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 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.
BMW have been greedy fucks for a long time now but it keeps getting worse. As long as their cars stay good I don’t think customers will go away, sadly.
I don’t care if there’s workarounds, I don’t care if you’ll be able to buy a knockoff bit for $0.50. I don’t care if most people won’t be impacted.
This. Is. Not. Ok.
I don’t care if there’s workarounds, I don’t care if you’ll be able to buy a knockoff bit for $0.50. I don’t care if most people won’t be impacted.
I don’t care about BMW at all.
If you are not using a standard fastener you need to provide a lifetime warranty on whatever can’t 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.
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.
It’s mildly inconvenient at worst. So it’s not even efficient evil, it’s stupid evil.
it’s stupid evil.
Since the screwhead is ~50% hollow, I wonder how the metrics on durability and longevity go.
It’ll also be cheap evil.
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 weren’t using Knipex pliers.
Nope, I am one of the poors.
