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      06-23-2020, 12:50 PM   #1
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Stainless Steel Water Bottle FUSED to cupholder

New 2020 X5 with heated/cooled cupholders. The car has only 100 (one hundred) miles...I got in the car one day, put my Stainless Steel Contigo brand water bottle in the left cupholder, put the "cool" function on, and drove 5 minutes. I parked, and when I grabbed the water bottle, the bottom steel lip of the bottle had fused to the bottom of the cupholder. I was literally in the car only 5 minutes! BMW wants $$$ to remove the cupholder and fused water bottle bottom. I have $25K worth of extended and special warranties, but none of them cover this (obvious) manufacturer defect. Any ideas? Contigo claims it's a BMW problem, and BMW claims it's my problem.
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      06-23-2020, 11:04 PM   #2
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That’s interesting. These cup holders are likely cooled and heated thermoelectrically. It’s called the Peltier Effect. How it works is one side gets cool or hot depending on the flow or polarity of current. It can actually get cold enough to freeze water or, conversely, get really hot.

What may have happened (and I’m just guessing) is that even though you had it on cool, the Peltier device is usually pretty thin, nothing more than PN semiconductors sandwiched between two conductive plates. After a while, both sides can get very hot because there’s not much separating the two sides, although the temperature difference between the two sides will remain. In other words, upon activation the hot side might initially zoom to 50 C while the cool side drops to 20 C. If left on, however, without a heat sink, the hot side will tend to get hotter, causing the cool side to heat up as well.

One side can get hot enough to boil water, which means the other side is also scorching hot, although there’s still that temperature difference between the two sides. The heating effect is very fast as well, seconds to minutes.

I think the way the BMW keeps things cool is by turning it on and off. If the device is defective, it could have stayed on enough to melt the cup holder itself to your bottle.
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      06-24-2020, 12:35 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Frenetic View Post
That's interesting. These cup holders are likely cooled and heated thermoelectrically. It's called the Peltier Effect. How it works is one side gets cool or hot depending on the flow or polarity of current. It can actually get cold enough to freeze water or, conversely, get really hot.

What may have happened (and I'm just guessing) is that even though you had it on cool, the Peltier device is usually pretty thin, nothing more than PN semiconductors sandwiched between two conductive plates. After a while, both sides can get very hot because there's not much separating the two sides, although the temperature difference between the two sides will remain. In other words, upon activation the hot side might initially zoom to 50 C while the cool side drops to 20 C. If left on, however, without a heat sink, the hot side will tend to get hotter, causing the cool side to heat up as well.

One side can get hot enough to boil water, which means the other side is also scorching hot, although there's still that temperature difference between the two sides. The heating effect is very fast as well, seconds to minutes.

I think the way the BMW keeps things cool is by turning it on and off. If the device is defective, it could have stayed on enough to melt the cup holder itself to your bottle.
That's an interesting explanation, but in anecdotal observation, the cup holders neither get very hot nor very cold, so it seems that when functioning as intended, the regulation is very conservative. In fact, the thermal cupholders are all but entirely useless for sold purpose because of this. The Peltier elements are also on the side, not bottom of cup holders.

What I think is more likely to have happened is that the metal container conducted the thermal gradient (colder relative to ambient, but it is still a thermal gradient) more rapidly than non-metal would and caused differential thermal expansion/contraction somewhere, locking the cup in. I would be curious to know if OP tried repeated extended cool and heat cycles to remove the mug from the holder, although it's possible that would just flip the differential expansion/contraction and do nothing to unfuse it.

It may also be that OP's cupholders were defective and provided poor temperature regulation. I doubt we'll ever know, but I suppose it can just be tested once the mug is out.

The manual does warn against using metal containers in the thermal cupholders, but doesn't explain why. So I think that fact alone gives everyone but the user an escape here.

Funny fact: my dealer gave me a gift of a metal BMW thermal mug to go along with my X5 with thermal cupholders. Wonder what their liability exposure would be had this happened to me?
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      06-24-2020, 03:27 PM   #4
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Yeah, one thing I forgot to mention is that items such as that metal jug, will act like a heat sink for any Peltier device. That’s probably why they warned against it and could also explain why it melted to the cup holder.
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      06-24-2020, 04:48 PM   #5
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Yeah, Peltier confirmed. I found it from the technical training documents located here in the Body document: https://g05.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1563063



And yeah, I’m speculating on what occurred based solely on my knowledge of Peltier devices and what he described had happened.

A malfunctioning device is the only explanation I can come up with, coupled with what is a gigantic heat sink.

Even with BMW knowing about the potential for metallic heat sinks (i.e., metallic cups), that alone wouldn’t have been enough to cause what happened. They wouldn’t design it like that I’m sure and if they did they would likely place a prominent warning sticker near the cupholder: no metal cups.

Last edited by Frenetic; 06-24-2020 at 05:17 PM..
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      06-24-2020, 05:01 PM   #6
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You need to call Magneto to remove it
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      06-26-2020, 10:03 AM   #7
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wow, thank you for the detailed science lesson! I'm very appreciative. My BMW dealer decided to "comp" the cupholder repair- although I'm left with scratches from trying a pair of tweezers to pry it out. My #1 requirement for a new vehicle was that it had cupholders that are wide enough for my Contigo Water Bottle. I test drove 3 different BMW's, and all 3 dealers did NOT warn me about this issue- they all saw me put the water bottle in the cupholders to test. So BMW designed the cupholders to be used ONLY with plastic or styrofoam, and chose to not warn buyers of this fact? That is not environmentally-friendly at all....but again, many thanks for the explanations- I guess I am going to stop using the cooling function altogether.

Last edited by 2020 X5 MSport; 06-26-2020 at 10:10 AM..
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      06-26-2020, 10:40 AM   #8
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You have probably tried this so sorry for my stupid suggestion then. But it's not stuck under the three "fins" that retract and accommodate to smaller containers? Because it looks that way on the picture.

Maybe try to drill a fine hole with a Dremel tool in the part that is a bit coming out and try to insert something to pull while pushing back the "fins". Pulling in the middle might be more successful? Are let the dealer do that in case you drill to deep.

Edit. Sorry problem is already solved?
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      06-26-2020, 04:41 PM   #9
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BTW, the 500-page manual that came with my 2020 X5? NO mention of cupholder limitations. All cupholder warnings are on pages 310-312 of the Owner's manual. Also, BMW cannot give me any explanation as to how ONE side of ONE cupholder turned on for 5 MINTUES (five) can have this effect on a pre-cooled stainless steel water bottle. The X5 loaner vehicle they lent me did not have any options at all, so the cupholders are of a different design. Plus, after just 250 miles (two hundred fifty only) miles, BMW had to install 2 new software updates that are not enabled via the phone app, nor the in-car computers. If we have to bring our BMWs into the shop for software updates every 100 miles, that's nuts!

Last edited by 2020 X5 MSport; 06-28-2020 at 02:19 PM.. Reason: corrections
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      06-26-2020, 08:34 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jchrishome View Post
wow, thank you for the detailed science lesson! I'm very appreciative. My BMW dealer decided to "comp" the cupholder repair- although I'm left with scratches from trying a pair of tweezers to pry it out. My #1 requirement for a new vehicle was that it had cupholders that are wide enough for my Contigo Water Bottle. I test drove 3 different BMW's, and all 3 dealers did NOT warn me about this issue- they all saw me put the water bottle in the cupholders to test. So BMW designed the cupholders to be used ONLY with plastic or styrofoam, and chose to not warn buyers of this fact? That is not environmentally-friendly at all....but again, many thanks for the explanations- I guess I am going to stop using the cooling function altogether.
I think you will be ok since the whole assembly gets replaced. They replaced mine because of rattles so I think you will be fine in the end.

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      06-27-2020, 01:20 AM   #11
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Originally Posted by jchrishome View Post
BTW, the 500-page manual that came with my 2020 X5? NO mention of cupholder limitations. It's on page 301 of my manual.
I could have sworn that I explicitly read no metal containers somewhere, but now also cannot find a reference. If I can't find something that discusses that, then I was just plain wrong and apologize for adding confusion. Will dig around a bit.
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      06-27-2020, 01:50 PM   #12
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hi Noushy- (love your name!) The dealer did not replace the entire assembly. In fact, they added more scratches to the inside of the cupholder (with my pre-approval, which they required before doing the work)

Last edited by 2020 X5 MSport; 06-28-2020 at 02:20 PM..
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      07-11-2020, 08:41 AM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 2020 X5 MSport View Post
hi Noushy- (love your name!) The dealer did not replace the entire assembly. In fact, they added more scratches to the inside of the cupholder (with my pre-approval, which they required before doing the work)
Maybe it's time to start posting bad reviews of this cars at YouTube and other services.

Maybe cooling the loose bottom and pulling with a sucker would have do the work. Don't think it could avoid scratches.
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      07-11-2020, 09:20 AM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 2020 X5 MSport View Post
Contigo claims it's a BMW problem, and BMW claims it's my problem.
This appears to be a Contigo problem not a BMW but more importantly I would love to know what $25k worth of warranties entails. That is an excessive amount of coverage.

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Originally Posted by 2020 X5 MSport View Post
I have $25K worth of extended and special warranties, but none of them cover this (obvious) manufacturer defect.
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