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I commend you for being part of the solution, but I have to say- for myself, the ability to check the cause of the check engine light would be worth it. If your car is fairly new, you may experience the check engine light very rarely. But for cars over 5 years old, I think that's the best feature. As opposed to taking it into a mechanic where you are completely ignorant of what the cause was.



I think it's an interesting feature, but it's still something that is a "once in a long while" feature. And, when I do use it, it's often pointless since I will need to take it to the mechanic anyway. If this was a free feature on my car, sure, I'll use it, but I'm not going to buy a product for that feature. More importantly, people who really don't care about cars in general and just take it in when the lights go on aren't going to either. (Especially when you consider the cost of getting your own self-diagnosis wrong. How is my mom supposed to know if a loose gas cap is a big deal or not?)

I think there's a lot of potential here but it needs to be something that a) I will use all the time and b) I will get real, tangible value out of it, not academic understanding of my driving habits or a few bucks a month off of my gas by changing them. (Which, by the way, is another "thing" I now have to worry about: is Automotive telling me my driving is ok? What do I need to change? Now I feel like a loser when I don't "do well" one month.) It needs to make my life easier or allow me to do things behind the wheel that are valuable but currently hard/dangerous to do. I think there's plenty there.


I know some cars can blink light codes (morse-like on dashboard) that you can reference online to self-diagnose the engine problem.

I did it once with a weird combination of brake and pedal pushes. Kinda cool actually. Method name escapes me now.


Normal OBDII readers are cheap ($20). You can also get the codes read for free at pretty much any parts store.


I have a $50 device that can pull the codes for any vehicle they listed with a description of the error.


Go to autozone, checkers, oreilly. They will diagnose for free.




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