alt Hacker News> everybody points out that how evil BMW is for trying to be proprietary, then immediately points out any Chinese factory can produce a compatible tool for pennies - which one is it?
Just because there's a workaround for an unnecessary annoying thing doesn't mean the thing ceases to be unnecessary and annoying.
An I am pointing out the design has merit from a purely mechanical perspective, and is a very poor method for actually preventing third party repair.
BMW has done some despicable things as pointed out by a recent article, like welding in a pyrotechnic fuse that would kill the battery when the car detected a fault, and which could only be replaced by cutting the factory sealed battery case open, or installing 'theft protection' measurers, which could brick ECUs if an unlicensed repair shop would attempt repairs on the car (which have been known to trigger even when the dealership attempted to fix the issue using official tools)