I’m never buying a BMW again. I had an electric i3 which had an inverter (charger) failure. BMW wanted €12k to fix it. Thankfully an independent offered to do it for 4K. But BMW still wanted 3K just to plug it in and authenticate the new block. Nothing else, just “bless” it. Made the fix cost-prohibitive so we just had to scrap the car. The battery, which most people fear, was fine on this 8 year old car.
Luxury car dealers do that all the time. The Volvo dealership quoted me $2800 to get my car to pass inspection, about $1500 of which was just tires.
I got a set of tires from Costco for like $800, and then an independent mechanic said everything else was fine and charged me $100 for inspection and emissions.
I know, but in the past the independent dealers didn’t have to deal directly with BMW for fixes. Now with all the authentication needed you can’t just get a replacement part from anywhere any more. Similar to how Apple locked down its batteries, BMW is doing the same.