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.)

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consp 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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somerandomqaguy 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

UN Regulation No. 155, and 156, and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) are requiring car manufacturers to implement cryptographic validation that allows only authorized software from the manufacturer to be run.

	▲	consp 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		What I meant more is that you need more and more specialized tools (according to the manufacturers). My previous ford needed a special (expensive!) bracket to keep the drivetrain in place if you want to do anything on the engine which makes home service less likely. These regulations do not mean you need 25k in tooling, but that is what it has come to. And thus there is a blooming (mostly Chinese/Russian) aftermarket tooling business with sketchy software you want to run in a VM.
	▲	pjc50 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You're going to have to explain dragging the UN in here.

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danw1979 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This 2022 BMW X1 my wife drives is the last BMW we will ever own. £395 for an oil change. £180 for brake fluid. £500 a year road tax.

Meanwhile my 2011 Prius continues to pass its MOT without fail, needs just the usual very affordable consumables, gets 50% higher MPG and actually has a larger cargo capacity than the X1.

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ahartmetz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>actually has a larger cargo capacity than the X1

You have just discovered that SUVs are large because some people want their cars to be large. They come with all the downsides of that and not much of the upsides.

	▲	psd1 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		They don't come with all the downsides. They externalise the reduced forward visibility for people behind you, the headlights spinning onto other users' cabins, the running over of toddlers, and, my favourite, the driving in the middle of the road rather than risk getting mud on their fucking tyres No tax rate is too high. Rebates for agricultural workers maybe.

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Supernaut an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Sounds like you're getting it serviced by a BMW dealership? I take my PHEV 3-series to a local independent mechanic, and the entire cost is usually less than you're paying for oil alone. Also, because it's a hybrid, the road tax rate is very advantageous.

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rapsey 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

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consp 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I was more or less pointing to the expensive repairs needed in BMW as in you know it's locked down and you need expensive OEM stuff. Maybe that is covered under "quality is expensive" for normal people but when you buy a BMW you know the replacement parts bill is costing you an arm and a leg.

	▲	rapsey 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah but they will wrongly justify for themselves that because BMW is quality, the repairs will not be so frequent.

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tpm 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What they mean by the EU-bashing is two things:

1. The EU de facto mandates the car manufacturers have to develop and sell cars that produce less CO2 (mostly by the way of fines for higher polluting vehicles). This led to the development of hybrid ('mild-hybrid', 'full-hybrid', and PHEV) and EV vehicles.

2. The manufacturers tend to both complicate the technology and lock the stuff down, so it's not easily repairable. This has its own enviromental price, and EV Clinic says this is not accounted for. That's not completely fair as on one hand there are EU repairability directives that address this but on the other we still want to have some degreee of market competition and in the end the market should punish those manufacturers (as it is already doing, I think).

One thing I want to add is that the EU also mandates real-world-fuel-consumption-measurement (OBFCM) devices in new cars and if that is followed to its logical conclusion and the manufacturers pressure is resisted, this will mean the end of hybrids as the real-world data is horrible for them.

https://zecar.com/reviews/plug-in-hybrid%27s-real-emissions-...

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Tade0 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's clickbait, but at the very least it's not LLM slop, considering how they spelled the word "theoretically".

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raverbashing 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Correct, it isn't it's more a "German Boomer Engineering problem"

Though I'd say this is 80% of the problem, the safety fuse thing is needed but it probably takes a while for companies to get it right