the exact same concerns as raised in this article. Here is what I found out:
- California mandates that PZEV certified vehicles be covered for 15 years/ 150k miles for all emissions related parts (i.e. the range extender engine).
- For batteries or energy storage devices of vehicles certified to the Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle (PZEV) emissions standard, they must be covered for 10 years or 150,000 miles, whichever comes first.
The i3 REX happens to fall into this PZEV category and so I've great warranty coverage. If the battery drops below 70% or outright fails, its fixed free of charge within this time frame.
This owner hadn't purchased an i3 with the Range Extender option - if they did however, they could move their car registration to CA and would get this repair for free. The warranty for BMW vehicles post 2011 is on the state a vehicle is registered in, not the state a vehicle was originally imported or last sold in.