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Right to Repair and Theft Related Parts (TRP) concerns

ATTENTION: PLEASE READ       ATTENTION: PLEASE READ      ATTENTION: PLEASE READ

 

Right to Repair: The automakers are attempting to take away your chose of where you
can have your vehicle serviced and repaired! 

 

Most people utilize dealership franchises for their new vehicle maintenance and repairs while the vehicle is under factory warranty. Once the warranty expires you take your vehicle to a repair shop you trust and is convenient to either your home or work. Now image if you no longer have that option and are forced to go back to the dealer for the life of the vehicle.

With new car technology advancing by the day, virtually every aspect of today's vehicles is being controlled by computers. These computers operate the brakes, radio, fuel delivery, ABS, interior and exterior lighting, power seats, and instrument cluster among many other things that are on our vehicles.  Each automaker is making the diagnostic of their vehicle unique by making the diagnostic codes only apply to their vehicle line so that not just anyone can diagnose and repair your vehicle. The automakers are restricting access to the diagnostic coding, charging a premium fee for the tools to access this information which will help repair your vehicle in a timely fashion and help to ensure a first time repair. With Right to Repair, automakers will need to conform to a universal coding system which will make it diagnosing multiple vehicle brands more cost effective for the independent repairers and owners alike.

The automakers are claiming that they own the technology and that you the customer/owner of the vehicle is just leasing the technology and do not have the right to access this information even if you own the vehicle outright. 

Right to Repair gives you the Right to Repair your vehicle where you want. Right to Repair gives every technician and not just the dealership access to the same information so that the independent shops can repair your vehicle just as easily. This helps to ensure that the dealers have competition which will help to keep repair and maintenance cost down. This will also increase safety by requiring that all safety bulletins and recall information are available to all consumer and repair facilities, not just the dealer franchises. 

This issue is being fought across the country in front of Congress and Senate in multiple states. On the forefront of this fight is Massachusetts where the 84% of the voters support Right to Repair.  

Canada has already imposed a similar act that ensures that the independent technicians have access to the same information that dealer franchises have. Canadian Automotive Service Information Standard (CASIS) PDF covering their respective agreement


Links to more information:
Right to Repair Coalition 2012: http://www.righttorepair.org
Massachusetts Right to Repair: http://massrighttorepair.com/

European Right to Repair, Question and Answers: http://r2rc.eu/documents/About_us-QA.pdf


Theft Related Parts

 

These are parts that automakers are encoding and locking to a specific vehicle identification number. When the parts are locked they cannot be recycled and used in any other vehicle. These parts include and not limited to Keys, Transmission Control Unit (TCU), automatic shifters, ignition switches, entertainment systems, engine management control units, etc... If your parts fail most of the time you will have to return to a dealer franchise to have the part diagnosed, replaced, coded and locked to your vehicle.  You no longer will have an option for purchasing a salvaged part because the automakers will not release the information to unlock these units. You are also limited to only being able to purchase these parts through a dealer franchise as the coding is not made available to the aftermarket and hence they cannot reproduce the item and create competition. 

Links to more information:
NASTF. org: http://www.nastf.org 
NASTF, VSC Spring Meeting  2012, Security Parts and Vehicle Interfaces presentation: http://www.nastfenews.org/20120417_SpringGenMtg/PDFs/Beckmann.pdf
Article was written by Robert Beckmann: Modern Transmissions and Vehicle Security: Where's the TCU?