BMW resale values make it very clear: these cars are actively hostile (in many many ways) to their owners the second they go out of warranty. Pity, their interiors are lovely. In the long term, is this strategy going to work out for them? I won't buy another one. I know... anecdata :)
A friend of mine used to buy the first model of any new and hot BMW. He'd know the specs better than the sales people and he spent a fortune on them.
They also spent more time in the shop with electrical gremlins than any car that I've ever seen. One of our employees insisted on a Mini, which is also BMW as their lease car. No other car we had had that much trouble. BMW is a crap brand that used to make very good cars. Mercedes is getting there. Neither of these will survive in the longer term if they don't somehow get back to their roots: making safe and reliable vehicles with good resale value. But for both companies the problems are in the same domain: they never got the hang of software.
> Neither of these will survive in the longer term
German government will do everything possible to prevent these companies from failing, no matter how bad the situation gets. This means that current management can simply apply the "next quarter" strategy without any realistic downside.
Probably more of a gimmick than a strategy. In the grand scheme of things in cars a pretty minor one too. Replacing a panel and a bolt vs. replacing more complex components that have proprietary firmware, wiring harnesses, 3d printed/molded components with very complex design and tolerances, etc. A lot of that is business as usual across the industry.
The key issue here is that repairability is currently not really factored into the sales value of the car. That's a bit naive of course because it actually does impact the second hand value of a car. For example, MG makes nice cars but they have a bit of a reputation for needing lots of repairs under warranty. That reduces their second hand value and therefore also impacts their new value. You can get some really good deals on second hand ones. But the repairs might add up. That's why the second hand value is so low.
Lease companies buying new BMWs to lease them out to high salaried executives expect to be able to sell these things on 3-5 years later and get a decent second hand value. If the car then has a reputation for being a bit difficult and expensive to work on (like MG), that is going to reflect in the second hand price. And the lease price. Mostly lease companies just pass that on in the lease price. That works for BMW until more competitive vehicles show up that can be leased at a lower cost.
A few quirky bolts won't move the needle here. They aren't going to get rich selling them or the tools that go with them. It's just a bit of minor friction for car repair shops. If they see enough BMWs in their shop, they'll get the damn screws and tools. It's not that different than Apple using custom screws on their devices. Every phone repair shop has the tools now.
BMW used to be extremely good and very repairable/upgradeable.
They have clearly lost their way. Seems like a fundamental loss of confidence in their ability to produce leading technology, and instead feeling like they must defensively focus on blocking and extracting maximum funds from customers, both with costly "authorized-only" repairs and subscriptions for heated seats.
And even for their older cars, most parts have gone NLA (no longer available), sending prices through the roof if you can find them at all! At least Porsche and Mercedes have programs to manufacture new parts for their old cars...
(My E39 M5 was one of the last user-repairable BMWs, but it's getting very expensive. On the other hand, it's driving a significant market for regular people designing and building replacement parts, whether 3D-printed, CNC'd, or homemade)
Reminded me of the "shim" discussion about BMW motorcycles and part authenticity from the 1974 classic "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance": http://www.hilarygallo.com/the-zen-shim-question/
And that would violate both BMWs Trademark and Patent, which at least in Switzerland could mean having to pay BMW damages and get fined for importing counterfeit goods.
good thing that it would be a chinese copy, and thus, not subject to switzerland law. So i wonder if chinese law recognize this patent/trademark for a screw?
Maybe, the problem is that customs are not opening every package and as long as manufacturer won't name the copy as "screwdriver for patented BMW screw" but something more like screwdriver SN-2249 then how customs would know what that screwdriver is for?
Customs could just ask you for a declaration, where if you lied and they found out later, you'd suffer a heavier penalty. I dont know if they do that right now (not familiar with it).
What would they found? I have ordered screwdriver SN-2249. Customs sees screwdriver SN-2249 on manifest and on invoice. What that screwdriver is used for? For tightening and loosing screws, duh. In no step of the process I have lied.
IANAL, but as fas as I know when you're importing it from China, you are subject to local laws (and may pay the fine for importing a ccopy of a trademarked product).
This feels like they want to use trademark law to prevent third-party products. You can't legally produce the screws without baiscally copying the BMW logo onto it. I don't know if a similar argument would hold water for the drivers though.
IIRC in Europe at least that doesn't work because now your third party has the defence of necessity. They didn't want to use your protected mark, but it was necessary or else their product wouldn't work, so, the protection doesn't apply.
In the USA, in Sega v. Accolade the judge ruled that you can't use a trademark to block access to your stuff. The context was, the Sega Genesis DRM had a check for the string "SEGA" somewhere in the game's ROM; presumably, Sega reasoned that they could license their trademarked name for this purpose to licensed devs and sue makers of unlicensed cartridges for trademark infringement; and did sue Accolade when they attempted to publish unlicensed games for copyright and trademark infringement. The appeals judge overturned an earlier decision in favor of Sega, citing that trademarks can't be used to block what would otherwise be a fair-use act.
Much of Sega v. Accolade was overruled by the DMCA, which explicitly makes defeating DRM a crime in the general case. But the prohibition against using trademarks to gatekeep people performing legal, nonfraudulent activity probably remains and may be cited in future cases.
That ruling sounds so sane and now we have DMCA bullshit.
You used to be able to take spammers to court individually as well, now we have the fuckall federal enforcement that protects them more than it does us.
Reminds me of the 2-hole "snake eye" or "pig nose" screw heads you sometimes see in bathrooms or elevators. I have several of the bits for these since they come with every one of those n>20 -piece screwdriver bit sets, but I've never actually had to undo one. I guess that goes for most of the oddball bits those sets come with.
If they really wanted to screw (pun, sorry) with repairability (and at significant cost to themselves), I guess they could start making their own taps and dies for nonstandard threads you can't buy anywhere else. Wouldn't stop them from being unscrewed, though.
There are many non-standard screw diameters and threads. They are often implemented for particular requirement-driven (you may want deeper threads to increase strength or vibration-resistance) or regulatory reasons (certain tariffs kick-in at specific screw diameters).
I'd be interested to know how BMW manufactures those screws. The patterns in the metal in the image suggest the entire hole was drilled out? The deepest part has circular marks inside that looks like the marks left by a facing tool on a lathe or similar. Then I guess the two wedges were inserted and the whole screw faced?
Unlike all the other guesses here, I actually do have experience with manufacturing specialty aerospace fasteners similar in size, shape, complexity, and precision as these. These are most assuredly being manufactured on a specialty tool called a “Swissing Lathe”, or Swiss CNC machine, because that is the machine you always use to make parts like this. It is a multi-headed turret mill combined with a lathe that can continuously feed a piece of long bar stock and continually spit out fasteners. They were invented many years ago to produce extremely high precision small screws for watches, and in fact Citizen is one of the main vendors of these tools to this day. Based on my experience I would expect the cycle time for making this part to be 30 seconds or so.
Here’s a good video that eli5’s the difference between a Swiss screw machine and conventional CNC.
And here’s a video with a high quality soundtrack that shows how the machine combines automatic lathe cuts, mill cuts, and thread rolling without changing machines, swapping cutters, or re-fixturing the work.
CNC Milled and suface brushed. I Think these screws are going to be used in some decorative Panels etc. Would be cost prohibitive to use these all over the Car.
This. It's obviously an interior fastener. Maybe they'll have a cheaper one without the logo for the airbag module or whatever. OEMs have spent untold sums over the year hiding interior trim fasteners using all manner of push and snap fittings. A few low trim vehicles have bucked that trend recently, to much savings of labor and tool/die cost and no apparent ill effect in the mind of consumers. And now everybody is testing the waters.
The prototypes might be milled and/or produced via additive manufacturing (3D printing.) In production the heads are likely formed via stamping. Here's an old video I remember watching as a kid (Unfortunately quite pixelated) of the Robertson screw being manufactured which has a tapered square profile for the bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td7GjAMAY7Y (The Acme School of Stuff was awesome for its time and still is.)
I don't see any geometry that would be hard for casting or milling, it's slightly more expensive because you can't do it in one go, but you have to lift the toolhead if you mill.
Screws aren't cast. And lifting the toolhead takes about .1 second.
What's expensive here is milling this screw head at all, and in particular the surface finish.
This is probably just a prototype for shows, though. At scale, screws heads are usually cold-formed, and this design would work for that, too. If you circular brush the head in the end, you'd get pretty close to this, even if you wouldn't get the finish in the pockets. But that doesn't make much sense there anyway, it'd get damaged by the fastening tool.
Why not? A properly set up CNC machining center would turn those out by the bucketload. That's precisely the sort of thing that BMW does regularly with exterior details, no reason why they couldn't do it for a batch of bolts.
You can make anything on anything. Doesn't make it smart tho.
If this were a production run of a few dozen super high grade aerospace donkey dicks with five shoulders and four pockets, an oil channel, a precisely engineered break point and a 12-step heat treat process I'd say yeah, make it on your Swiss lathe with live tooling or bajillion axis VMC or whatever.
But this looks to be a simple small, probably cosmetic or otherwise low-ish strength stainless or chromed fastener that BMW probably wants a few hundred thousand of. You'll be time, money, labor, frustration, managerial nitpicking, just about everything, ahead to just have the fastener industry and their existing expertise make it for you. The "bespoke" drive, the custom branding, those are all known-knowns to those guys. They'll whip up tooling for their screw machines and fill the same bucket in 1/20th of the time.
Edit: replaced video link with better one. Obviously there's fiddle fucking around they're not showing and they're mix and matching footage of different products but the speed things move once you've got it all set up is broadly accurate. A whole bunch of these steps would be skipped or altered for a stainless fastener.
I know how just about every fastener is made. I also know how to look for toolmarks on the work product and I guarantee you that the bolt in TFA was made by machining rather than by stamping. Because this is a marketing instrument, not just a fastener.
I'd be unsurprised if they photographed a the pre-production one that was milled. They will almost certainly not be making the bulk of them that way. It just doesn't make sense in any way. At minimum order qualities in the tens of thousands (which they will certainly exceed) it makes sense to sub out to specialists.
You don't use CNC for making a billion individual screws. These would have their heads formed by being stamped in a die, just like phillips, robertson, security torx or any other screw heads.
Not for a billion. But especially for these it makes perfect sense, and given the details on the screw there is no doubt that it was made in exactly that way. The head was first milled and then there seems to have been a wire brush pass afterwards which got most but not all of the mill marks.
I think this is misunderstood - everybody points out that how evil BMW is for trying to be proprietary, then immediately points out any Chinese factory can produce a compatible tool for pennies - which one is it?
I think this is a pretty good mechanical design in general because:
- large contact surface (like hex or torx)
- no chance of slide-out (like flathead) or torque-out (like Philips)
- you can use a different size screw bit than the screw, and it wont slide around, or destroy your nut like torx does with hex
Which what? I honestly don't understand what the comparison is or what is misunderstood as there is nothing to misunderstand - it's a proprietary screw designed to defeat self/unlicensed repair - FULL STOP. Fuck the technical merit. And the point of mentioning that Chinese factories can produce cheap knock-offs is to demonstrate how absurd of a anti-consumer measure this is.
> everybody points out that how evil BMW is for trying to be proprietary, then immediately points out any Chinese factory can produce a compatible tool for pennies - which one is it?
Just because there's a workaround for an unnecessary annoying thing doesn't mean the thing ceases to be unnecessary and annoying.
An I am pointing out the design has merit from a purely mechanical perspective, and is a very poor method for actually preventing third party repair.
BMW has done some despicable things as pointed out by a recent article, like welding in a pyrotechnic fuse that would kill the battery when the car detected a fault, and which could only be replaced by cutting the factory sealed battery case open, or installing 'theft protection' measurers, which could brick ECUs if an unlicensed repair shop would attempt repairs on the car (which have been known to trigger even when the dealership attempted to fix the issue using official tools)
> An I am pointing out the design has merit from a purely mechanical perspective, and is a very poor method for actually preventing third party repair.
It sounds like you are defending both the design and the decision with nothing said about it being a poor method.
Seems to be in line with BMW's enshitification moves they've made regarding Home Assistant. I actually have an X5 that was affected by this & it will be the last BMW I ever own.
I suppose that depends on your definition of “now”. BMW has had a 20 year history of fork lower failures on their adventure bikes. Just search “BMW Fork Failure” and you will find a lot of discussion. Here was a Microsoft friend’s wreck in Alaska, which I believe was one of the earliest ones. Front wheel complete separated while she was riding straight and level on a paved road.
You will be able to buy a "BMW screwdriver" from China in a couple of weeks. This prevents nothing, it's just annoying and goes to show that BMW is run by dickheads (in case you didn't know yet).
Apple's "pentalobe" screws tell you the same about that company.
I have heard about these screws, but it isn't a reach to hand make a bit that would turn these all day, that said, I am done with screens and capacitive switches in cars
and will be doing retro mods to a few nice clasics for my own use, one that only beeps when you push the giant button just for that.
This patent came from the design department. Some dude looked at the logo and said, “Huh, we could make a screw from this.” The legal team then took it and made a design patent.
If you guys want, I can message him and ask about the grand conspiracy behind it but you might be disappointed.
BMW resale values make it very clear: these cars are actively hostile (in many many ways) to their owners the second they go out of warranty. Pity, their interiors are lovely. In the long term, is this strategy going to work out for them? I won't buy another one. I know... anecdata :)
A friend of mine used to buy the first model of any new and hot BMW. He'd know the specs better than the sales people and he spent a fortune on them.
They also spent more time in the shop with electrical gremlins than any car that I've ever seen. One of our employees insisted on a Mini, which is also BMW as their lease car. No other car we had had that much trouble. BMW is a crap brand that used to make very good cars. Mercedes is getting there. Neither of these will survive in the longer term if they don't somehow get back to their roots: making safe and reliable vehicles with good resale value. But for both companies the problems are in the same domain: they never got the hang of software.
> Neither of these will survive in the longer term
German government will do everything possible to prevent these companies from failing, no matter how bad the situation gets. This means that current management can simply apply the "next quarter" strategy without any realistic downside.
It's also a well payed job for boomers.
Helps to keep house prices up
Probably more of a gimmick than a strategy. In the grand scheme of things in cars a pretty minor one too. Replacing a panel and a bolt vs. replacing more complex components that have proprietary firmware, wiring harnesses, 3d printed/molded components with very complex design and tolerances, etc. A lot of that is business as usual across the industry.
The key issue here is that repairability is currently not really factored into the sales value of the car. That's a bit naive of course because it actually does impact the second hand value of a car. For example, MG makes nice cars but they have a bit of a reputation for needing lots of repairs under warranty. That reduces their second hand value and therefore also impacts their new value. You can get some really good deals on second hand ones. But the repairs might add up. That's why the second hand value is so low.
Lease companies buying new BMWs to lease them out to high salaried executives expect to be able to sell these things on 3-5 years later and get a decent second hand value. If the car then has a reputation for being a bit difficult and expensive to work on (like MG), that is going to reflect in the second hand price. And the lease price. Mostly lease companies just pass that on in the lease price. That works for BMW until more competitive vehicles show up that can be leased at a lower cost.
A few quirky bolts won't move the needle here. They aren't going to get rich selling them or the tools that go with them. It's just a bit of minor friction for car repair shops. If they see enough BMWs in their shop, they'll get the damn screws and tools. It's not that different than Apple using custom screws on their devices. Every phone repair shop has the tools now.
BMW used to be extremely good and very repairable/upgradeable.
They have clearly lost their way. Seems like a fundamental loss of confidence in their ability to produce leading technology, and instead feeling like they must defensively focus on blocking and extracting maximum funds from customers, both with costly "authorized-only" repairs and subscriptions for heated seats.
Sad
And even for their older cars, most parts have gone NLA (no longer available), sending prices through the roof if you can find them at all! At least Porsche and Mercedes have programs to manufacture new parts for their old cars...
(My E39 M5 was one of the last user-repairable BMWs, but it's getting very expensive. On the other hand, it's driving a significant market for regular people designing and building replacement parts, whether 3D-printed, CNC'd, or homemade)
Reminded me of the "shim" discussion about BMW motorcycles and part authenticity from the 1974 classic "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance": http://www.hilarygallo.com/the-zen-shim-question/
actually reminds me more of the "mechanics feel" part.
Lots of pros use a hand screwdriver and they never strip heads/threads/etc
Correct bit for screwdriver available on AliExpress 5 minutes after the bolt is available for public.
And that would violate both BMWs Trademark and Patent, which at least in Switzerland could mean having to pay BMW damages and get fined for importing counterfeit goods.
good thing that it would be a chinese copy, and thus, not subject to switzerland law. So i wonder if chinese law recognize this patent/trademark for a screw?
Their point is that there's a possibility that Swiss customs fines them and confiscates the "counterfeit."
Maybe, the problem is that customs are not opening every package and as long as manufacturer won't name the copy as "screwdriver for patented BMW screw" but something more like screwdriver SN-2249 then how customs would know what that screwdriver is for?
Customs could just ask you for a declaration, where if you lied and they found out later, you'd suffer a heavier penalty. I dont know if they do that right now (not familiar with it).
What would they found? I have ordered screwdriver SN-2249. Customs sees screwdriver SN-2249 on manifest and on invoice. What that screwdriver is used for? For tightening and loosing screws, duh. In no step of the process I have lied.
What's the reality of that happening though? I feel like they have bigger fish to fry than going after people for buying one screwdriver bit.
IANAL, but as fas as I know when you're importing it from China, you are subject to local laws (and may pay the fine for importing a ccopy of a trademarked product).
Anyone with a mill could fabricate something to fit that in a short space of time.
Fine. But the broader point is that the customer is the product, not the owner of a purchase.
That makes me wonder if customer is the product, who is the owner?
BMW Financial Services.
Very few people in Europe 'own' their cars nowadays.
Think we can get it with existing SP10 bit or “clutch” shaped bits?
Fiber optics bit https://www.qocese.com/product-p-381399.html
Magnetic Spanner bit https://www.amazon.com/Magnetic-Security-Screwdriver-Electro...
Clutch bit https://www.amazon.com/Clutch-Vintage-American-Steel-Sizes/d...
Wouldn't circumventing trademark lockouts like this be fair use under "Sega v. Accolade"[1]?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
The "screw you" jokes just write themselves.
I wrote one for a test drive but then I forgot the turn signal and got pulled over.
This feels like they want to use trademark law to prevent third-party products. You can't legally produce the screws without baiscally copying the BMW logo onto it. I don't know if a similar argument would hold water for the drivers though.
IIRC in Europe at least that doesn't work because now your third party has the defence of necessity. They didn't want to use your protected mark, but it was necessary or else their product wouldn't work, so, the protection doesn't apply.
In the USA, in Sega v. Accolade the judge ruled that you can't use a trademark to block access to your stuff. The context was, the Sega Genesis DRM had a check for the string "SEGA" somewhere in the game's ROM; presumably, Sega reasoned that they could license their trademarked name for this purpose to licensed devs and sue makers of unlicensed cartridges for trademark infringement; and did sue Accolade when they attempted to publish unlicensed games for copyright and trademark infringement. The appeals judge overturned an earlier decision in favor of Sega, citing that trademarks can't be used to block what would otherwise be a fair-use act.
Much of Sega v. Accolade was overruled by the DMCA, which explicitly makes defeating DRM a crime in the general case. But the prohibition against using trademarks to gatekeep people performing legal, nonfraudulent activity probably remains and may be cited in future cases.
That ruling sounds so sane and now we have DMCA bullshit.
You used to be able to take spammers to court individually as well, now we have the fuckall federal enforcement that protects them more than it does us.
On the contrary, they are asking for trademark dilution with this.
This is also why a lot of car bumpers have the make/model/logo impressed into the mold itself
Reminds me of the 2-hole "snake eye" or "pig nose" screw heads you sometimes see in bathrooms or elevators. I have several of the bits for these since they come with every one of those n>20 -piece screwdriver bit sets, but I've never actually had to undo one. I guess that goes for most of the oddball bits those sets come with.
If they really wanted to screw (pun, sorry) with repairability (and at significant cost to themselves), I guess they could start making their own taps and dies for nonstandard threads you can't buy anywhere else. Wouldn't stop them from being unscrewed, though.
There are many non-standard screw diameters and threads. They are often implemented for particular requirement-driven (you may want deeper threads to increase strength or vibration-resistance) or regulatory reasons (certain tariffs kick-in at specific screw diameters).
I'd be interested to know how BMW manufactures those screws. The patterns in the metal in the image suggest the entire hole was drilled out? The deepest part has circular marks inside that looks like the marks left by a facing tool on a lathe or similar. Then I guess the two wedges were inserted and the whole screw faced?
Unlike all the other guesses here, I actually do have experience with manufacturing specialty aerospace fasteners similar in size, shape, complexity, and precision as these. These are most assuredly being manufactured on a specialty tool called a “Swissing Lathe”, or Swiss CNC machine, because that is the machine you always use to make parts like this. It is a multi-headed turret mill combined with a lathe that can continuously feed a piece of long bar stock and continually spit out fasteners. They were invented many years ago to produce extremely high precision small screws for watches, and in fact Citizen is one of the main vendors of these tools to this day. Based on my experience I would expect the cycle time for making this part to be 30 seconds or so.
Here’s a good video that eli5’s the difference between a Swiss screw machine and conventional CNC.
https://youtu.be/y3y0tATB0lg?si=pkYDT3BV0-6C-aq5
And here’s a video with a high quality soundtrack that shows how the machine combines automatic lathe cuts, mill cuts, and thread rolling without changing machines, swapping cutters, or re-fixturing the work.
https://youtu.be/MPAK5I1HJAw?si=fnMmjDp6ydYSDbfH
And if you need some specialty fasteners made and have an unlimited budget I can reccomed these folks.
https://centrix-us.com/
CNC Milled and suface brushed. I Think these screws are going to be used in some decorative Panels etc. Would be cost prohibitive to use these all over the Car.
This. It's obviously an interior fastener. Maybe they'll have a cheaper one without the logo for the airbag module or whatever. OEMs have spent untold sums over the year hiding interior trim fasteners using all manner of push and snap fittings. A few low trim vehicles have bucked that trend recently, to much savings of labor and tool/die cost and no apparent ill effect in the mind of consumers. And now everybody is testing the waters.
The prototypes might be milled and/or produced via additive manufacturing (3D printing.) In production the heads are likely formed via stamping. Here's an old video I remember watching as a kid (Unfortunately quite pixelated) of the Robertson screw being manufactured which has a tapered square profile for the bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td7GjAMAY7Y (The Acme School of Stuff was awesome for its time and still is.)
The head was almost certainly milled out of a blank made on a lathe. Something like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/Yf-twqgWZQ8
I don't see any geometry that would be hard for casting or milling, it's slightly more expensive because you can't do it in one go, but you have to lift the toolhead if you mill.
Screws aren't cast. And lifting the toolhead takes about .1 second.
What's expensive here is milling this screw head at all, and in particular the surface finish.
This is probably just a prototype for shows, though. At scale, screws heads are usually cold-formed, and this design would work for that, too. If you circular brush the head in the end, you'd get pretty close to this, even if you wouldn't get the finish in the pockets. But that doesn't make much sense there anyway, it'd get damaged by the fastening tool.
For prototypes, almost certainly with a CNC lathe. For a large scale production, I would expect them to drop forge these...
Those are end mill marks.
Nearly zero chance of them doing that at production volumes though.
Why not? A properly set up CNC machining center would turn those out by the bucketload. That's precisely the sort of thing that BMW does regularly with exterior details, no reason why they couldn't do it for a batch of bolts.
You can make anything on anything. Doesn't make it smart tho.
If this were a production run of a few dozen super high grade aerospace donkey dicks with five shoulders and four pockets, an oil channel, a precisely engineered break point and a 12-step heat treat process I'd say yeah, make it on your Swiss lathe with live tooling or bajillion axis VMC or whatever.
But this looks to be a simple small, probably cosmetic or otherwise low-ish strength stainless or chromed fastener that BMW probably wants a few hundred thousand of. You'll be time, money, labor, frustration, managerial nitpicking, just about everything, ahead to just have the fastener industry and their existing expertise make it for you. The "bespoke" drive, the custom branding, those are all known-knowns to those guys. They'll whip up tooling for their screw machines and fill the same bucket in 1/20th of the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJvQZko8uiU
Edit: replaced video link with better one. Obviously there's fiddle fucking around they're not showing and they're mix and matching footage of different products but the speed things move once you've got it all set up is broadly accurate. A whole bunch of these steps would be skipped or altered for a stainless fastener.
I know how just about every fastener is made. I also know how to look for toolmarks on the work product and I guarantee you that the bolt in TFA was made by machining rather than by stamping. Because this is a marketing instrument, not just a fastener.
I'd be unsurprised if they photographed a the pre-production one that was milled. They will almost certainly not be making the bulk of them that way. It just doesn't make sense in any way. At minimum order qualities in the tens of thousands (which they will certainly exceed) it makes sense to sub out to specialists.
You don't use CNC for making a billion individual screws. These would have their heads formed by being stamped in a die, just like phillips, robertson, security torx or any other screw heads.
Not for a billion. But especially for these it makes perfect sense, and given the details on the screw there is no doubt that it was made in exactly that way. The head was first milled and then there seems to have been a wire brush pass afterwards which got most but not all of the mill marks.
I'm not quite sure how you'd wire brush pass the pockets, and for a functional screw it doesn't make much sense anyway.
Mind this is a screw for a press release macro photo. I doubt they're going to put the same effort into making them at scale.
If it's metric thread you only need to unbolt them once, and then you replace them with TORX.
Every time I see that now to me it will represent stupidity and greedy waste
Looks like Adafruit took down the page about 3D printing a working driver bit. Wonder who made that happen :/
I think this is misunderstood - everybody points out that how evil BMW is for trying to be proprietary, then immediately points out any Chinese factory can produce a compatible tool for pennies - which one is it?
I think this is a pretty good mechanical design in general because:
- large contact surface (like hex or torx)
- no chance of slide-out (like flathead) or torque-out (like Philips)
- you can use a different size screw bit than the screw, and it wont slide around, or destroy your nut like torx does with hex
> which one is it?
Which what? I honestly don't understand what the comparison is or what is misunderstood as there is nothing to misunderstand - it's a proprietary screw designed to defeat self/unlicensed repair - FULL STOP. Fuck the technical merit. And the point of mentioning that Chinese factories can produce cheap knock-offs is to demonstrate how absurd of a anti-consumer measure this is.
> everybody points out that how evil BMW is for trying to be proprietary, then immediately points out any Chinese factory can produce a compatible tool for pennies - which one is it?
Just because there's a workaround for an unnecessary annoying thing doesn't mean the thing ceases to be unnecessary and annoying.
An I am pointing out the design has merit from a purely mechanical perspective, and is a very poor method for actually preventing third party repair.
BMW has done some despicable things as pointed out by a recent article, like welding in a pyrotechnic fuse that would kill the battery when the car detected a fault, and which could only be replaced by cutting the factory sealed battery case open, or installing 'theft protection' measurers, which could brick ECUs if an unlicensed repair shop would attempt repairs on the car (which have been known to trigger even when the dealership attempted to fix the issue using official tools)
> An I am pointing out the design has merit from a purely mechanical perspective, and is a very poor method for actually preventing third party repair.
It sounds like you are defending both the design and the decision with nothing said about it being a poor method.
The article says it cannot withstand the torque of torx or hex.
Torx and hex already solve the slide out problem.
Which part of this makes you think "Hmmm yes this is great design"? What would bad design look like to you?
It seems to me it would be terrible mechanically because the driver has 2 very weak little lobes sticking out.
Seems to be in line with BMW's enshitification moves they've made regarding Home Assistant. I actually have an X5 that was affected by this & it will be the last BMW I ever own.
https://alerts.home-assistant.io/alerts/bmw_connected_drive/
https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1n8tidg/bmw_...
BMW: The Ultimate Asshole Machine.. now with more assholery to assholes too!
(Their motorcycles had a better rep until now.)
I suppose that depends on your definition of “now”. BMW has had a 20 year history of fork lower failures on their adventure bikes. Just search “BMW Fork Failure” and you will find a lot of discussion. Here was a Microsoft friend’s wreck in Alaska, which I believe was one of the earliest ones. Front wheel complete separated while she was riding straight and level on a paved road.
https://www.advrider.com/f/threads/crash-in-destruction-bay-...
> Their motorcycles had a better rep until now.
No they didn't. Driveshafts are notoriously bad. It's the kind of failure that leaves you on foot in the middle of nowhere.
Old ones then. Is this new ones? Which model year range?
Is 2025-10-15 recent enough?
https://www.rideapart.com/news/776212/bmw-r1300rt-cardan-sha...
I wonder how many lemon law lawyers were involved before that happened.
You will be able to buy a "BMW screwdriver" from China in a couple of weeks. This prevents nothing, it's just annoying and goes to show that BMW is run by dickheads (in case you didn't know yet).
Apple's "pentalobe" screws tell you the same about that company.
I have heard about these screws, but it isn't a reach to hand make a bit that would turn these all day, that said, I am done with screens and capacitive switches in cars and will be doing retro mods to a few nice clasics for my own use, one that only beeps when you push the giant button just for that.
Who cares about bmw except gangsters and narcissistic psychopaths these days anyway?
The quicker they bury themselves the better for everyone, more market space will remain for good car manufacturers
This patent came from the design department. Some dude looked at the logo and said, “Huh, we could make a screw from this.” The legal team then took it and made a design patent.
If you guys want, I can message him and ask about the grand conspiracy behind it but you might be disappointed.
I rent cars 300 days a year, for work. Generally I don’t have high expectations.
Right now I’m driving a BMW IX2 and it’s the stupidest fucking car I ever drove.
I had booked a Polestar 2, which Hertz unfortunately didn’t have available. Great car, that one.
Now I’m curious, are there any manufacturers still making repairable cars?
Chinese brands, maybe?
Yet another reason to never own a BMW
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