Yeah, totally and in my OP I admit to being a schmuck as well.

Just picked it up, works just fine, total parts and labor $0. Replaced: brake position switch, brake pedal to master rod clip, pedal assembly. I'm gonna look up the crazy prices for all that later. Total cost and labor for fixing the same fail on an actual car: $0 because it's not made of snap together plastic in the first place.

Looping back to what started all this: unsnapping the pedal cover the put the fancy ones on. I mean how easy is that with old metal stuff? How hard can I panic stop this thing without snapping the plastic brake pedal?

The whole thing strikes as a retirement buzz kill because I understand how the technology communicates and I could do with out getting sucked in to the occasional reverse engineering exercise. I mean I know a lot more than I want to about the power top controller on her 200. If the thing had u-connect, I could probably hack it and put the roof down from my desk top. BTW, ave battery live span: 1 year.