BMW Tells Owners Of 83 Cars Not To Drive Them Over Risk Of Fiery Death

BMW recalls 83 EVs for risk of fire, Cruise has an astronomical burn rate, Mercedes prices the new SL. All this and more in today’s issue of The Morning Dump.

Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.

BMW Tells A Few Owners To Stop Driving Their EVs

The next few weeks are going to really suck for roughly seven dozen BMW owners. While a recall with a scope of 83 cars seems fairly small in the grand scheme of things, an order not to drive the affected vehicles could really play havoc on people’s plans. Yes, BMW is advising 56 iX electric crossover SUV owners and 27 i4 electric sedan owners to park their vehicles immediately due to possibly having improperly-manufactured battery packs. If this is giving you shades of Chevrolet Bolt, you’re not wrong.

See, while BMW engineered battery packs for its i4 and iX in-house, production is still handled by outside suppliers. This means quality control is largely in the hands of Samsung SDI, and they didn’t quite nail a batch of packs. Let’s take a look at what the NHTSA recall report has to say.

A review of the battery supplier production records for the vehicle from the April incident was performed. Analyses suggested an irregularity during the supplier’s production process which may have allowed debris to enter into a battery cell. Further analyses were able to identify cathode pieces within the battery cell.

On June 3, 2022, BMW became aware of a US field incident involving a Model Year 2022 iX xDrive50, and on June 19, 2022, BMW became aware of a non-US field incident involving a 2022 BMW iX M60. Similar analyses were performed, and similar findings were identified involving an irregularity during the supplier’s production process.

So what exactly can broken-off cathode pieces within a battery cell cause? How about a chance of fiery death? Yeah, such debris can short a cell and start a thermal event — not exactly ideal stuff.  [Editor’s Note: I used to work as a thermal protection engineer, and I recall that the term “fire” was pretty much unacceptable. “Thermal event” was the go-to term. -DT]. As such, owners and dealerships have been given simple instructions: do not drive or charge the affected vehicles, and don’t park them near buildings either. The recall fix consists of whole battery pack replacement and should kick off in late September. Until then, best of luck with keeping these vehicles from self-immolating.

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Speaking of BMW EVs

How’s this for awkward timing? If you want a BMW EV that almost certainly has a lower chance of self-immolation, might I suggest the new i4 eDrive35. It’s a bit of a mouthful and certainly a bit ugly, but it carries a number that somewhat mitigates those concerns. Including a $995 freight charge, this thing starts at $52,395. That’s honestly not bad for an electric liftback, so how did BMW kneecap the i4 to get the price down to such a level?

Well, we’re not looking at crazy range or power here, although it still sounds plenty quick and distance-ready for most. A battery pack with a net capacity of 66 kWh feeds an electric motor on the rear axle to move the i4 from a dead stop to 60 mph in an estimated 5.8 seconds. Power should clock in at around 281 horsepower and 295 lb.-ft. of torque, while range is estimated to be around 260 miles on the base wheels.

While this doesn’t feel like brilliant timing to announce this new i4 variant, pricing and performance seem quite reasonable. Expect the i4 eDrive35 to roll into showrooms in the first quarter of 2023. If you want a mid-price electric sedan that isn’t a Tesla Model 3, this is pretty much it until the Hyundai Ioniq 6 arrives.

Cruise Apparently Burns Through $5 Million Every Single Day

Building autonomous cars is hard enough, but making autonomous cars profitable seems even harder in the short-term. Automotive News reports that losses are piling up for GM’s Cruise autonomous vehicle division, and the burn rate is almost unbelievable.

GM said last week that it lost $500 million on Cruise in the second quarter as it began charging for rides in a limited area of San Francisco. That’s more than $5 million a day, or the price of a Chevrolet Tahoe every 15 minutes.

Cruise’s losses for the first six months of the year deepened to $900 million from $600 million during the same period in 2021. Higher compensation costs to keep staff on board after putting aside plans for a public stock offering were one factor, GM executives said.

While fares from Cruise’s autonomous taxi program likely put a small dent in the losses, Cruise will have to greatly expand its territory and scope of operations to see a truly meaningful recoup through fares. This could be an uphill battle depending on how seriously regulators take issues like clustering and an alleged safety-second culture, so we’ll be watching this situation quickly to see how it plays out.

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New Mercedes SL Gets U.S. Pricing

With the arrival of a new Mercedes SL, it almost feels like the balance of the European GT segment is slowly being restored. The SL is one of the longest-running nameplates in the automotive world, with a grand history of largely open-topped opulence with a few cases of fixed-roof nutbaggery. The SL65 Black Series comes to mind.

The new SL comes with AMG’s four-liter biturbo V8 in two states of tune. The SL55 pumps out 469 horsepower and 516 lb.-ft. of torque, while the SL63 ups the ante to 577 horsepower and 590 lb.-ft. of torque. Stout numbers, as they really should be once you see the eye-watering price tags of both models. Including a $1,050 freight charge, the SL55 stickers for $138,450, while the SL63 clocks in at $179,150. That’s a $40,700 jump to the fast one, rather expensive considering the meager boost in quoted straight-line performance.

See, both SL models get all-wheel-drive to put power down efficiently, so the SL55 has a quoted 0-60 mph time of 3.8 seconds while the SL63 has a quoted 0-60 mph time of 3.5 seconds. If Mercedes’ testing is correct, that works out to around $13,566.67 per tenth of a second. So if the straight-line advantage is fairly mild, does the SL63 pack more handling hardware than the SL55? Well, yes and no. While the SL63 comes standard with a limited-slip rear differential and hydraulic roll stabilization, both of those features are available on the SL55. Also, do you happen to remember the AMG GT? The two-seat sports car that redefined phallic design for the modern age? It happened to be thousands of dollars less than a base SL, starting at $119,650.

I guess to sum it all up, I’m a little bit skeptical of the value of the new SL. It just seems a bit expensive in an era where consumers are generally shying away from cabriolets. I’m sure more information will arrive over the coming months to make the SL63 seem to pack better value, but until then I’m a bit cautious.

The Flush

Whelp, time to drop the lid on today’s edition of The Morning Dump. Welcome to August! Believe it or not, today is a statutory holiday in Canada, one most commonly referred to as Civic Holiday. Unfortunately, it’s not about ripping VTEC, but we’re here to change that. Let’s pretend that the K20A from a JDM eighth-generation Honda Civic Type R showed up unexpectedly on your doorstep with a note to have fun with it. What build would you plan around this free engine?

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Lead photo credit: BMW