It's also absolutely no secret that fattest margins and profits for automobile industry is also made with "aftermarket service" - which include upsales and inflated prices for service intervals.
There's a reason they all now need digital service books which are locked to their partnerships.
>There's a reason they all now need digital service books which are locked to their partnerships.
This is honestly one of my biggest fears about the modern auto repair situation. Previously it was fairly common to eventually find service manuals for sale second hand after enough time had passed. Or someone would scan and dump them online. Then it turned into waiting for PDF's to leak from dealership CD's.
Now with having them locked down to dealership tablet pc's I worry they will never hit the public.
We need to bring back standardization and regulation of cars. Aftermarket parts for cars has mostly collapsed because NHSTA has deregulated almost everything. Auto manufacturers have worked hard to try and stop any 2 vehicles from sharing parts. They are all bespoke, sometimes even to the model year of a car.
That's a big part of what's made it harder to maintain cars and has driven up the prices.
It should be possible, for example, to swap in a new infotainment system on any old car. It should be possible for 2 EVs from different manufacturers to swap batteries.