This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
More up to date info here: https://hackaday.com/2025/11/15/hyundai-paywalls-brake-pad-changes/ You can do it with just a $300 bidirectional scan tool from Harbor Freight.
And the OOP responding about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ioniq5N/comments/1ojjp6m/comment/nonp97y/
This isn't a new thing. Almost every car that has an electrical park brake advises you to use software to change change out your rear brake pads, as when you release your Electric Park Brake (EPB), the EPB motor doesn't wind back enough, to give you the space required to install new pads and/or rotors, it only winds back enough to release pressure off the piston pushing the pad, which this has been in production cars since 2001 (some cars have brake maintenance modes which can be activated without software, Mazda first comes to mind with this). This whole Hyundai/Kia deal reminds me of Volkswagen back when they were intoducting proprietary software for vehicle maintenance, which led to a guy getting mad and making his own software that does everything the factory software does for a fraction of the cost and arguably better (Rosstech/VCDS) which I feel will happen soon with Hyundai. But being mad just at just Hyundai for this is the wrong mindsent, almost every car manufacturer does this and for a long time, and needs to stop. Even for dealerships this is horrendous because it uses a always online software that if you live somewhere with bad internet or GPS connection, stops you from even just resetting the service interval, which as usual is explained as being a good thing for "safety reasons" by the manufacturer.
What's stopping people from disconnecting the EPB and manually connecting a battery to the motor to wind it back?
It's weird how many negative Hyundai news you get from the US, it's almost like they are threatening all the established players in the market.
Meanwhile you barely hear about the toyota engine fuck ups or the fact that they being stolen en masse.
