Cars nowadays are becoming more and more computerized. This can be beneficial in some cases, as the ECU can control various things very quickly and precisely. And the ECU can also tell your mechanic exactly what is wrong if your car has problems.

But the recent trend is to make EVERYTHING electronic. Things that use to be simple and straightforward to do mechanically have now become absurdly complex. A prime example is the oil monitoring system on the new BWM M3. On every car made in the last 100 odd years, you could read the oil level by looking at the dipstick. While a decidely crude and rudimentary design, the dipstick is nonetheless straightforward to use and has served its intended purpose admirably.

The engineers at BMW decided that with the new M3, reading the oil level could be better performed electronically by the ECU. As you shall see, they are wrong.

One of my coworkers acquired a new M3 late last year. Today, he told me of the epic fail that is the car’s oil monitoring system. Since there is no dipstick, the ONLY way you know what the oil level is is when the car tells you what it is. But you see, there is no electronic oil gauge. Rather, the car tells you when you should add oil and when there is too much oil. But that can be a very large range. Additionally, the manual very unintelligibly explains what to do when the oil warning comes on. Most notably, it says to NEVER add more than 1 quart of oil, despite the fact that the low oil warning could be caused by needing more than 1 quart of oil. Indeed, the system was so cryptic that my coworker gave up and had the dealer deal with it, as it is still under warranty.

Well, after a group consultation by all of the mechanics on duty, the dealer ended up adding too much oil - again because there is no way to actually know how much oil is in the oil pan. You know a system is overly complex when even the dealer can figure out how it works. So they had to drain all the oil and do a full oil change, topping off slowwwwwly and waiting for the ECU to decide when it was satisfied. All told, it took them 1.5 hours to deal with the oil.

So there you have the genius of electronically monitoring the oil level. Many man-hours wasted and even more aggravation for all parties involved. Too bad there wasn’t just a dipstick…