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Looking at a 2017 with no reverse.

3K views 12 replies 9 participants last post by  Cane Prevost 
#1 ·
Going to an auction tomorrow that has a 15,000 mile car2go running as is, because of no reverse. What are the chances that it's an electronic issue and it doesn't need a whole transmission replacement?

 
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#10 ·
Problem is the ecu i be told by dealer. Some other car sharing program sold off or went belly up and a ford dealer bought all of them. Sold them and when people bought them and tried to get a key, they were told need an ecu as the car sharing company had a special ecu so they could have a master key to run them.
 
#11 ·
You're being sent down the wrong path. These were car2go cars, operated by Car2Go/ShareNow, owned by Daimler. They pulled out of North America due to changing market conditions, and the loss of the gasoline fortwo (they were running Mercedes-Benz CLA, GLA and B-class in Vancouver before they closed up, as they needed more cars and couldn't buy more Smarts!). They -were- special-edition Smarts, but not nearly that special! They had vinyl seats (not otherwise available in a Smart), and they had a key holder, attached to a fleet management system. The ECU will not impede the car from going into reverse. As long as it has a key, and the key starts the car, the ECU is not the problem.
In some markets, they were master-key'd, but in most they weren't. The master key'd cars are just that -- a bunch of cars which all had the same programming in them, to work with the same key shaft. They didn't actually have anything special about their ECU, just "the same programing on all of them".

The cars are unlikely to have, but could have artifacts of the fleet management system still in them. All of the 451 Smarts had their management via the proprietary radio - which is why all of the ex-car2go 451s have aftermarket radios in them. The 453s were done via proprietary firmware on the stock navigation-equipped radio. You will have to jump through that hoop, but it won't affect operation of the key or reverse gear.
 
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