Modern Cars Are On A Path Of Rapid Obsolescence

Since the automobile first came about at the end of the 19th century, maintenance and repairs have been an essential, albeit annoying, aspect of car ownership. Every single vehicle that’s ever graced the world’s roads has needed some sort of repair throughout its lifespan. During the car’s early years, owners took the responsibility of repair into their own hands, and most vehicles even came with their own basic repair instructions in the owners’ manual. However, with the rise of digital tech, this has changed dramatically, and now, even top sellers like the Toyota RAV4 and Tesla Model Y are veritable computers on wheels.

Nowadays, car owners struggle to even perform the simplest form of auto maintenance, like an oil change, without running into some form of engineered roadblock like a fiddly undertray that lacks openings to access the drain plug and filter. Many repairs require specialized tools or software these days, which most laypeople don’t have access to. Also, as hybrids and EVs continue to grow in popularity, those types of vehicles have their own host of complicated electronic repairs. In short, the vehicle owner is losing their ability to repair their own vehicles, and it’s getting to the point where cars are beginning to look more and more like disposable commodities instead of the relatively simple, mechanical appliances they were for nearly a century.

Repairing Your Own Car Is Getting Too Expensive

Some Facts Surrounding Increased Repair Cost

• Drivers averaged $0.09 per mile in maintenance costs in 2023
• The total mean average cost to own and operate a new car has risen to $12,182 in 2023
• Recent rapid currency inflation increases repair costs
• Hybrid vehicles are, on average, 20 percent more expensive to repair than conventional ICE-powered vehicles

As we touched on previously, cars these days are much more focused on being technological marvels, and all the newfangled tech and in-car electronics have harmed cars’ reliability. In essence, the bigger the infotainment screen, the nicer the car, or at least that’s how the auto industry as a whole seems to market quite a few vehicles these days. However, the issue with electronics is widespread, and responsible for much of the automobile’s current high repair costs.

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The reason for this is how most in-car electronics fundamentally work. You can’t just take a wrench to them when they go wrong like you could with a bad tie rod end or strut. Instead, most electronics like your infotainment screen or digital gauge cluster need to be replaced if broken. Of course, software updates exist for minor, widespread issues like a glitchy interface, often over the air, but if something happens to the system like a wayward toy thrown from the back seat smashing the screen, the entire unit usually needs replacing, and that can be an expensive part.

For example, one unfortunate Chevrolet Bolt owner was quoted at $3,000 to replace their infotainment interface, and that’s only a 10.2-inch screen. Think back just a couple of decades ago. If you needed to replace your factory AM/FM/cassette radio in your Ford Explorer, for example, the cost would pale in comparison to the Bolt’s infotainment interface replacement.

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Another contributor to the increase in average auto repair costs is the rise of hybrids and, especially, EVs. We’ve already learned the cost to repair a hybrid is roughly 20 percent higher than a conventional, ICE-powered vehicle. When it comes to electric vehicles, however, it’s estimated that EV accident repair amounts to roughly $950 more per fault than for a conventional car, largely due to the sheer expense incurred from repairing its battery pack. To add insult to injruy, EVs are still a relatively new entity on our roads, and as is the case with most new technologies, they are not yet nearly as reliable as ICE cars.

How The Fall Of Competition Contributes

It’s well-understood that in a free market, competition breeds innovation. When you’re forced to contend with minds just as sharp as your own, you need to be ever-vigilant, finding ways to gain an edge over the other guy. Then, just when you think you’ve got a leg-up with your revolutionary new invention, he comes up with some idea better than yours, and the cycle continues. These days, the automotive industry is moving away from this practice at the expense of the consumer.

Consumers need this type of competition from the car companies between themselves. Not only does that sort of adversarial relationship allow for innovative new ideas, it also controls pricing, because whoever has a higher price for the same type of car will, eventually, be outsold by the company with the cheaper, better car. These days, automakers like Volkswagen, Tata, Renault, and Stellantis own quite a big chunk of the mass-market automotive industry.

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Big Tech is one segment of the global economy that the auto industry is beginning to mirror in some of their practices. For example, the largest and more obvious play they’ve ripped from Big Tech’s playbook is planned obsolescence, or the purposeful engineering of a part of a car so that it fails in a certain timeframe, creating a need for a replacement part within a certain time period. Or simply withdrawing support and replacement parts from the market after a certain number of years, so owners cannot find those parts new anymore. Simply withdrawing software support can brick a car, a calamity that’s befallen some unlucky Chinese buyers of home-market EV startups that failed. A problem that US owners of the Fisker Ocean are no doubt concerned about.

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Okay, So Who Benefits?

This new, anti-competitive behavior doesn’t bode well for us buyers. Not only does this lead to cheaply made cars due to these giant companies not having to compete as much, it also leads to the cornering of the repair market, as more and more manufacturers and dealer networks strike up alliances in order to lower competition between themselves, allowing for higher repair prices, from the parts that cars need to the labor costs at individual dealerships. The less choice people have, the more they’ll be forced to purchase parts or services at inflated prices. Not to mention, denying independent repair shops the right to purchase official diagnostic software further forces consumers to seek repairs from dealerships, forcing them to pay a premium for both parts and labor.

It’s a smart move, speaking purely from a business mindset. Your company creates the product or offers the service, which is engineered to not be as good as it could be. You then create a need for more parts, services, or vehicles, because the previous ones failed prematurely, yet on purpose. Great for shareholders and execs, bad for us consumers. Turning the car into something akin to an smartphone, which is replaced every few years, was a genius move by many car companies and, on a smaller scale, dealer networks, to create more revenue. However, it squeezes us consumers for more and more of our hard-earned money, and many of us are subject to this passive, monetary injustice without much of a leg to stand on, because a large majority of us need our cars. Upcoming tariffs and the banning of Chinese- and Russian-made connected-car parts are another spanner in the works, and sourcing such parts elsewhere may well increase parts and vehicle prices.

What’s Being Done To Help?

Thankfully, there are a few groups and organizations dedicated to ensuring right-to-repair rights for independent auto shops and individual vehicle owners. One of the most outspoken in this cause is the non-profit Automotive Service Association (ASA), the Consumer Access to Repair (CAR) Coalition. A major victory for the right to repair occurred just a few days ago, when the Maine state legislature passed a law requiring independent repair shops to have the right to purchase the same vehicle diagnostic and repair software used in dealerships. A similar victory was also recently won in Colorado. However, some of the new right-to-repair laws have run into federal roadblocks, so there’s no telling if these victories will necessarily stick yet.

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It’s Not Just The Automotive Industry That Needs Work

Interestingly, another segment in the mechanical industry has been plagued by right-to-repair disputes even more than the automotive arena. John Deere, one of the most famous producers of agricultural and other heavy equipment, was notorious for denying farmers and independent shops from using their diagnostic software. In early 2023, farmers won the right to repair their John Deere equipment, as before they were forced to utilize official John Deere parts and facilities. Recently, a new lawsuit against John Deere, brought about by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), looks to further expand farmer’s and other John Deere owners’ right to repair by their own means. It seems the right-to-repair movement expands well outside the realm of the automotive market. Things look promising for right-to-repair issues, but only time will tell if circumstances continue to move in the consumer’s favor, or if the large corporations involved in stripping the right to repair from individuals will further tighten their grip.

Sources: CarRepairChoice.org, BBC.com, J.D. Power, ChevyBolt.org, BankRate.com.