Your fleet running reports

[Rich B]

I'm baffled by the mind of a person who has those crazy seats and those black door cards, and looks at them and thinks "I'm going to track down that crazy fabric and change the door cards" when the logical choice is to just get some black leather seats!

[drcarlos]

I'm baffled by the mind of a person who has those crazy seats and those black door cards, and looks at them and thinks "I'm going to track down that crazy fabric and change the door cards" when the logical choice is to just get some black leather seats!

Nah, although I have leather seats in both my cars, I think the crazy fabric is a good way to lift a fairly mundane interior (sorry, but I just find BMW interiors boring), I love it.

[ZedLeg]

Absolutely incorrect Rich, interesting fabric seats are always better than boring black leather.

It’s a shame that luxury cars decided that leather was the only way to go in the 90s. Love those old velour interiors

[mik]

E-Tron has been displaying an “Inspection Due” message for a few weeks, despite it having a 2yr service interval, and the first one therefore due Sep-22.

They advise the timer was set in Germany, and should have been reset during PDI and 1st registration, but somehow wasn’t.

We agreed to take it in yesterday so they could clear it and complete a “Service Campaign” associated with the range (should extend it marginally by around 5%).

Took it in and they decided they wanted to do a full service to clear the Inspection message “legitimately” since We have a service plan and it wouldn’t cost us anything.

“Yes” I replied, whilst thinking “wha? We have a service plan?”.

They didn’t of course have time to complete a full service in the daytime remaining, so home and back in on Wednesday. Checked the documentation and we do indeed have a service plan - until the end of 2028 . A rather nice bonus that I hadn’t even realised was involved when i was negotiating the deal.

[Mito Man]

This is when I ask my usual what do they service on a fully electric car?

[mik]

This is when I ask my usual what do they service on a fully electric car?

I’m going to guess - all the shizzle they usually do, except stuff that involves an IC engine and gearbox.

So brakes and suspension effectively.

Plus a check on the fuel cells to see if any need replacing I guess.

As noted before - when I visited the Tesla service centre in Edinburgh, they noted that they replaced as many brake discs for corrosion as wear, so make sure you don’t just use regen folks! E-Tron fronts are massive vented floating discs with 6-pot callipers - I don’t expect they are cheap.

[Swervin_Mervin]

This is when I ask my usual what do they service on a fully electric car?

I’m going to guess - all the shizzle they usually do, except stuff that involves an IC engine and gearbox.

So brakes and suspension effectively.

Plus a check on the fuel cells to see if any need replacing I guess.

As noted before - when I visited the Tesla service centre in Edinburgh, they noted that they replaced as many brake discs for corrosion as wear, so make sure you don’t just use regen folks! E-Tron fronts are massive vented floating discs with 6-pot callipers - I don’t expect they are cheap.

Makes you wonder how much longer we'll continue to bolt discs and calipers to EVs if, by and large, that's just redundant unsprung mass that will do little other than corrode away. I guess there'll always need to be a mechanical fail safe to stop vehicles, but it doesn't seem that efficient a way of achieving it.

[mik]

This is when I ask my usual what do they service on a fully electric car?

I’m going to guess - all the shizzle they usually do, except stuff that involves an IC engine and gearbox.

So brakes and suspension effectively.

Plus a check on the fuel cells to see if any need replacing I guess.

As noted before - when I visited the Tesla service centre in Edinburgh, they noted that they replaced as many brake discs for corrosion as wear, so make sure you don’t just use regen folks! E-Tron fronts are massive vented floating discs with 6-pot callipers - I don’t expect they are cheap.

Makes you wonder how much longer we'll continue to bolt discs and calipers to EVs if, by and large, that's just redundant unsprung mass that will do little other than corrode away. I guess there'll always need to be a mechanical fail safe to stop vehicles, but it doesn't seem that efficient a way of achieving it.

Yeah I guess today we have economy of scale - sharing components with IC cars in their range.

Defo still need mech brakes - regen can’t provide really heavy braking and it can’t brake you from walking pace. In theory a mechanical brake at the motor(s) would work, but you’d then lose the independent control that ABS provides.

[Jobbo]

I'm baffled by the mind of a person who has those crazy seats and those black door cards, and looks at them and thinks "I'm going to track down that crazy fabric and change the door cards" when the logical choice is to just get some black leather seats!

My god you're boring!

I'd like to see the door cards in the same plain red fabric as the bolsters, since I don't know if BMW would have put the patterned stuff on the doors when it's only on the seat centres. I suspect I'd prefer it as Harry has done it anyway.

ETA: you had a Golf GTI for a couple of years; did the tartan fabric seat trim touch you inappropriately?

[Swervin_Mervin]

I’m going to guess - all the shizzle they usually do, except stuff that involves an IC engine and gearbox.

So brakes and suspension effectively.

Plus a check on the fuel cells to see if any need replacing I guess.

As noted before - when I visited the Tesla service centre in Edinburgh, they noted that they replaced as many brake discs for corrosion as wear, so make sure you don’t just use regen folks! E-Tron fronts are massive vented floating discs with 6-pot callipers - I don’t expect they are cheap.

Makes you wonder how much longer we'll continue to bolt discs and calipers to EVs if, by and large, that's just redundant unsprung mass that will do little other than corrode away. I guess there'll always need to be a mechanical fail safe to stop vehicles, but it doesn't seem that efficient a way of achieving it.

Yeah I guess today we have economy of scale - sharing components with IC cars in their range.

Defo still need mech brakes - regen can’t provide really heavy braking and it can’t brake you from walking pace. In theory a mechanical brake at the motor(s) would work, but you’d then lose the independent control that ABS provides.

I'd always wondered about whether an electro-magnetic setup could be made to work, and lightweight enough. So it could act as a generator when not braking, thereby trickle charging the batteries, and then reversing that and braking electro-magetically. It's just how you deal with the mechanical failsafe. I wonder if there'd be a way of creating a carbon "brush" that could, in extremis, be used as braking material.

[Rich B]

I'm baffled by the mind of a person who has those crazy seats and those black door cards, and looks at them and thinks "I'm going to track down that crazy fabric and change the door cards" when the logical choice is to just get some black leather seats!

My god you're boring!

I'd like to see the door cards in the same plain red fabric as the bolsters, since I don't know if BMW would have put the patterned stuff on the doors when it's only on the seat centres. I suspect I'd prefer it as Harry has done it anyway.

ETA: you had a Golf GTI for a couple of years; did the tartan fabric seat trim touch you inappropriately?

i like bright interiors - my e46 had lovely Imola red leather - I'm purely talking about the effort Harry has taken to do such a thorough job! It's not the way most people would approach it.

[Gavster]

My 4 series is on eBay, finishing on Saturday, the highest offer so far is £9.5k and I would be really pleased if it gets £10k+

[V8Granite]

There is a huge amount of energy being removed by brake discs and pads though. If the battery is full the energy has to go somewhere through a load bank or similar. The load banks I’ve used are very heavy but I’m not sure how small they can be made.

One of the coolest descriptions of brake energy was they had worked out from a 200mph stop in a Vantage V600 which at the time had the largest production brakes, they could heat a 1 bed flat for a fortnight.

Dave!

[mik]

One of the coolest descriptions of brake energy was they had worked out from a 200mph stop in a Vantage V600 which at the time had the largest production brakes, they could heat a 1 bed flat for a fortnight.

Dave!

Would be a chuffin’ nightmare to avoid the cables getting all fankled and tangled up with other traffic though.

[integrale_evo]

I'm baffled by the mind of a person who has those crazy seats and those black door cards, and looks at them and thinks "I'm going to track down that crazy fabric and change the door cards" when the logical choice is to just get some black leather seats!

My god you're boring!

I'd like to see the door cards in the same plain red fabric as the bolsters, since I don't know if BMW would have put the patterned stuff on the doors when it's only on the seat centres. I suspect I'd prefer it as Harry has done it anyway.

ETA: you had a Golf GTI for a couple of years; did the tartan fabric seat trim touch you inappropriately?

i like bright interiors - my e46 had lovely Imola red leather - I'm purely talking about the effort Harry has taken to do such a thorough job! It's not the way most people would approach it.

The unusual and very good condition interior is mainly what attracted me to this particular car. Lots are starting to get pretty scabby.

We already have three other German cars with sensible black leather interiors

And thanks, I’ll take it as a compliment

[Jobbo]

If the battery is full the energy has to go somewhere through a load bank or similar.

The battery can never be so full that you can't completely stop using just the regen. Simple physics - it takes more energy to accelerate to a speed than to bring the car back to rest. Since the car can't be charging while accelerating, even if you start your journey 100% full there will always be more than enough capacity created from your acceleration to accommodate the energy generated bringing the car back to rest.

[Mito Man]

Good point by Dave, hardly any regen when under 5 mph, or when the battery is cold or when its fully charged.

Then you have to take into account the gnats ass % risk of someone with a fully charged EV driving down the Stelvio pass in cold weather and coming across a deer, on a hairpin bend...

[V8Granite]

If the battery is full the energy has to go somewhere through a load bank or similar.

The battery can never be so full that you can't completely stop using just the regen. Simple physics - it takes more energy to accelerate to a speed than to bring the car back to rest. Since the car can't be charging while accelerating, even if you start your journey 100% full there will always be more than enough capacity created from your acceleration to accommodate the energy generated bringing the car back to rest.

So you start at 100% and then drive down the end of your sloped drive and crash.

Presuming your efficiency of charge and efficiency of drain stayed roughly the same, there will be hundreds of scenarios when you can be out of braking capacity.

Dave!

[Jobbo]

Presuming your efficiency of charge and efficiency of drain stayed roughly the same

Are you aware of thermodynamics?

[Jobbo]

I acknowledge there are scenarios where you drop the electric car out of a plane where's it been charging and drive it downhill, where there is energy gained from gravity that could not be accommodated. However, that is entirely predictable and easy to plan for.