You can say that again

engine controls are great as long as you direct them, when they act on their own it's a different story. But the truth here is that, no matter how you look at this, it will always be arace between two companies who want to sell more of their product by sticking just one more microcontroller under the seat and giving it a name that will distinguish it from the competitors car, but they can't stop there because the next model of the competitior will have something similar. This drives the prices of everything sky high. To diagnose a complex system it takes a lot of skill and very expencive machinery, not just diagrams and wrenches, but computers that have amind of their own. I'm not sure about MB, but I'm quite certain it is very similar, but I had the opportunity to take a look at some of BMWs equipment for diagnosis, they have a key reader that will ID your car and everything about it, sure nice feature, but when the key needs to be replaced it will cost you $300 to get a new one cut and programmed not $30 like it should.

All these features are great, but only when they work, and building a car that only lives to the day when it's warranty expires is polluting the planet and wasting your time, but then again, the people who make these cars don't care about that as long as they sell their product.

xp