Adafruit: From Ultimate Driving Machine to Ultimate Rent-Seeking Machine: The BMW Logo Screw Patent.
If you haven’t already heard, BMW’s R&D teams have been busy “innovating.” Unfortunately, they aren’t focusing on the things that actually matter—like stellar engine performance or the legendary driving dynamics that gearheads love. Instead, the C-suite execs decided that the best use of their engineering budget was to design a proprietary security screw specifically intended to prevent BMW drivers from fixing their own cars.
“specifically intended to prevent BMW drivers from fixing their own cars.”
Give me a break.
I hate to break it to people but every manufacturer has a lot of brand specific tools. You need a special socket for Toyota head bolts, 10 point sockets for Honda suspensions, a special multipoint socket for Audis, a special socket for Mercedes lug nuts and it’s good to have a 21.5mm for Fords. 5 point security torx are starting to pop up on GMs.
That’s just an example of a few sockets, the deeper you go into a car, the higher the possibility that you need a $400 special tool or kit for a specific manufacturer, or even specific year or engine.
Why do manufacturers do that, do you think? Why would car manufacturers design the vehicles such that they require proprietary tools? Surely they can just use commodity parts and fixings?
I don’t really know. I purposely picked the things I mentioned because they’re similar to the BMW bolt, but the tools required are cheap and simple for all of them.
Part of my point was that there are other, more complicated and more expensive tools that are brand specific too. I think a lot of it is really just the nature of the beast. Brands do thiings differently, so a special shaped tool to get into the nook and cranny of a certain car won’t work on a different brand that has different nooks and crannys. And you can substitute “brand” with “engine,” “model,” or even “year.”
Right, but the article suggests a potential motivation - adding friction to dissuade motorists from repairing and servicing their own vehicles - which seems very likely to me. I was wondering why you dismissed that claim.
I don’t see how it could be effective. The brand specific things I mentioned are almost identical and none of them stop people from repairing their car. The BMW design is simpler than the ones I mentioned. A flat screwdriver with a gap cut down the middle would work.
Sure, I agree that it wouldn’t pose an insurmountable barrier for people, but it absolutely does cause friction - someone might have taken a crack at fixing something themselves, seen that it needs some proprietary tool, and decided “meh, fuck it, i’ll take it to the dealer”.
I can’t think of any other motivation than that.
I also highly doubt this screw is made with intention to keep users out of repairing their cars. I guarantee they are dress ups for engine bay/ interior. Having the bmw logo along panel screws looks far more puff than a bunch of torx screws. Every car requires either special tools or special software to work on, NO exceptions in modern vehicles. You cannot truly clear error codes from a Chrysler without a subscription to their gateway and internet access. You can go in limp mode where there’s no service and ur 3k autel scanner won’t help you without wifi as it cannot connect to the gateway. I don’t give a crap about special fasteners that’s the name of the game, my gripes are what they do on the computer side of things to lock you out. Right to repair just means you have the right to pay dealer networks thousands a year for the privilege of accessing your own modules on ur car with your scanner. What a fucking racket.
Sure, they can afford a luxury foreign automobile, but one particular drill bit? We’re not made of money!
Doesn’t BMW already use a lot of proprietary screws?