Stellantis Italy Locks You Out of Your Vehicle’s Computer

Stellantis Italy behind Ram, Chrysler, Jeep….(formerly Fiat) will not allow you to read your own car’s on-board diagnostics system. It appears you have to be a mechanic and pay for online services to be able to have access to the computer of the vehicle or replace a module, and though they claim this is for security it looks like a scheme for subscription services and dealer parts sales. For $99 you can buy a simple Bluetooth OBD II dongle to read your car’s data like BlueDriver, read and clear fault codes, see live data… all in a phone application (many other OBD scanners exist with really good ones starting at about the $300 range). And many things are easy to diagnose and fix yourself if you’re inclined, which is incredibly handy as many dealerships with high overheads will mistreat you in order to pay the bills, and sometimes not even correct the original issue (see bottom video).

But it appears Stallantis Italy lost a case in the EU, so maybe this will change. Consequently, their quality leaves a lot to be desired, but this is definitely a deal breaker for ever buying one of their vehicles, especially when it will need repairs.

Here’s the video on a quality mechanic dealing with a car the dealership didn’t take care of.