Technology

I guess that's one way to make people give up cars in favor of public transportation.

They lock the parking brake behind a paywall on the scanner, so you have to pay a subscription fee. Chrysler has the parking brake service mode on the vehicle for users. VAG, BMW, Nissan, Toyota, GM etc all do it. It just make servicing more expensive for consumers, because the cost all gets passed down.

Actually useful YouTube video about this

Welcome to the future, you will own nothing and be happy about it.

Me and my 11 year old just changed the rear shocks on my car, 18mm socket and box wrench, 45 minutes of time. I'll never buy a vehicle with these types of paywalls.

it's a matter if time until they make Linux for cars.

More up to date info here: https://hackaday.com/2025/11/15/hyundai-paywalls-brake-pad-changes/ You can do it with just a $300 bidirectional scan tool from Harbor Freight.

And the OOP responding about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ioniq5N/comments/1ojjp6m/comment/nonp97y/

Yeah we definitely need open source vehicles/transportation initiatives for everything: trains, trams, hsr, cars, etc

And that's when I switched a while ago from a modern Bentley to an "ancient" mechanical car from a past long forgotten. Every electrical gadget is local, and it just has android auto (dedicated isolated phone just for the car) with a fake google account for navigation. Everyone thinks we're broke lol, but I'm so fed with this shit. Even a silly backlight went from 5 bucks for a replacement-bulb to 1500 bucks for the whole led-package. Parts alone, add the mechanic and the many hours needed.

Heard that all brands do this shit though. Like even disabling things remotely that are there but you didn't subscribe to. This is bonkers.

Is it possible to retrofit a used "computer" vehicle and remove all digital tech to make it electromechanical again, where the owner has complete control of what they purchased?

This isn't a new thing. Almost every car that has an electrical park brake advises you to use software to change change out your rear brake pads, as when you release your Electric Park Brake (EPB), the EPB motor doesn't wind back enough, to give you the space required to install new pads and/or rotors, it only winds back enough to release pressure off the piston pushing the pad, which this has been in production cars since 2001 (some cars have brake maintenance modes which can be activated without software, Mazda first comes to mind with this). This whole Hyundai/Kia deal reminds me of Volkswagen back when they were intoducting proprietary software for vehicle maintenance, which led to a guy getting mad and making his own software that does everything the factory software does for a fraction of the cost and arguably better (Rosstech/VCDS) which I feel will happen soon with Hyundai. But being mad just at just Hyundai for this is the wrong mindsent, almost every car manufacturer does this and for a long time, and needs to stop. Even for dealerships this is horrendous because it uses a always online software that if you live somewhere with bad internet or GPS connection, stops you from even just resetting the service interval, which as usual is explained as being a good thing for "safety reasons" by the manufacturer.

So they chose to go the John Deere way.

I've been wondering about the costs of actually having a car custom built. I obviously have neither the know-how nor the place to build my own car, but are there some garages where you can just order the parts and have others assemble it for you? I know it would be expensive as fuck, but having a road-safe, road-legal car with no on-board computer (except maybe a rear view camera... something that doesn't need connectivity) would be worth it. They might need a vehicle Black Box, but many of those only hold data for the last few seconds only in the event of a collision or accident and do not keep geolocation or personal driving data.