cross-posted from : https://lemmus.org/post/20199206
Adafruit: From Ultimate Driving Machine to Ultimate Rent-Seeking Machine: The BMW Logo Screw Patent.
If you havenāt already heard, BMWās R&D teams have been busy āinnovating.ā Unfortunately, they arenāt focusing on the things that actually matterālike 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.
I donāt care if thereās workarounds, I donāt care if youāll be able to buy a knockoff bit for $0.50. I donāt care if most people wonāt be impacted.
This. Is. Not. Ok.
I donāt care if thereās workarounds, I donāt care if youāll be able to buy a knockoff bit for $0.50. I donāt care if most people wonāt be impacted.
I donāt care about BMW at all.
If you are not using a standard fastener you need to provide a lifetime warranty on whatever canāt be removed by standard parts. Lifetime means you need to escrow with a third party enough money to fix it in case you go bankrupt.
BMW have been greedy fucks for a long time now but it keeps getting worse. As long as their cars stay good I donāt think customers will go away, sadly.
I dont understand how they can sell it as security screw if you can unscrew it with those thin pliers
As someone who has broken a pair of pliers trying to use them to unscrew something, that may not work as well as you think it might.
You clearly werenāt using Knipex pliers.
Nope, I am one of the poors.
The thing is. This is an arms race. The service providers need to source the tools, and the tools or copies will be available from various vendors.
Itās mildly inconvenient at worst. So itās not even efficient evil, itās stupid evil.
itās stupid evil.
Since the screwhead is ~50% hollow, I wonder how the metrics on durability and longevity go.
Itāll also be cheap evil.
