Thoughts and Musings on the Ineos Grenadier

[FridgeFreezer]

2 hours ago, jeremy996 said:

Ineos say they have about a quarter of the processors a new Defender uses.

That's not much of a metric if the vehicle as a whole is using a similar "level" of electrickery, it's not like anyone round here is cracking out the soldering station and replacing individual microprocessors in ECU's on the regular... and TBH ECU's are generally robust & reliable things... it's the underlying reliance on the systems, and falling over / going into limp mode / diagnosing the issue when there's a problem, and I'm not really sure how much I believe the hype that this thing will be any "better" to work on than any other modern vehicle in that respect if it's got all the same systems fitted (likely from the same OEM suppliers too).

[jeremy996]

10 minutes ago, FridgeFreezer said:

That's not much of a metric if the vehicle as a whole is using a similar "level" of electrickery, it's not like anyone round here is cracking out the soldering station and replacing individual microprocessors in ECU's on the regular... and TBH ECU's are generally robust & reliable things... it's the underlying reliance on the systems, and falling over / going into limp mode / diagnosing the issue when there's a problem, and I'm not really sure how much I believe the hype that this thing will be any "better" to work on than any other modern vehicle in that respect if it's got all the same systems fitted (likely from the same OEM suppliers too).

All true -  we are just going to have to wait for actual experience. Ineos expect their electronic manual and parts catalogue to be a game changer, as it includes a lot of troubleshooting for the modern systems. If they have specified the right bits and have the right quality, fixing it if it breaks could be easier than a modern LR. Ineos also say they have written the software to be more fault-tolerant, again the proof will be in the eating. Having a limp mode more than the walking pace of an emaciated snail would be a start!

I cannot, in all honesty, expect it to be as easy to fix as my old 110, which had the same level of technology as a mantle clock, but I'm hoping it won't break as often. For 60 Grand OTR, I will be very fed up if it does.

[elbekko]

43 minutes ago, FridgeFreezer said:

That's not much of a metric if the vehicle as a whole is using a similar "level" of electrickery, it's not like anyone round here is cracking out the soldering station and replacing individual microprocessors in ECU's on the regular... and TBH ECU's are generally robust & reliable things... it's the underlying reliance on the systems, and falling over / going into limp mode / diagnosing the issue when there's a problem, and I'm not really sure how much I believe the hype that this thing will be any "better" to work on than any other modern vehicle in that respect if it's got all the same systems fitted (likely from the same OEM suppliers too).

Indeed. If they really want to improve electronic reliability, they'd improve the CANBus system so one bad module doesn't take out the whole network ring. Computers moved past that 20 years ago, time for cars to start using some more intelligent networks.

[deep]

2 hours ago, elbekko said:

Indeed. If they really want to improve electronic reliability, they'd improve the CANBus system so one bad module doesn't take out the whole network ring. Computers moved past that 20 years ago, time for cars to start using some more intelligent networks.

I think car reliability probably peaked over twenty years ago.  The electronics they pretty much all use now are shocking.  You get a small problem and it sends you in circles for ever.  Plug in a diagnostic machine and it gives you an unhelpful code (one on my Peugeot cracks me up - why is the car sometimes miss-firing?  Plug in the scanner, check the code.  "Engine is misfiring"!!).  That's the sort of nonsense I would expect the Grenadier to rise above.

[landroversforever]

1 hour ago, deep said:

I think car reliability probably peaked over twenty years ago.  The electronics they pretty much all use now are shocking.  You get a small problem and it sends you in circles for ever.  Plug in a diagnostic machine and it gives you an unhelpful code (one on my Peugeot cracks me up - why is the car sometimes miss-firing?  Plug in the scanner, check the code.  "Engine is misfiring"!!).  That's the sort of nonsense I would expect the Grenadier to rise above.

What age? 

 

[jeremy996]

5 hours ago, deep said:

I think car reliability probably peaked over twenty years ago.  The electronics they pretty much all use now are shocking.  You get a small problem and it sends you in circles for ever.  Plug in a diagnostic machine and it gives you an unhelpful code (one on my Peugeot cracks me up - why is the car sometimes miss-firing?  Plug in the scanner, check the code.  "Engine is misfiring"!!).  That's the sort of nonsense I would expect the Grenadier to rise above.

We have a 2002 Vauxhall Aglia which has endeared itself to the family by its ability to just work, so long as it is fed and oiled. It is a bizarre car as it is a Suzuki Move+ with a Corsa power pack, so no manual is truely helpful, but it has only the basic OBD II code set and surprisingly good durability. It also has a code for "Misfire", which was a cypher for the coil pack is dying.

Compared to the Agila, the 2000 Mazda MX5 we have is a bit of a diva; shredding drive belts, then an intermittant coil pack failure that was not identified by the ODB, (nasty, pre ODB II blinky light job), but by swapping leads around to see if the fault moved. I do have the full factory repair manual for the MX5, so troubleshooting is more a case of RTFM!

More modern vehicles usually have the emissions codes, (almost universal), and several sets of proprietary systems that requires money or IP theft to interrogate. These always seem to be a pain in the 'arris and will seriously put up the price of fault identification, so I commend Deep's conclusion to the masses.

[jeremy996]

New to me Grenadier YouTube with Mark Tennant giving an update; hang on for the game viewer at the end, a bit of a sight!

 

[elbekko]

14 hours ago, deep said:

I think car reliability probably peaked over twenty years ago.  The electronics they pretty much all use now are shocking.  You get a small problem and it sends you in circles for ever.  Plug in a diagnostic machine and it gives you an unhelpful code (one on my Peugeot cracks me up - why is the car sometimes miss-firing?  Plug in the scanner, check the code.  "Engine is misfiring"!!).  That's the sort of nonsense I would expect the Grenadier to rise above.

Oh, god no. I'll just give a wave in the general direction of the P38. Hundreds of separate wires for everything, ECUs that on the inside look like they're from a computer from the 80s (tbf, they were). The BeCM that controls everything, and thus needs feeds to and from everything.

Modern cars are a miracle of reliability, in general. Especially looking at powertrain, imagine plopping a RV8 and Flapper EFI in something now. People would be livid that they'd have to change the timing chain before 4 oil changes on a modern car. The electronics now are much better developed and much more robust internally. Most of the problems with new cars are infotainment related, because it's so in-your-face that people notice it. It doesn't matter, your car won't stop driving because your infotainment is rebooting. And if they'd just fix the network in cars, single modules would have a much reduced chance of bringing down the whole system.
CANBus is a good idea, executed not-so-great, that's all. Don't forget that also started 20+ years ago. Stand-alone modules communicating on a central bus is so much better than a monolithic system. It's the same as in software development: cars now are more of an event-driven microservice architecture.
People mock a taillight ECU, but I prefer it being an isolated job over the body computer having to care about how to drive the taillights. If you have memory seats, exactly 2 things *need* to know about them: the button to operate it, and the seat itself. But you can have the infotainment system listen to the same message, so it can display a "hey driver x, welcome back". Or save dashboard layouts based on the memory selection. 0 cost, 0 extra wires, the body computer doesn't need to give a single damn. Want to control the passenger seat? Easy, just send a message to that instead.

If you want your diagnostics to give you more helpful codes, you'll need even more sensors that can go wrong. And then people will moan that the codes only show up because the sensor is broken.

The biggest failing of modern cars is that everything is locked down. If the CANBus was well-documented and open-source, fault finding would be much easier. So would tuning, swapping out components, ...
An engine swap *should* be electronically trivial these days, as you'd just need to plop in a module that translates manufacturer X messages to manufacturer Y messages. Sadly, it isn't, because everything is closed and even encrypted now. Partially because of automakers being greedy, partially because of people being afraid of the evil hackers that'll make your car shut down from the next lane over, partially because of emissions requirements that can't be tampered with.

I can guarantee you the Grenadier will fix exactly none of this. They've taken all of this from BMW, who will not want their IP exposed. Fault codes will be exactly the same as you get on a BMW, because that's what Bosch developed for them, and of course they're just going to reuse that system. One can hope they did a better job of waterproofing the CANBus connections and the ECUs, but who knows. Probably not.

(Sorry for the unstructured rant, that's how my brain works...)

[ThreePointFive]

You make a good point (well, several) about it being BMW. Has anyone checked if they'll let you have "access" to the diff locks or if they're a £30/month subscription?

I've come to realise that my problem - if I have one - is with Ineos and not with the vehicle. If I'm 'anti', it's because of the morally dubious (in my opinion) way this vehicle has been marketed and produced, I probably like the car itself. As such, I intend to tone down the rhetoric. A bit.

But that said, we need to remember that according to Ineos' own mission statements this is a replacement for the old Defender, not a rival to the new one. The yard stick for complexity is the previous model.

If it was Land Rover's desertion of producing a simple, rugged, easily maintainable workhorse and the Grenadier fills that gap, then surely the new model is an irrelevance as a comparator.

So when discussing electrics, it should not be how many fewer ECUs it has than the new one, but how many more it has than the old and could it have done without them.

[Escape]

While I agree to most of this, I just can't let this pass.

3 hours ago, elbekko said:

People mock a taillight ECU, but I prefer it being an isolated job over the body computer having to care about how to drive the taillights.

What's wrong with just a switch and possibly a relay?? I don't need or want a computer to control my taillights! And if the switch should fail, I'll simply bypass it and carry on. As I have done on my Excel, broken headlight switch fixed with a Leatherman and piece of copper wire on the side of the road. I've looked at a similar bypass on my project P38 (in case I should ever drown the BECM), but that's not so straightforward. But possible, just because there is a dedicated wire for everything. I don't even want to think what it would take in something more recent...

[Retroanaconda]

Because these days tail lights do more than just illuminate when the switch is on. They might come on when the car is unlocked for example, or the brake lights might need to be lit when the regenerative braking is operating on a hybrid vehicle. The user might want to be told when a specific light has failed. All these things need more than a simple circuit, and the electronic control unit is an effective way of achieving them.

[landroversforever]

32 minutes ago, Retroanaconda said:

Because these days tail lights do more than just illuminate when the switch is on. They might come on when the car is unlocked for example, or the brake lights might need to be lit when the regenerative braking is operating on a hybrid vehicle. The user might want to be told when a specific light has failed. All these things need more than a simple circuit, and the electronic control unit is an effective way of achieving them.

You've also got less cabling going to and from the light then. If its controlled internally then it's only got the CAN signals and power/ground.

[Chicken Drumstick]

4 hours ago, ThreePointFive said:

But that said, we need to remember that according to Ineos' own mission statements this is a replacement for the old Defender, not a rival to the new one. The yard stick for complexity is the previous model.

If it was Land Rover's desertion of producing a simple, rugged, easily maintainable workhorse and the Grenadier fills that gap, then surely the new model is an irrelevance as a comparator.

So when discussing electrics, it should not be how many fewer ECUs it has than the new one, but how many more it has than the old and could it have done without them.

The last of the line Puma's have quite a lot of electronics too.

[FridgeFreezer]

2 hours ago, Escape said:

What's wrong with just a switch and possibly a relay??

Because that's more wires everywhere, and there's a fair chance that a tail-light with a small control module that just needs power, ground, and a CAN connection is more reliable than a relay that has moving contacts or a switch that's got to handle full current rather than a small logic signal.

Honestly I'm mostly in agreement with @elbekko, if done properly (and openly) the whole CAN thing is a pretty good idea... much like electric motors to power cars are a very good idea only let down by battery technology.

Also, as elbekko's comment sort of hinted, a lot of stuff is locked down for emissions/safety reasons - when cars are electric there's going to be much less reason for the systems to be locked down (no emissions systems to bypass with naughty tuning chips etc.) and driving the motor(s) is a fairly simple 3-phase controller job, so swapping motors / controllers with more open aftermarket stuff may get much easier.

11 minutes ago, Chicken Drumstick said:

The last of the line Puma's have quite a lot of electronics too.

It would be informative to see a side-by-side comparison to the Grenadier I think.

[landroversforever]

Think of it like a theatre lighting setup.... with the old analogue type systems we had to run a suitable power cable from the dimmer racks to every single light. We're only a small village group but that was still roughly ~36 cable runs of everything from ~2m to 15m. We do still use some of that on cost grounds, but even just swapping half of that system to the lighting equivalent of CAN means we don't need to run anywhere near as much as where the loadings work we can daisy chain both the power and signal cabling. With then the added option of more clever lights that are able to use other signals for things like RGB colour changing or movement/focus/gobo etc.

[Happyoldgit]

22 minutes ago, Chicken Drumstick said:

The last of the line Puma's have quite a lot of electronics too.

Yep. Most of the issues that I had with the ones I actually owned were down to outdated body design and poor protective coatings and finishes. Next in line would be mechanical issues neck and neck with the poor location of some electronics due to the venerable age of the body design and poor connections.

[jeremy996]

Ineos had stated they intended to go "open source", but I gather reality struck rather hard and now access to systems will require a suitable terminal, (some form of laptop), and licenced software. I commented about this many posts ago. (29/09/2022, Driving the Grenadier).

Emissions was the primary driver, as systems have to be certified by the manufacturer for distance/time, (one of the reasons that USA deliveries are still 12 months away, (have to be certified in the US).

Well designed and specified electronics are very reliable, badly done electronics are a nightmare, especially if the supplier is secretive about the code, functions and error messages. If the electronic service manual is as good as promised, the backup as good as billed and they have avoided any major gotchas, the Grenadier could be all I'm hoping for. 

As for a side by side comparison of a Puma with a Grenadier, a good start will be a wiring diagram, but I'd expect the Grenadier will be more complex, as to get EU type approval it must have at least Stop/Start, ABS, ESC and tyre pressure monitoring.

[elbekko]

7 hours ago, Escape said:

What's wrong with just a switch and possibly a relay??

Well, it's never just a switch and a relay.

A taillight has, at a minimum, the taillight itself, an indicator, a brake light, maybe a fog light, maybe a reverse light.

So that's a separate cable for all of those. That's a bunch of weight.

Then you duplicate half of those to the instrument cluster.

Then duplicate all of them for a trailer plug.

You can replace all this with 4 wires and a small, simple module. Something says "I'm braking", and the taillight thinks "hmm, better turn on the brake light". Have a trailer hookup? That module sees the same signal, and lights up the trailer's brake lights. Remember when we put the towbar on my Merc? One power wire, one ground, and a 2-wire plug for the CANBus. Want a 7-pin plug? Then put in a 7-pin module. Want a 13-pin plug? Put in a 13-pin module. The rest of the car doesn't care, and doesn't have to care.

Same with the taillights again. The body computer doesn't need to care if you have an old-school bulb, or LEDs, or an OLED panel. The only thing that ever needs to know about that is the taillight itself.

In software development we call this separation of concerns. Don't talk directly to dependencies, talk to an abstract interface and stop caring about how it works.

[Escape]

I'm still not convinced adding all that complexity will make things more reliable.

As for adding weight, you need a bigger cable if it has to carry all the current, so it wont be much lighter than separate wires. But it will introduce a single point of failure. Sensing for a blown bulb can be done at the switch, no need for much extra wiring. It was done like that in 80s by Merc and Lotus (for the fan fail warning light, not the lights) to name 2.

Sure, if you want all kinda gizmos like lights staying on or blinking merry xmas you might be better off with a taillight ECU. Not if you just want them to work and be able to fix or bodge them if/when needed. So fine for the new LR Defender as a lifestyle vehicle, not so much for the Grenadier that was hyped to be rugged and field repairable.
I don't like talking to a black box and hoping it does what I expect it, though I accept that's probably what most people prefer these days. Me, I like to know what I'm doing. Or at least pretend to. 😉

 

[Happyoldgit]

Hmmm point is the feeling I get is legislation and all that jazz doesn't want you to fix or bodge them. If that's your bag then stick to stuff that is several decades old.

[Bowie69]

To be honest, all this talk of tail light ECUs.... has anyone had a tail light fail on a modern car with LEDs?

[Escape]

Actually yes, I've had to replace 2 taillight units on moderns because some of the LEDs weren't working anymore. I don't know if the LEDs themselves failed or the elektrickery to switch them on, all sealed so throw away and replace. Painfully expensive, especially compared to the price of a bulb or even LED replacement.

[Chicken Drumstick]

9 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

It would be informative to see a side-by-side comparison to the Grenadier I think.

Not sure it would. The Puma came out in what, 2007. So is best part of 15 years behind the Grenadier from a development point of view. It was also just a revamp, not a clean sheet design.

Puma's have remote central locking, heated seats, electric windows, electronic fed speedo, digital trip, 4 wheel traction control, ABS, bluetooth stereo, anti stall, air con, immobiliser, emissions control devices, electronic throttle, different throttle response programs, adaptive idle speeds plus a load of things I'm probably missing.

Also of major note, would be the price. In 2007 the Defender was a lot cheaper. I know my Uncle paid about £17k in 2012 for a 90 pickup, so would have been less 5 years earlier. The above spec is actually pretty good and comprehensive for a vehicle of its price point.

[Escape]

6 hours ago, Chicken Drumstick said:

Puma's have remote central locking, heated seats, electric windows, electronic fed speedo, digital trip, 4 wheel traction control, ABS, bluetooth stereo, anti stall, air con, immobiliser, emissions control devices, electronic throttle, different throttle response programs, adaptive idle speeds plus a load of things I'm probably missing.

The TD5 could be specced with all of those as well, just not as standard. Which probably suited part of the customers (like myself at the time) and kept prices down.

[Happyoldgit]

Crikey I paid a shed load more than 17k for all my Puma's. That may have been base price for a base spec 90 pickup but the 110 XS CSW & 110 XS USW's I bought (last was in 2014, first 2007) were knocking on 30k+.