From an Audi e-tron that was just about to hit 10,000 miles. No wonder Volkswagen is desperately hiring as many software engineers as possible. Or are they trying to protect their dealers’ service business?
The big question is what would happen if you took it to Jiffy Lube?
full story at Electrek.com
I’m guessing the e-tron has no combustion engine… if that’s the case would ignoring the notice somehow count as not performing maintenance and somehow void the warranty?
For the halibut, I pulled up the e-tron maintenance schedule. There is work to be done at 10K, but, of course, no oil change.
The cars have an optional fragrance cartridge, to be replaced every 2 years.
They are supposed to check the expiration date of the first aid kit. My Jetta wagon came with a first aid kit. I gave it away.
Counter-intuitively, the car does have a cooling system that requires periodic maintenance.
Well, if they do get around to changing the maintenance reminder subroutine to delete the reference to an oil change, I just hope they don’t use the same programmers that Boeing used on it’s MCAS,
https://www.audiusa.com/content/dam/audiusa/Documents/maintenance-schedules/MY%202019%20Audi%20e-tron%20USA%20Scheduled%20Maintenance-8-20-2018.pdf
“Counter-intuitively, the car does have a cooling system that requires periodic maintenance.” Sure, anything that handles energy is less than perfect; that’s a fundamental law of physics. The maintenance is pretty trivial.
A battery undergoes a chemical reaction as it charges and discharges. A few percent of the energy involved is released as heat. If a battery gets too hot it can be damaged. Most EVs have a small liquid cooling system for the batteries, with a little radiator, a fan and everything. Nissan Leaf air-cools the batteries. There’s a minor controversy about whether that’s good enough for maximum battery life.
Electronics handling many kilowatts are close to ideal as well, but likewise a percent or two goes up in heat as its transistors switch from off to on and back again. Likewise a small cooling system for a few hundred watts is present in most EVs.
These coolant loads are indeed much smaller than the waste heat given off from combustion.
Periodic maintenance? I suppose you should check the coolant levels every so often, that’s not hard. Checking hoses too, especially if any are exposed to the road. I forget what the coolant change interval is on my Fiat, but I remember on my friend’s Mitsu EV, they actually specify an interval of 240 months. That’s 20 years.
Looks pretty typical for the work of modern day software engineering, I’m sure there’s a team working on the patch for the job they couldn’t execute properly in the first place. The latter in other words.
What’s really wrong is all these german cars copying 1980s GM disco dash displays that BMW/Mercedes/Audi driving yuppies called tacky and gimmicky.
The disco dash was more of an ’80s Japanese thing than a GM thing, Camaro Berlinetta and C4 Corvette excepted
And S10/Astro, Fiero, Trans Am, 6000STE, Riviera, Regal, Roadmaster, Toronado, Reatta, Cutlass Supreme, Olds 88/98….
Man, I hate changing that electric oil. It’s a shocking job, much cruder than replacing the regular stuff. We’re on a slippery slope, I tell you.
Yeah I know youre joking but I used to run the filtration plant for cleaning oil from OCBs and transformers, the oil gets fithly and will conduct unless cleaned by filtration.
What I find stupid is having a digital display of speed inside of a digital display of a speedometer. You don’t want to have to deal with a confusing display like this
I found out recently that the manual-transmission Kia Soul has an LCD indicator telling you what gear you’re in. Most other cars I test drove, including the Honda Fit I bought, and the 2008 Toyota Yaris I had before, simply have a blank panel, nothing, or a blank section of the multifunction LCD where the PRNDL indicator would be.
It is of course a stretch of a conclusion based on this, nevertheless it examplifies why I would be wary of buying EVs from the big, old manufacurers.
They are obviously only in the EV business because Tesla has made it impossible for them to convince politicians not to force them, and something like this really does make the whole effort seem half-assed.
Sorry, but fear of Tesla is not the only reason why German manufacturers are going ALL IN on EVs. Germany is very serious about reducing it’s carbon footprint and part of that is that the government has decree that X numbers of EV vehicles WILL BE BUILT, whether the customers want them or not. The same type of legislation that California and a few other states have passed into law.
Sorry Howard, but that’s not quite the facts. Germany has zero control over the CO of its cars or can mandate EV production. The EU sets emission standards, and it’s then up to manufacturers to meet them, or not. If not, as in the case with FCA, they have to buy CO credits from other manufacturers who have excess, meaning Tesla. FCA is going to pay Tesla over a billion in EV credits.
The EU CO emission regulations can be met with hybrids too, which is why Toyota is doing so well in Europe these days. They have hybrid versions of just about every car they sell there. Honda is also pushing hybrids.
The big problem for the Germans is that the sell lots of bigger vehicles (SUVs, etc) so the CO emissions are more difficult to meet, especially since dieselgate. They have no choice but to either build EVs, or make a massive investment in hybrids, but since hybrids are seen as an interim solution, EVs is the way they’re going. And there’s no turning back now, even though it’s really hurting their bottom line right now.
To answer your question directly, the Jiffy Lube guy would come out with a paper towel in his hand, saying “this is the color that regenerative brake fluid is supposed to be and this is from your car. It doesn’t look like this has been changed in the last 10,000 miles and the service is only $29.95.”
We need a laugh button for this.
“When’s the last time you changed the surge protector in this car? That long, eh? Well, today only we have a special….”
No worse than the Lexington Park, MD Nissan dealer who put a $1000.00 “service” charge on new Nissan Leafs. Main part of the “service”? Lifetime oil changes.
Could be Audi’s legal department at work. Imagine if the software engineers had taken out the oil change reminder for the e-tron and, via a mistake in the manufacturing process, the reminder was removed from other Audi products, as well.
IOW, better safe than sorry. Not to mention that it’s a terrific way to get an Audi customer into the service department for some potential upselling.
You’re joking, right? Why would it be removed form their other cars?
that is bad…..and a great example why they still can’t beat Tesla.
Who knows? Maybe the world really is ass-backward these days. Maybe nowadays Cadillac is the leader and Audi is just trying to be like GM? You gotta admit, this would be something that GM would do…