The article explains how they pretty much have to do it for legal reasons. Similar to microwave warnings. It has nothing to do with keeping the rightful owner from doing what they want with their car. The company does not benefit, judging by what the article explains, apart from having the legal disclaimer in case somebody who has no business (because of lack of knowledge) touching battery or electric parts gets hurt.
In a fuel powered vehicle touching fuel related parts at most gets you dirty. Even touching fuel does not hurt you. Electricity is different. Merely touching the wrong part can hurt you. Guess who would get sued if that happened and the company did nothing or even just not enough to prevent it.
While fuel powered cars can have sharp, moving (or rotating) or even very hot parts, all of those can be seen or sensed. Electricity cannot be detected by human senses, so here too is more reason to prevent access.
This isn't actually all that new: Quite a few of luxury automobiles have had non-serviceable engine compartments for many years. It's not uncommon particularly with high-end sports cars, where engine covers may only be removed by licensed technicians. Those tend to be held by special screws requiring non-standard tools or similar. Ironically it's often the engines one might want to marvel at the most.
Half joking, of course, but seriously I think this sort of design choice just reinforces the idea that the manufacturer, not the buyer, owns the product. Locking the hood closed, the symbolic innards of your car, isnt the only way to build a car safely. I fear moves like this will just further alienate people from the tech they rely on.
I know exactly what you mean: I'm fond of pointing out that I probably wouldn't be a software engineer today if the computers I grew up with had been as locked down as an iPhone. It only sort-of works in a world that today also features a Raspberry Pi, but is not sustainable on its own. In my brain I refer to this as "educational sustainability" somehow (then again, isn't all education motivated by sustainability of civilization and culture?), but I'm sure smarter folks have discussed and given this a better label.
That said, luxury sports cars are an oddball market with non-obvious concerns and economics. A lot of the limited production run cars these restrictions apply to are essentially too valuable to actually drive. They're collectors' items, or acquired as speculative goods that will increase in value. It may be that making them more "tamper-proof" is in a strange way in the interest of the buyers.
Are there really "special screws" that are difficult to deal with these days? Any hardware store carries sets of what used to be obscure security bits. Torx (innie or outie) and hex don't even count as "special".
I had read that the reason for the plastic covers on fancier cars, while partly for appearance and to discourage amateur servicing, also are there for a substantial reduction of engine noise. But I never heard anything about owners not having permission to remove them.
I've speculated that one reason for making it a hassle to service modern cars is that if an owner has been messing with their car, screwed it up, and brings it to the dealer, it's more likely there will be clues that warranty coverage should be denied.
E.g. a recent 911 GT3 or several Bugatti models, for example the Divo. It's often mid-engine sports cars, also because not designing them to make the low-mounted, mid-positioned engine accessible saves a lot of complexity and removes design constraints.
Which precedent do you view as being set by Mercedes here? There are a variety of possible interpretations, but it’s impossible to guess without more details.
I don't know if it applies to modern microwaves, but years and years ago, I learned a secret to keeping a microwave running long after its normal lifetime, and without paying a professional repair person.
It would start arcing eventually, and the solution was to "replace the waveguide". Someone not physics-illiterate could explain more about how that functions, but practically speaking, it involved getting a flat sheet of special material (mica I believe?) and cutting a small panel out to match an existing one on the inside of the cavity.
In a fuel powered vehicle touching fuel related parts at most gets you dirty. Even touching fuel does not hurt you. Electricity is different. Merely touching the wrong part can hurt you. Guess who would get sued if that happened and the company did nothing or even just not enough to prevent it.
While fuel powered cars can have sharp, moving (or rotating) or even very hot parts, all of those can be seen or sensed. Electricity cannot be detected by human senses, so here too is more reason to prevent access.