koz4.2

I don't recall him mentioning his sources when you asked. It's still early.

Kris Hansen

the passenger compartment.

Though I suspect the battery location is only one of several reasons Audi chose to not mess with USDOT certification.

JEMiller

Trunk-mounted batteries in just about every BMW manage just fine

Kris Hansen

Perhaps they're attached differently. I KNOW for a FACT that the trunk mounted battery was one of the reasons the RS4 Avant didn't come stateside.

Hell, Audi used to mount the battery under the back seat, starting with the 5000... But again, it was mounted very securely..

JEMiller

...open the trunklid, flip open the cover on the side compartment - yep, battery's still there, NHTSA didn't sneak in overnight and steal it. Walk over to my M5, open the trunk, gigantic battery (same one the S6 uses, in fact...in the M5 the battery is ballast as much as it is power) still smack-dab in the middle of the trunk floor where the spare is in the 540.

When GM brought the Holden Monaro into the US as the Pontiac GTO, they went through and did a quickie reengineering of the fuel-tank location, moving it from under the trunk floor to the trunk between the rear wheels (thereby sacrificing half the trunk space.)

There's nothing in the DOT regs that prevents a gas tank behind the rear axle, and my guess is that the GTO would have passed the crash tests just fine with the tank under the floor, but GM was too sensitive to the press Ford had gotten with the Crown Vic P71 cop cars and some ragged bolt-ends tearing open fuel tanks when the cars were rear-ended at 70mph.

Now, the '65 Mustang convertible restomod I just sent off to the body shop, where the gas tank is the trunk floor and there's nothing but horsehair seatback between that and the passenger compartment...that didn't suit me too well, especially when it's supposed to be the wife's weekend car. So I framed in the tank opening with .125 steel so it could be bolted up from underneath and made a panel to weld in as a new trunk floor on top.

JEMiller

Link to realoem.com parts blowup of current-model (E61) 5er wagon, battery still in right rear corner where it was on the E39s we've got.<ul><li><a href="http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do?model=NN73&amp;mospid=48521&amp;btnr= 41_1551&amp;hg=41&amp;fg=25">realoem.com E61 rear body parts</a></li></ul>

Kris Hansen

which is, battery location/mounting was ONE reason they did not try to certify the car, not THE reason.

MarkW

In fact,

I would love to see the failure rates of auto trannys with the TDi motors.

We already have what appears to be a high failure rate here with what I call "normal" amounts or torque. I can only hope the TDi trannys were built better.

Anyone heard of issues with TDi cars and failure rates? May be hard to find as most cars in Europe I have seen are manual transmissions.

ThetaTau87

This is the reason that there are no passenger cars sold in the US with a fuel tank behind the rear axle. FMVSS 301 allows a small amount of fuel spilage, but the GM standard is zero leakage in any barrier impact. The worst impact is a 30mph moving barrier into the rear of the car. 30mph may not sound fast, but it causes a hell of a lot of damage when you hit a stopped car at that speed.

AudisAPlenty

Crash testing is even more. There are 5-7 crash tests that need to be performed (side, rear, front, frontal offset, roof, as well as front/rear 5mph tests). All in all I've wager it costs near the 1-2 million dollar range. Europa international spent 1.2 million to certify the mercedes G wagen to US specs (prior to Mercedes sending it to the US).