https://www.dailydot.com/news/mechanic-officially-been-locked-out-of-computer-systems/
'The car companies want to put small guy out of business.'
'The car companies want to put small guy out of business.'
That's treating people as Humans. But in our capitalist hellscape, we aren't people, we're Consumers. We exist to provide money to companies, and they're ever interested in finding more ways to make us give them money.
It's not enough that you buy a TV, the manufacturer needs to have ads in it. They need the telemetry on what you watch, when you watch it, and for how long so they can make the ads more relevant. We can't have you replacing your phone battery, so we'll make it an internal component so when it goes bad you're more likely to just get a new phone.
But we can't pay people more, because that's an expense.
The line must go up at all costs.
I don't understand how people keep buying rams. They're just such pieces of shit.
Edit: make that Dodges.
The National Automotive Service Task Force (NASTF) is a 501 C6 not-for-profit organization established in 2000 by Automakers and the independent aftermarket to identify and resolve gaps in Service information, Tool Information and Training.
Chrysler, jeep, dodge, ram, fiat all have a SGW- a secure gateway that doesnt let any un-authorised diagnostic tool to connect to the car and delete faults or do any repairs, you can still see faults but cant do anything more. If you want to do more you have to buy theyr tool for 15000$ and 1000$ a year, or to bypass the SGW and do the repair ilegaly.
Renault, nissan, infiniti all have a SGW that cant be bypassed normaly so you have to pay about 10€ for a 24h connection for one VIN code. There is no free way to connect to these cars.
Mercedes just introduced a new SGW that i dont know anything much but you can pay to bypass it. The price i got was for 800€ for 50 connections.
VW group is working on a new platfrom with Rivian that is sayed to be 100% not bypassible in any means. Onley a dealer would be able to do anything.
BMW is letting connect and do anything but its made harder by locking every part to a VIN so that you cant use used parts. Rumor is that next generation bmw will not be able to use used parts. Some cars dont let you do it now but there are ways to make it work.
Looks like I'm gonna run my Mercedes 300D until it literally collapses into a heap. The engine is supposed to be good for a million miles, after that I guess I can change bearing journals, valves and seats, bore it out and do oversize pistons like they did back in the day.
I'm appreciating more and more owning a car that only has an electrical system for the lights and radio
I've been advocating right to repair and have been trying to raise the alarm bells to stuff like this. Unfortunately people have been blind to it and keep putting up with this crap.
"Oh I have to go to the ram dealership instead of an independent and pay $10,000 more? Sounds good to me!"
"Oh they track everywhere I drive, the speed I'm driving and also sell it to my insurance so they can increase rates, and advertisers to stalk me? If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear!".
How do you find energy to keep going? I got too tired and burned out from trying to explain to people why the right to repair is important, but it seems like they already got too used to thinking replacing stuff all the time and tossing them away because of simple things is normal. When I try to talk about it, I am portrayed as the weird one, who thinks we should be using stuff manufactured more than a couple of years ago.
I've advocate by doing. I work at a computer repair shop with honest rates, and transparent practices. I volunteer at repair cafés sharpening tools for free. This way you demonstrate directly towards them what you're doing and what companies are doing.
I can show customers that apple's ribbon cables are thinner than tissue paper, all of the freaking glue holding it together, the serialized components, the convoluted design, etc.
Whenever I speak about it outside of the repair shop people think I'm some conspiracy nut, but people will listen with the evidence right in front of them.
The reason is more likely that they want to avoid people enabling all the software features they disabled because you didn't take the super-premium-customer-comfort pack for 15$/month.
How do you expect car manufacturers to survive you anticapitalist swines! /s
You can't really do that with diagnostic tools, but you can change the vehicle mileage. I see a lot of cars coming from shady car lots with under 100k miles that look like they have over 300k on them.
This guy knows dodge.
For the uninformed: hemi engines have a massive engineering flaw. Never buy a hemi.
Some argued that the new requirements were to protect cars from theft.
Car thieves: Oh noeeees… anyway 🤷
depending on where the owner lives/resides they might be able to take this to court now for vendor lock-in/right to repair violations
So what I take from this is… don’t buy a new car. Well, since I’ve never owned a car newer than 10 years old, I guess I’m ahead of the game for once. #winning
Really only protects you for about ten years. It’s not like they’re suddenly going to become repairable at the 5 or 10 year mark.
thus the actual answer is "move to a place where you don't need a car to live", you don't need to worry about the repairability of public transport vehicles and bikes are trivial to repair.
Uproot your entire life, including job, family, social circle etc so you can be somewhere with better public transport.
Or, piece of shit vehicle manufacturers keep their fucking nose out of how you modify/maintain/service a product that you BOUGHT with your own money.
Trains and buses aren't always the answer.
lol. fuck cities. i will take my old car and live on my compound as far away from all of you as i possibly can. i see what yall have done with the world.
The lack of independent repair hurts the used car market before the cars get that old anyway. Lack of repairability reduces the number of cars that make it into the used market in working condition and keeps prices higher.
My 17 year old truck has all the features I need from a vehicle. If I can just keep it running I have no desire to upgrade it in the foreseeable future. Even if I had infinite money I'd probably just get one with lower mileage and upgrade it with offroad accessories and stuff. I have basically zero interest in new cars.
The auto industry is full of POS bullies. Everytime one for them goes into another industry they are totally turds and mess everything up then leave cause no one likes them and they pissed off vendors.
I heard that called seagull management. Swoop in, make a lot of noise, shit everywhere, then leave.
I used to have a Prius C, got it used.
95% of shops wouldn't touch it for anything non cosmetic. Hybrid, confusing, scary!
Learned how to work on it myself, before it got stolen.
Guess I just got the beta version of not being able to have your car serviced, due to good old fashioned blue collar laziness and incompetence.
It's not laziness or incompetence. It's risk vs reward. It's not worth spending extra time and money to be able to work on a car you might see once a year. Send it to the dealer and work on one of the other 20 cars waiting in your parking lot. If you owned a Ferrari, would you take it to one of the the shops around town? No, you wouldn't, and they wouldn't touch it either.
Now that hybrids have been out for a minute, more shops will work on them. My shop now does but we didn't until recently, because we see one or two per month now.
That's not the take you should come away from this story with. None of them should be allowed to do it.
This is an escalation the others haven't taken yet, but I'm sure they'll soon follow if they're allowed. But all prevention of repair should be illegal, not just this company.
Car company’s have been doing it for decades. There are legitimate reasoning; theft relevant parts for instance; you don’t want to enable vehicle theft and the “security through obscurity” model did work for a long time. Unfortunately for the manufacturers, most factory security systems are being cracked by locksmiths and vehicle rebirthers.
Another reason is for warranty claims. The manufacturer builds the cars to be the right balance of price, reliability, efficiency and performance. If you modify your vehicles ECU software, the engine may not be as reliable or efficient. If an “unauthorised repairer” changed the programming of the ECU, it can compromise the efficiency and reliability of the vehicle.
There are been plenty of accusations of “planned obsolescence” because a vehicle has died just out of the warranty period, after someone has fucked with the vehicle tuning.
Finally, the other reason, especially for Volume Manufacturers is that their vehicles are sold as a Loss Leader so they can make up the shortfall through aftersales. Some vehicle importers make deals with governments to lower tariffs on new vehicles, but increase tariffs on genuine parts, like what the Japanese industry and the Australian Government made in the 1980s.
Whether you agree with this logic is irrelevant; this is the reasoning manufacturers use for restricting aftermarket parts and labour.
When a “free-market” Aftermarket Aftersales industry causes the Genuine Aftersales industry to fail, Manufacturers will try to make up any losses through other channels, like requesting government subsidies “for the good of the local industry” or selling telematics data (which just “happens” to have personal user data) to data brokers.
