How is this practice even legal? Could auto manafuctirers do the same thing? I'm sure they discourage aftermarket programming and whatnot, but using DRM to prevent DIY repairs is bringing things to a whole new level.
My dad is a mechanical engineer who loves cars. I spent my youth listening to him lamenting the fact that modern cara have too many electronics and DIY protections. That you can't even make an oil change without also notifying the computer, the interface for which is proprietary and only sold to licensed dealers, or the car would refuse to run because it would think its oil is bad. He reminisced about the good old da…
Honestly I'm really sick of hearing idiotic stories like this. You need to demand that he tell you exactly what car is like this (basically, "citation needed").
My 2015 Mazda is the easiest car to change oil that I've ever seen. There's a service panel on the bottom of the car that comes open with two screws, and inside is the drain bolt and the filter right next to it (hanging down, so it won't pour oil all over when you unscrew the filter). It really couldn't be any easier. Drain the oil, replace the filter, replace the crush-washer on the drain bolt and put it back on at ~35 lb-ft, pour more oil in the fill hole on top of the engine. Then, on the infotainment system, you just navigate to the "maintenance" section where the oil-change reminder is, select "Reset" and you're done. The system even has flexible oil change intervals and will tell you when to change it based on your driving habits; mine lets me go 7500-10000 miles between changes.
This canard about "proprietary interfaces only sold to licensed dealers" is either total bullshit, or is only on certain (likely high-end luxury) cars that are easy to avoid.
(Edit: to be fair there is some of this for certain things and certain cars. But it doesn't exist as far as I've seen for basic maintenance tasks, it just seems to be something created in the minds of old people and passed around as rumor until it became accepted as truth. One example of something that really is like this I've heard of is some high-end cars with electrically-adjustable suspensions, requiring a special dealer-only service tool to calibrate it in case of repairs. But you're not going to see this on a $20K Honda any time soon; regular cars these days still have the same ol' completely mechanical MacPherson strut suspensions they've had for ages.)
>He reminisced about the good old days when all you needed was a wrench and a hammer and you could fix anything on a car.
That's bullshit too. Cars have always needed all kinds of specialized tools. Disc brake spreaders, steering wheel pullers, spark plug gap tools, feeler gauges, torque wrenches (try replacing a con-rod without one and see how long your engine lasts), cylinder hones, I could go on and on.