To change the brake pads on the rear of my wife's Macan will require a USB2 tool to retract the brake pads. I had to program her Macan with a USB2 tool just to replace the battery. I had to tell the vehicle what type of battery it was Wet Cell or Glass Matt, A part number, a serial number, and the Amp hours to get the car to accept the new battery.

I bought an Autel Scanner to do all that. I have not needed to do any brake work as yet.

Just changing the oil requires the Autel scanner.

One thing China is good for: Hacking the OEMs. We would collectively be screwed without them.

rjp

This is pertinent. There's currently a bill, REPAIR Act, in Congress addressing non-OEM access to automotive data.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/906

Oh, go ahead...you do realize that this is corporate America, (and corporate everywhere else), doing this, not the government, right? The very corporations that you probably want less regulation of, amiright?

Of course, you don't. :rolleyes:

John Deere just went through that and effectively lost. Owners have the right to repair.

I think it was at a state level.

https://apnews.com/article/colorado-right-to-repair-farming-equipment-1da00ea957fd1057bf522cb4725e62d4

Pal lives in Maine and they passed a Right to Repair late last fall and he feels it will be a long time before enacted given battles between Dealerships and independents.

WTF is going on?

Good.

I don't plan on buying a new car or truck, but a shop with a Snap On scanner bled the brakes on my old 96 truck. The power brake vacuum cannister was going bad and I went to a shop to get it changed. I was using the truck to get back and forth from rehab after getting an artificle Knee. I thought no way could I get up under that dash and back up to handle this. The guy at the shop didn't want to either. After letting him listen to the whoosh of loosing vacuum when pedal was mashed, squeezing the hose with channelocks and motor slowing down, he wanted to do a bunch of other stuff.

Well I changed it and master cylinder and after bench bleeding the master cylinder, had a soft pedal. Went to another shop and asked to get my brakes bleed. Figured on the rack and maybe a pressure bleeder and opening the bleed screws. The mechanic plugged in the scanner and with motor running bleed them of air in the antilock thing by mashing buttons on the scanner in about 10 minutes.

Sure beat me up under the truck and having my wife pump and hold the brakes while I open and closed bleed screws. So I like some of the fancy electronics if the auto manufactures share the data on how sytems work and the data collected.