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.
I think they just patented it because the system rewards patent trolls with thousands of patents, even if they have no intention to ever use said patent.
This is unpractical and will cost them more (replace all the tooling, rethink supply chain) than it will supposedly make them (rich customers would go to official repairs anyway, and poor customers will just get a copy from aliexpress)
jjlinux@lemmy.zip 1 hour ago
No biggie. In less than a week we’ll have thousands of Chinese Amazon sellers providing these tools to everyone for lose to.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Yeah, security screws are security theatre. I had an electronics screw driver set that came with a bunch of the rarer screw bits by default. Actually ran into one I didn’t have, then noticed another set with that one (plus other features like the long bendy bit for hard to reach screws) next time I was in the tool section and just bought it.
That said, I won’t be needing this one. Driving a BMW would go against the image I’m trying to cultivate of not being an asshole.
LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 1 hour ago
Until you’re halfway through putting in new brake pads and realize you need a specialty bit and now you’re stuck without a working car until you get that Amazon package.