You've expressed your concerns to Mercedes-Benz regarding the camera calibration process, but haven't received a further response. It's possible that they may not prioritize updates for petrol cars due to the shift towards electric vehicles. You can consider pressing them for a response or exploring potential solutions with local mechanics or third-party experts if the issue remains unresolved.
It's essential to clarify the function of the camera with accurate information. If the camera is not intended to search for parking spaces, and you believe there's a genuine fault, you should continue to seek clarification and resolution from Mercedes-Benz or consider consulting with an independent mechanic or automotive expert who can diagnose and address the issue more effectively.
The function of the camera is irrelevant to this fault. The problem is when the camera decides it need to re calibrate, and then goes into a cycle of recalibration where it never completes the process and keeps trying to do it for months on end. There must be a bug in the software causing this that a dealer will never be able to fix. Mine eventually stopped doing it itself, after many weeks of trying to get it to complete the recalibration in empty industrial estates I gave up, and some time later it just stopped doing it.
Because it's a software glitch, the calibration is not completing within the expected timeframe so it keeps starting the calibration sequence over and over, until one day, it will finally complete the sequence and go back to normal. Well, only until it decides it needs to recalibrate all over again!
Mercedes response to you is absolute garbage. No way is a camera system designed to calibrate every time the car is started, and even if it was, why is still trying to calibrate 20 minutes down the road every time you stop at the lights and start off again?
Although I agree with you that this is unacceptable it does seem as if it has been designed to operate in this way, otherwise why would all new A class be doing this? It may be, however, that MB have got the software design wrong and are reluctant to admit it.
The only thing I could think of was the parking assist function which automatically starts looking for suitable parking spaces below a set speed and maybe the camera was linked to this but this function was available on the previous version of the A class and that doesn’t go through a calibration sequence every time the car is started so I can’t see why it would be that. No logical reason for it that I can see. Coincidently, I had another issue with the wipers which stopped working completely until the car reached around 10mph then they would start up. This was fixed by MB with a replacement ECU and the problem went away. Just goes to show you though how tricky cars are nowadays with all of these computer chips controlling everything - one of them is bound to fail at some point. In the case of the camera calibration issue it does not seem to be a failure but just the way the car has been programmed. The problem is getting MB to accept that this is a problem for customers and sort out a fix. I have asked them to explain their logic behind this but no reply so far - I must chase them up again.
My understanding is the parking system doesn't use the camera other showing on the screen. It's solely the sensors that sense the size of parking space. Even if that were the case the constant calibration doesn't make any sense
I think the parking system is a red herring, on both of mine, the camera does not come out when parking and no guidance lines are shown on the screen. Only the sensors on front and rear bumpers are used to park.
