John Q Public is not an issue. The automakers are attempting to lock out other companies. But it is a lot easier to get backing if they claim any idiot can make these sort of changes.
I used to write embedded software, but not for cars. So skip the following if it bores you!
We call code programed into a device embedded code or embedded software.
Only embedded engineers and similar hobby types have the background needed to modify embedded code. Only a small percentage of these people know enough about cars to modify the code used in cars.
The human readable computer program developed by the auto maker is not available, so you have to reverse engineer the binary on the computer chips. But automakers read protect their code so you can't get to their binary without breaking that protection.
Even if one has the background it is a whale of a lot of work to reverse engineer the code. It is not something single engineer can easily do. It might be easier to write you own code but that is still complex.
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