The electronics are a double-edged sword. I know of one catastrophic example - the family Renault (The triangles of doom) doesn't even come with a dipstick for some unfathomable reason. - something like that is plainly silly. It has a display that shows up OIL OK when you start it and that's it. I've heard VAG's can be horrible for it - but you can get an application and cable that'll read the detailed data. I've a colleague in work who's had to recode the injectors on his van - so there're other ways around it that I don't know.
I've also solved problems on my car thanks to having an OBD hookup and a smartphone - little things like the knock sensor sending spurious signals thanks to crosstalk in a cable, or a vacuum leak caused by a crack in a hose. I could tell I had a bad fill of fuel because I could see it re-tuning itself and retarding to compensate. I think I've the beginnings a weak fuel pump because it's slowly trimming rich, but it's not critical yet.
In a way I'm sort of lucky in that the engine of my car is still basically an evolution of 1970's design so the electronics were just sort of bolted to it to make it run - but most of the sensors and the like are easy to swap and easy to get at and clean. And there's a lot fewer of them. Crank position, intake air, both exhaust sensors and a knock sensor - I think. That's on a mid-2000's car. That may be close to the sweet-spot. It's smart enough to be useful and simple enough to be fixable. Most electronic problems I have are sensors getting dirty and the occasional random total instrument failure.
Right to repair is going to become a much bigger issue in the near future - especially for cars that've fallen out of the factory's graces and are into the extended support phase. Not everyone can afford a new car and people need to drive. I think Repair has been spoecifically added as an exemption to the DMCA - but I may be mistaken.
I've also solved problems on my car thanks to having an OBD hookup and a smartphone - little things like the knock sensor sending spurious signals thanks to crosstalk in a cable, or a vacuum leak caused by a crack in a hose. I could tell I had a bad fill of fuel because I could see it re-tuning itself and retarding to compensate. I think I've the beginnings a weak fuel pump because it's slowly trimming rich, but it's not critical yet.
In a way I'm sort of lucky in that the engine of my car is still basically an evolution of 1970's design so the electronics were just sort of bolted to it to make it run - but most of the sensors and the like are easy to swap and easy to get at and clean. And there's a lot fewer of them. Crank position, intake air, both exhaust sensors and a knock sensor - I think. That's on a mid-2000's car. That may be close to the sweet-spot. It's smart enough to be useful and simple enough to be fixable. Most electronic problems I have are sensors getting dirty and the occasional random total instrument failure.
Right to repair is going to become a much bigger issue in the near future - especially for cars that've fallen out of the factory's graces and are into the extended support phase. Not everyone can afford a new car and people need to drive. I think Repair has been spoecifically added as an exemption to the DMCA - but I may be mistaken.
I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.
One day they're going to ban them.