Featured The Tesla monopoly on repair and parts; Why I won't buy one.

Regarding the video you posted as a response…

So I ask again. Do you have any actual information leading to the conclusion of Tesla bricking your car if you don’t pay a monthly fee?
Or is it just you venting without any actual basis?

 

Yes, today's cars have lots of sensors. Some have multiple busses for them to communicate to a controller that will display warning messages in a language of your choice messages. No more 6 digit codes via a scan code and a single check engine light.

Buyers want the features. And government wants other features. I've seen videos displaying how much wiring is involved and how lots of that wiring can be reduced. But the sensors will still be there.

I got my start on cars dating from 94 years ago. My first car was from 64 years ago. They were nightmares of reliability.

The video portrays a car with 197k miles on it and a probable cause of someone who changed a battery the old fashioned way and didn't maintain voltage through the procedure. And thus a need for reprogramming. Heck our current Toyota display technology can require a reboot but can be done without a tool if you know how.

I'm at the 5 year 36k point in my current car (Toyota) ownership. I'll replace the battery in a month or so just as a precaution. But have you looked at a modern Toyota and seen how complex even a simple battery removal would be due to covers and wires etc. So I'll wait for a sale at the dealers and buy then and let them be responsible for not triggering warnings. And I'll pay a little more. And the scan tool and the load testing battery tester will sit in my garage ... heck the load tester has never been out of the box because I bought it when I had a car in which I could change the battery. And now I can't because the scan tool is generic and that is the price I knew I was paying for all the benefits of all the computer controlled sensors and modules that my 5 year old car has. Even my '99 car had features a generic scan tool couldn't access. And the brake controller was one of them. The manufacturer kept those codes proprietary possibly for fear some one would change the coding and in an accident claim that it was the manufacturer's fault. And yes there were smart people who figured all that stuff out and you could buy the code for a single maker version that was as capable as the manufacturers computer rented to dealers for about $600 if you had a computer to run it on.

And the dealer systems I have seen not only pull the code but walk the technician through the diagnostic steps and repair procedures to fix the problem. Even give standard labor hours and parts ordering information. And can be used for firmware updates to meet recalls and provide improvements on controllers it is not wise to allow via OTA updates.

Would I rather a technician familiar with the car and its repair needs do the job or me? That one is easy.

More modern cars are being designed to reduce the number of wires and controllers for cost and weight reasons. Yep, Tesla did that. But not the sensors, features or the logic that controls it all.

So buy a '60s era Beatle. Because all new cars are designed to be maintained this way.

 

Many people find the multitudes of controllers and ECU beneficial. In most instances you hook up, the OBD shows you what's bad, and you replace it.
Gone are the days when a mechanic might think it's one thing then have to install another thing, & then another thing. Then they tell you it was all 3 things rather than the last thing.
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Seems to me it's more often the people who expect it to work like that who end up getting all frustrated and writing off OBD as a crock.

The ones who understand the ECU hasn't got any way to know what's causing the problem, but can only give them information about what it saw, and who are able to take stock of that information while they think out what the cause might be, those are the ones who benefit more from it.