this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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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.
Why is the parking brake involved with the computer at all....
It's an electronic parking brake. Those are common now because a small switch takes up less interior space than a lever for a cable-actuated parking brake, and the computer can disengage the parking brake if it detects that the driver is attempting to drive with it activated. The computer is involved in brake pad replacement to tell the parking brake motor to open to its widest position to accept new pads, and calibrate itself to their thickness.
This requires a special adapter and software subscription rather than a button on the infotainment screen because Hyundai is engaging in rent-seeking and perhaps trying to direct business to its dealers.
Guess I'll add this to the list of reasons I'm keeping my current car until it falls apart.
So if your brakes go out and you try to use the parking brake for a slow stop it won't do anything anymore?
If you lose your brakes you can still pull the switch and it'll apply the e-brake. If you are on the highway and don't want to slam it on, you can turn on your hazards and coast to a safe place to apply it.
Correct, though the car in question here is electric and will almost certainly use the motors to slow the car to reuse that energy. The motors should be able to stop the car even if the hydraulic brakes fail, and probably more effectively than a mechanical parking brake.
apparently some do and some don't. or they require a particular cheat code when pressing the button, idk.
the point is, you can't trust your parking brake to be an emergency brake anymore, you press a button and hope something happens
Every vehicle I've had with an electric parking brake operated the same way. Hold the park button while moving and it starts clamping the parking brake down, let off the button and it starts to release. So you can basically PWM the parking brake in an emergency.
~~Capitalism~~ Progress!
Because OEMs have all decided that the mechanical one was insufficient...
Never seen the third pedal on an American car/truck?
It's not a "huge space" and the reason is because they're significantly less expensive, more reliable, and easier to adjust and repair.
They put them in cars, too...
My point is the electric parking brakes are not necessary or beneficial in any way. They only serve to make the vehicle more expensive and less reliable.
I'm not sure what your point was in that statement if not to infer that they don't exist.
As terrible as the HVAC adjacent transmission is, at least there's actual physical buttons & not a touch screen...
It can still be enshittified further...
It is and it isn't. To use the onboard control to actuate the parking brake, yes, you have to use the paywalled software. But it's a simple motor. Positive and negative. If you disconnect the connector at the parking brake and use fused jumper leads to a 12v battery, you can cause the actuator to go forward or backwards. Make sure the parking brake isn't applied before doing anything, disconnect the cars battery, disconnect the p brake connector, jump the terminals once you figure out which polarity causes the retraction. Manually compress the caliper piston, replace the pads (and hopefully the rotors too). Pump the brake pedal as you would normally once everything is replaced, reconnect everything, and you're good to go. in my experience this doesn't work on ford but there's a service procedure that doesn't use a scanner to force the park brake into service mode. There's always a way around dumb stuff like this
Must be newer VAG vehicles then, mine definitely needed a scan tool to put on service mode. Though it's also pretty old. I had a newer Mercedes and that had a hidden service menu that allowed me to do the brakes.
Yep, obdeleven let's you go into the basic settings because most of the times they have the passwords in the app. On the newer cars, especially audi, the service reset (not the oil reset) is behind a paywall. Maybe depends.on the scanner, but the autel and topdon ones need an additional subscription, along with Nissan, Chrysler etc
Eww, microtransactions every time you want to do anything? Fuck that.
Or you can buy vcds if your VW is a bit older.
Probably like Chrysler, they were in bed together at one point. Just like merc, Chrysler has the junctions for network, similar aux battery, and so on. Most Chrysler you can just stomp the gas pedal 3 times to reset the oil light in addition to the instrument cluster shortcut.
Chrysler had hidden features before the merger too. The key dance showed drivetrain codes on my 300M. Holding specific buttons showed climate control codes
Yep, cycle the key 3 times. Works on almost all older Chrysler with a key.
~~you are on lemmy pointing media bias as novelty? next you are going to shock us by telling us Reddit is mostly bots and sad power crazed admins~~
ps: this was intended as a joke for some other comment, I got mixed up… sorry OP
No...?