How do you remove cupholder under front armrest?

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Kristian said:
Wow - that's one heavy cup holder - 224 grams.

Any popular easy weight savings?

Thanks

Kristian

I was surprised at how heavy that was too. Another thing that seems heavier than it should are the two plastic and cloth trim panels either side of the frunk under the bonnet. BMW uses some very dense plastic!
 
graememwl said:
Another thing that seems heavier than it should are the two plastic and cloth trim panels either side of the frunk under the bonnet.
The worst weight abuse is the glass rear hatch cover. Not only is it fragile and expensive to replace (the hatch can't be repaired), but it is considerably heavier than it would have been had it been covered by the same thermoplastic used for all other exterior body panels.
 
I had wondered about the glass rear - why not just make it of acrylic and then put something like a phone screen protector (Like Zagg) so it doesn't scratch.
There are lots of non-load bearing screws and bolts that could use aluminium instead of steel.
Vented front discs - I'm sure lighter regular ones would have been fine bearing in mind the regen braking.
Of course small extra light carbon ceramic ones would have been really nice but they are way too expensive.

Loving the car though and saving even more money now my office has started offering free charging.

Kristian
 
Kristian,
The removable cup holders can be pretty stuck in place. Monstrous pulling straight up is one option, but a little side to side jiggling while pulling up will make them pop out pretty easily.
 
Kristian said:
There are lots of non-load bearing screws and bolts that could use aluminium instead of steel.
One must be careful using dissimilar metals for bolts/screws and what they screw into. To prevent galvanic corrosion, our all-aluminum Honda Insight hybrid had specially-coated single-use steel bolts that screwed into aluminum.
 
Keep forgetting about mixing metals even though I have a large stash of used single use silver plated nuts and bolts reclaimed from a skip at my old job.
Is anodising aluminium enough to stop the corrosion?
 
Keep in mind that a well-designed vehicle may see some pretty nasty environments like being next to the ocean, where salt spray may cover most things, and even be part of the dust flying around. Some deserts, even, have a lot of caustic things that while they may not see moisture all that often, can get into nearly everywhere. Many places still use salt on the roads in the winter that tends to get everywhere. Maybe nothing worse that wet, salt, then sitting in a warm garage for awhile, the repeat. Even if you don't live in one of those areas, you may drive through them. BMW tends to take that sort of thing seriously. Look at some old Dodge, Chevy, Nissan products driving by where things are covered in rust. Short-term, they may look and function well, but some do try to make them last longer without issues.

Aluminum in its natural state almost always has a thin coating of rust on it. Unlike iron, aluminum rust creates a barrier, while iron rust is like a scale, making a molecule that is larger than the elemental material, exposing more material to oxygen so it can continue to rust. It's also almost invisible, unlike iron rust. Anodizing aluminum makes a thicker, harder compound, but the underlying material is the same. Plating anything gets expensive, and is not perfect. ON screws, bolts, nuts, the act of tightening them can break the plating, exposing the underlying materials to corrosion which is one reason why some are considered on-time-use (another is that the act of tightening them can distort them so they may lose some of their other, engineered properties).

Drilling rotors tends to make them more fragile and noisy while also costing more. Everything is generally a cost/benefit design decision. If drilled rotors tipped the scales in the right direction, given the clean-sheet design, they would have happened. I'm not privy to any of those decisions, but I think part of it was choosing forged wheels verses cast, which are both stronger and lighter and likely a much larger weight savings than drilling out rotors would have been in the cost/benefit decisions, reducing the unsprung weight while also adding strength.
 
This is the 1st car I've had with forged wheels.
If I ever fitted different wheels to a car I always tried to fit lighter ones - my old 1 Series had Oz Superleggeras on with winter tyres and they were very light for cast wheels, but a real pain to clean - the i3 wheels are so quick to clean.
 
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