What do you think of this?.
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From the article:** "In arguing against an exemption, John Deere and General Motors have argued that motorists don’t necessarily buy a car; they merely buy a license to use the car for the duration of its life."
Are they shitting us?
Am I reading this article correctly? Can you imagine having to take your car to a dealer everytime somethings wrong? It would cost a fortune. I only use a dealer during the warranty period.
What’s really going on here, and does GM have a valid point about their copyrights.
Or are they just this greedy?
This is the first I’ve heard of such a thing. Do you have a link to a better article? That one’s about people’s reactions to something, without really explaining what the something is.
Actually, I can see this being a thing in the future. Especially if we start seeing driver-less cars on the road and if the sharing economy as exhibited by Lift and Uber continues to take off. Why own a car with all the attendant hassles and expenses if you can just order a driver-less car on your smart phone that takes you exactly where you want to go. If this model does become a reality (as some economists suggest), I can see GM owning the fleet and just leasing them to local transportation companies or even private individuals.
Of course this is all contractual; we have leases today that require the lessee to take the automobile back to the dealership for regular service. If you buy a car, I would like to see the manufacturer try to punish the owner for taking their owned product apart more than just voiding the warranty or something similar.
The closest I can come to the concept in the title of the OP is: suppose you fix your own brakes, botch the job, skid out of control, and kill somebody. If that happened often enough, laws might get passed requiring people to be trained and licensed to fix brakes.
Since it doesn’t happen particularly often, nobody bothers.
As for the actual subject, it’s one of those market things. If all the car-makers went to a lease-only model, what choice do we have? If one small renegade company stays with a sales model, and makes a billion, then the others will go back to a sales model also, to compete. If that one renegade goes bankrupt, then the lease-only model is the winner.
Not yet. If they decided the air filter compartment needed a sensor letting the computer know it’s open they could argue such a repair needs to be done by a dealership as the owner wouldn’t be able to replace it without setting off a code they can not legally identify or reset on thier own.
There are people who sell breeds of animals that won’t sell to people who won’t sign a legally binding agreement saying they won’t do certain things to the animal, even though those things are legal. The agreements include right to inspection and confiscation of the animal if the agreement is violated. Don’t like it, don’t buy the animal.
What if all auto makers did the same thing upon sale of a vehicle? They are trying to use copyright law to destroy private property and ownership rights.
I don’t think it’s going anywhere, but the audacity of the attempt is appalling!
The real question is: what is the motivation behind this? Since distributing modified code can be construed as piracy, how do they benefit from preventing users from modifying it to begin with, and why the need to define ownership as being limited to “use”. There is clearly some train of though that prompted this course of action, and it is potentially ignorant for us to just assume it is a case of being “out of touch”.
So you’re saying there may be a justification for legally preventing someone from working on their property that they own free and clear? ***“Motorists don’t necessarily buy a car; they merely buy a license to use the car for the duration of its life” *** doesn’t rub you the wrong way?
The big thing is computer diagnostic tools. Right now, 3rd party tool companies have access to the information they need to make diagnostic tools that will work on a wide variety of cars. If the carmakers succeed in making that confidential, they could make sure that only their diagnostic tools work. That could make it very difficult not only for DIY mechanics but also for independent repair shops.
We are already at the point where the home mechanic can do little, except for oil changes, brake work, etc. I forsee a future in which dealers will do all service, because the automotive systems will be all linked into the internet-you will get an email announcing that your car needs service. If you don’t go, you void the warranty. and when self-driving cars arrive, it will probably mean the end of anything but authorized service.
You mean like working on the gas lines in your own home? And maybe if you smell a gas leak at a bad connection, putting some duct tape over it? Or rewiring your home’s electrical system based on something your read on teh Internets? Things like that?
Which is not the same thing at all.
I read the original Wired article and it isn’t really any clearer than the one linked in the OP. At least this Wonkette interpretation has a bit of humor.
The whole thing mostly strikes me as bad journalism. The writer is conflating a whole bunch of different things:
the difference between the software components in a car’s computers (over which Deere and GM seem to be trying to assert copyright) vs. the mechanical components that are actually the things that break down, and that you actually need to repair,
the difference between repairing a car and modifying a car, and
the difference between a commercial mechanic, who has always had to be licensed, and an individual owner doing his own repairs
So this seems to me to be pretty much a case of “nothing to see here”. It’s true that as cars have become more and more high-tech in general as well as more highly computerized, some aspects of repair in some cases are best done (or can only be done) by dealers, but that’s not really what the article is about. My own car is pretty much infested with computers and ECMs and ever since it’s been off warranty I take it to a very competent independent mechanic that I’m fortunate to know, who has no problems with it.
That’s not really true. If you’re just wanting to fix your car, all you really need is a cheap OBD-II scanner. If you want to fiddle around with things or hop it up, then you might need some expensive computer tools, but being a DIY owner-mechanic is as easy as it ever was.
The difference is that modern cars don’t require constant maintenance work like the old ones did. The DIY mechanic of yesteryear could save a boatload doing their own tune ups, valve adjustments, plugs etc instead of having the car in the shop every couple months, but modern cars are so much more reliable and maintenance non-intensive that there’s much less to be saved.
I was going to say the same thing. I’m a little tired of people saying you can’t work on your own car anymore, because in many ways they are easier to diagnose than ever. Tighter spaces, sure, but when you get down to it, valve covers are still valve covers, alternators and water pumps haven’t changed all that much, etc. And the internet has a wealth of information that was not available even 10 years ago. These sealed wheel bearings (for instance) swap out as a unit, so much easier than all the races and bearings, packing grease, etc. More expensive, but easier.
A few years back I had a stalling issue that turned out to be a bad crank position sensor. The internet took me right to the problem, and there was a Youtube of how to replace it. I probably never would have figured it out on my own, and I was pleasantly surprised at how straightforward it was.
The “you can’t work on these new cars anymore” myth is encouraged by the plastic engine covers that you find in most cars now. “Where is the engine?” And it is encouraged by dealerships so you will not even try, you will just bring it back to the dealer’s shop.
Pull these plastic covers off and you still have plugs, coils, valve covers, rockers, lifters, valves, etc.
In some ways the newer engines are even simpler to work on because design changes have eliminated some of the more finicky adjustments. No points to set the gap on, no timing to set, no valve lash to set, coil-on-plug has shortened or eliminated spark plug wires. There are more plug-and-play components like wheel bearings that are just unbolt old one, bolt on new one.
Of course you still need a place to work on your car and a fair investment in tools and most people elect not to invest in the tools or the time. But if you still want to do your own work, can identify the problem, and have the time, you can still do almost anything that does not involve a machine shop.
And you can find instructions and how-to videos on the internet to do everything.
Our auto repair shop loves DIY jobs. A significant part of our income derives from failed “shade tree mechanic” work. Big bucks there - not only do we have to undo what was first attempted under the shade tree, but then go ahead and do what should have been done in the first place.
As far as having your own tools, our technicians all provide their own tools (except for the big stuff, of course). Each of them has from $30,000 to $50,000 invested in these tools.