Legal timebomb

New legislation is blasting through the diagnostics market, but few have realised the impact it will have .Vaughan Freeman investigates

Autotrade April 2000, “The Diagnostic Dilemma”

A legal hurricane has just torn through the diagnostics world, yet hardly anyone has noticed it. The huge impact will hit in just over three years as a flood of used cars come into the independent sector from franchised dealer networks, fitted with diagnostics features ordered by the new law. The diagnostics revolution has been sparked by a little noticed piece of European legislation that came into force this year affecting all new Type Approved or homologated cars. The law demands all such vehicles be fitted with European On-Board Diagnostics (EOBD) which feature a common data access port under the bonnet putting out easily readable information.

And from next January all new cars will have to have the EOBD port and some cars already on our roads are fitted with it.

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Steve Davies. Marketing manager at Sykes-Pickavant, said: "Strangely EOBD has not received the publicity that it deserves which might be because as yet it is only relevant to cars recently homologated. Not many independents have twigged that as a result of EOBD there will be a considerable degree of commonality, allowing them to apply the same electronics equipment and some of the same software to many different vehicles. So you have one program and one socket on every make of car that will give you similar information.

"It sounds good and, of course, it is, because along with the EOBD port, manufacturers must provide independents with the information to work on those cars - so it is a step in the right direction.

"I don't think the next five years will see a startling change in technology, or at least anything making life much more difficult for independents. I think we have reached a plateau on the technology and for workshops who have not yet invested in diagnostic equipment and training then there is still time."