Your information conflicts with the information that I have Eddie. Our local Merc dealer told me that from 2018 you wont even be able to open the bonnet of the car without a code reader and that code reader cost the Merc dealership £175k. Whats more its not done by a stand alone lappy but on a link to the computer back in Stuttgart. The local Maserati dealer has a similar arrangement - any diagnosis is done on mainframe back in Italy.
The Ynaks have made it law for some basic codes to be available to all but the manufacturers have lots of other dcodes that you cant get at on a generic reader.
I havent tried getting any reverse engineered code for the Merc but I have for the Ferrari and I have failed.
So: Modern car manufacturers are using their marketing clout to promote badge snobbery to the point where people are having to pay enormous amounts of money to buy machinery which is
- Capable of ludicrous levels of performance that would neve be able to be exploited in the real world
- Weighted down with stupid numbers of features, none of which are necesary and all of which get in the way of enjoying our cars
- Unable to be maintained by the customer or the customer's chosen service provider
- Have ever-increasing running costs which bear no relation to the utility value derived.
It won't be long before the discerning car buyer wakes up to this nonsense and refuses to buy into it. No wonder manufacturers like Dacia are doing so well.
