The modern automobile is safer, cleaner, more efficient, and more technologically advanced than anything that came before it. Yet those improvements have come at a cost. For many owners, mechanics, and independent repair shops, that cost is repairability.
The replacement component often requires programming, coding, calibration, or authentication before the vehicle will recognize it.
A simple windshield replacement can trigger calibration requirements for cameras and radar sensors. A battery replacement may require registration procedures.
The main issue is built-in obsolescence.
Even old regularly easy repair work in early mid 2000s vehicles is getting worse because replacement parts quality has dropped off a cliff.
I regularly have to replace the same part 2, 3 times IMMEDIATELY OUT OF THE BOX because they’re defective or barely remanufactured (brake calipers are almost a complete crap shoot and new copies are harder and harder to buy, and if they arec can be up to 10x the price).
Just buy a car from a company who pulled out of the American market, like Diahatsu or SAAB or some other. Problem solved. 👍
TBF, almost nobody who buys a BMW has ever even opened their hood. 😉
How do they refill their oil every 1000 miles without opening the hood?
They don’t care, there isn’t even a dipstick to check. The computer just dings that it’s time to take it in.
At the jiffy lube, or perhaps more likely, the dealership service center.
Interesting thing here; I drive a 2013 vehicle. Other than regular maintenance, the only repair it’s ever needed was a rear bumper replacement and a bit of bodywork when someone rear ended me at a stoplight.
Contrast this with vehicles from the 1950s-1990s where sure, you could affordably repair them yourself or at the local garage, BUT that was something that became a regular event after the vehicle was 4-5 years old.
Personally, I’m more concerned with how manufacturers are closing off sections of the software in their vehicles such that it can’t be audited, security reviewed, independently patched, or modified to prevent all the telematics from flowing back to them.
I fairly recently replaced a water pump in my wife’s 2013 Lexus. Much easier than doing so in my old 1998 Accord. I didn’t even need to pull the timing cover off, for hers.
