Safety or planned obsolescence?
 

Modern vehicles advance at an astronomical pace. The biggest advancements have been made in three major fields – Screens, hybrids and safety. The first two of these are mostly marketing, we have made good progress with them, but the really important part of development is safety. Modern cars are safe, and that is a good thing. Many fewer people lose their lives in silly accidents in modern cars as opposed to older, less safe ones. Seat belt tensioning according to a person’s height and weight has been a big advancement. Thankfully safety is a big priority today, much more so than it was in the past few decades. But what happens when an accident occurs? Do we scrap the whole car and just buy a new one? Manufacturers would certainly like that to be the case. If we crash a car, even if it is bad we can restore it. So long as it is economically viable. Insurance companies scrap cars left, right and center these days because they cannot be bothered to pay the price to repair. Labor has gone up, technology has advanced, and richer countries prefer to get a new, undamaged car after an accident. OK, no problem but this leaves fields and landfills full of perfectly good cars in need of some repair that can be used safely on the roads and brought back to life. This, I believe, is what really bothers OEMs. Not one person (or company for that matter) would ever say “Yes” if asked if they wanted to make less money and sell less of their product. I believe this is the reason why companies would prefer to make it nearly impossible to put a crashed car back on the road. They would not really like to sell you the tools to repair it (be it software/ hardware, or the physical parts you need to replace). This is why rebuilding a crash car has become such a cumbersome task – the opposition on behalf of the OEMs. People on the internet, guys like Matt Armstrong, Freddy Hernandez and others have made a living out of that. I know a few of those people directly or indirectly and the fact is that they are sometimes facing obvious opposition on behalf of the OEMs. The bigger the corporation- the harder they are to work with. In today’s example we can talk about Stelantis and particularly about FCA – there is a very dystopian Cyberpunk feeling when all the major automotive manufacturers unite into hyper-corporations and (in essence) sell you 3 cars in total with different badges. It becomes harder and harder to work because their technology departments combine their efforts in order to make it harder to reuse a car or even make it last longer than its warranty period. This is especially hard when discussing the cheaper offerings in a company’s lineup.

Who is most likely to be affected?
 

Let’s take one of Italy’s most used vehicles – FIAT 500, FIAT Panda and Lancia Y. These cars are everywhere, especially here in Europe people use them and they usually have a tough life – many miles, non-stop daily use almost throughout the continent – they are used as family city cars, daily drivers and also company cars – always driven, often at 10 10ths and seldomly taken good care of. It is only logical that they end up in accidents. Now we can’t scrap each one because they have had a minor accident, can we? Well, the corporations would like that too much, throw it away – buy a new one, they would say? But why – a car cannot really be 100% recycled, there is waste, and corporations want to be green, don’t they? Isn’t the greenest thing to do to keep using a product? Yes, but there is green and then there is greed. Customers who use Pandas and 500s and Ys are not really always ready to buy a new car. They are often not even insured. So, these people would be essentially forced to take out even more loans to cope with the purchase of a new car, just to keep their bakery going, or keep taking their child to school in the next town. But the manufacturers say “NO!” We cannot allow this car to continue driving. Why? Do you just want to sell more cars and have waste? Seems so.
 

Problem
 

Commonly used ECUs in these cars are the Magneti Marelli 11GF – an ECU dedicated to the Hybrid models mostly – the 1.0 Hybrid that a nice French lady has bought to deliver flowers in town and pop over to her friends for the weekend. Hypothetically speaking – this lady gets into a small accident on her way to deliver flowers and setup someone’s wedding. This would mean that she cannot drive her car even if she repairs it because the ECU of the car now has a permanent error because of the crash. This crash error forbids the car from running; it would either cut the starter motor completely off or start and die immediately. This means that even if the plastics and metal on the outside are replaced the lady could no longer use her car. She is back on the car market. There can also be a different DTC in these cars DTC P1947-68 Belt Starter Generator (BSG) disabled by crash event. VERY IMPORTANT. Neither the crash data, nor the P1947-68 require an accident in order to write a FIAT off. Please note that they may appear without accident. This can appear in any FIAT 500, PANDA or Lancia Y. The symptoms are similar – starter does not turn at all or cuts out immediately. This will total 90% of all entry level Stelantis FCA cars.

Solution

Apart from the ones you can get to work on. With the help of the best aftermarket diagnostics- AVDI and the Abrites Diagnostics for FIAT/ Lancia/ Alfa Romeo/ Maserati (FCA) you can solve all of these problems for your customers and make sure all of the lower Stelantis FCA cars, mostly 1.0 Hybrid 500s, Pandas and Ys are 100% supported. You will require a CB019 to complete the task because without access to the internal CANBUS you are as stuck as the florist lady. You will not only be helping your customers, you will be helping yourself by being a great professional and honing your craft, but you will also be helping the planet by saving the environment from scrap FIATs and Lancia.

What is just as important – the corporations will not be able to force people into a new car!

The Clear Crash Data function comes built into the base AVDI software.  Discover everything the AVDI (Abrites Vehicle Diagnostics Interface) can do.

AVDI software


Until next week, try to have fun at work :) 

Alek