Featured Toyota bZ4X Specifications Revealed

Not for Toyota. They typically use 4 ports in the US. Port of Long Beach, Port of Benicia, Port of Jacksonville and Port of New York and New Jersey. Another car maker might use Corpus Cristi.

They’ve been increasingly using Lázaro Cárdenas, MICH
Mexico which is on the Pacific side to relieve some of the backup at the California ports. Then they just truck them up towards Texas which might be cheaper all around.

iPad ? Pro

 

At least it was before the governor started insisting on additional inspections of trucks.

 

Inspections are over. The secondary inspections found nothing but spoiled a lot of food. Estimates it cost texans $4B and the country $9B. He claimed it was successful. By every metric he hurt texas.

 

bz4X review and first drive from The Out of Spec Motoring channel - 56 minutes
be prepared - Kyle has driven Tesla models for years.

 

Looks like the car has a lot to offer, but the price is out of reach.

 

Interesting take away from them was that it's $10,000 more than a Chevy Bolt (where they feel its actual segment lies) but it charges faster.
.

 

No, none. Port of CC is primarily petro-chemical with some agriculture. It is not a container port nor have ro-ro capability. After the new pass-over harbor bridge is completed with much high clearance, things could change.

 

Over the last few days.

Toyota’s bZ4X EV is so broken that it’s now offering full buybacks

 

Yeah I read about that, what an amateur problem to have.

Your vehicle starts with the wheels and drivetrain, lack a solid base and nothing works

 

Has what the actual problem been explained?

 

Yes! The wheels might fall off, but only if you drive it

You might call it a Bolt problem. Not that Bolt, the one that catches fire when you aren't driving it, but a wheel bolt!

Mike

 

But what part of the wheel is at fault?
Early speculation is it is because Toyota switched from wheel nuts to wheel bolts. Others have been using wheel bolts without issue for years. The fix is taking too long for it simply be wrong torque for the bolts. Are the bolts failing? Or the hub plate they screw into? Or is it actually something else?

 

Toyota is conducting a safety recall involving 2023 model year bZ4X vehicles - Toyota USA Newsroom

To paraphrase: "After low-mileage use, all of the hub bolts on the wheel can loosen to the point where the wheel can detach from the vehicle." "No remedy is available at this time. Until the remedy is available, any authorized Toyota dealer will pick up the vehicle and provide a loaner vehicle FREE OF CHARGE to the owner."

That was as of today. So I plugged in a VIN into their owners recall status and it remains the same.

Maybe they are rethinking the whole wheel bolt thing and plan on replacing the wheel hubs to accept normal wheel studs. It seems like an awful lot of time to determine whether it's a wheel hub issue or a wheel bolt issue. And of course it's probably got a supplier issue hanging around in the back to exacerbate the problem. Maybe that's why they've suspended operations at the plant because they sent all of their spare parts to fix this issue.

 

Wheel bolts will always be a solution in search of a problem.

They have never been as reliable as studs, harder to self center and despite (ease of replacement) tend to also damage threads.

 

The common reason this happens is lack of stretch.

What keeps bolts from loosening is stretch - the amount the bolt stretches when brought up to torque.

A common rule of thumb is that the length of the fastener that is going to be stretched should be 4 times the diameter of the fastener. I've used this rule for about 30 years and never once had a fastener come loose, in some of the most demanding environments you can imagine (high vibration, fully reversing loads, extremely hard bolts, etc.). When a faster is shorter than that rule, you're supposed to use a locking mechanism (Loctite, nylon lock nuts, jam nuts, Stover bolts, locking washers, safety wire, etc.).

Whether the fastener is a bolt or a stud makes no difference here. Studs are nice if you have to remove and replace the nuts often, but you also shouldn't be doing that. Fasteners will fatigue from having that done. Ideally, you replace the fasteners every time they are brought to torque (or tension) and then released. Obviously we don't do that with wheel studs. But maybe we should since I have had a couple break on me over the years. I think that's mostly from a monkey over-torqueing them with an air ratchet, however. I found a couple of 76 ft-lb rated fasteners at 250+ ft-lbs before.

 

Wheel bolts aren't new to the automotive industry. Porsche uses them and lots of those cars are driven in high stress situations with lots of tire changes. (The included tool kit comes with special mounting stud/bolt to make mounting the wheel easier) So it isn't that bolts are bad, just in this application.

 

If they have a way to locate the wheel while you start the bolt (technically a screw, since there's no nut), I can see how the might be a little more user friendly than the typical stud and nut.

One of my first jobs, back in my college days, was in a tire center. I'm 69 now and have almost always rotated my own tires, and changed my own flats. Now I'm working part time on cars again. Two weeks ago, as I was putting a left front wheel back on a Prius, half way home, the stud spun and all the splines were stripped. Had to drill it out and replace the hub and bearing. Last week, a coworker was taking off a customer's (Camry) left front wheel (What is it with left front!!??), and he had a stud strip out. Oh, and he was taking off the wheel to replace a stud that had broken at some tire shop. So, one going on and one comping off. And those are the first times I've seen or experienced that happening. But it probably would not happen with a bolt since there are no splines to give out.

But I really don't think it matters much which you use as long as they are speced properly and make it easy to keep the wheel in place while you start the fasteners.

 

The Porsche mounting item is just like a bolt with the head cut off you hand screw halfway in and then remove once you have hung the wheel on it and screwed in several of the other bolts. The real bolts have a shaped collar to allow the bolt to slide and make good contact into the hole in the wheel. Maybe that is what Toyota forgot.

People just cut the head off a common bolt when they have lost the original nicely polished special one in the kit. Of course replacing it is nicely priced if you want the Porsche one.

 

This is a sad report: Toyota is now offering to buyback recalled bZ4X EVs - Drive Tesla

Toyota’s newly launched Toyota bZ4X is already facing a massive recall, and Toyota is now offering owners an option for the company to buyback the vehicle.

Toyota has sent letters to buyers to advise them to continue not to drive the vehicle until Toyota can establish a fix.

If owners want to keep their vehicles, they can:

• Get reimbursements if the car was paid in full
• Continued access to a loaner vehicle free of charge
• Storage of their bZ4X
• Free charging
• Extension of factory warranties

However, if clients are still unsatisfied with that offer, Toyota is now offering to buyback the vehicle.
. . . ​

Bob Wison

 

i am not an engineer, but it's hard to believe that this is such a difficult problem to solve