I’ve got one for you . . .
If your car needs a new tpms sensor, you typically need a tool to activate it . . . and that’s after you’ve gotten the vehicle into learn mode, which on some vehicles isn’t possible without a scan tool
so according to your logic . . .
HINT: don’t buy any car at all!!!1
Maybe the entire car maintenance industry is a scam, as per your logic . . . ?!
Don’t be silly. Any maintenance which a typical car from the late 1980’s to mid 2000’s required is perfectly legitimate. The need to “register” a new battery, or “register” tire pressure sensors with a factory scan tool is a scam, though the scam is being carried out by the manufacturers who design such a system–not the mechanics who have to work on the cars once they are sold.
I would NEVER buy a car which requires access to a factory scan tool in order to perform normal routine maintenance, such as replacing the battery, changing the oil and oil filter, etc. That just doesn’t make sense to me.
Not so much. The physical layout is different, but the chemical process is the same.
My 2017 Tucson uses a conventional flooded lead-acid battery.
Its “smart” charging system drops the voltage to 12.6V when it’s satisfied with the charge level.
Some vehicles still do not require special tools to make TPMS happy nowadays, Mazda and Honda to name a few, but these are in minority.
The public response was an overwhelming ignore to this, so one by one, manufacturers decided it is OK to do that and get some extra profits.
Let’s acknowledge this, percentage of owners who works on their cars is quite small.
Let’s get real: I live on the ‘Redneck Riviera’, that’s is the mountains Southwest of Palm Springs, CA. A car is needed just to survive. But why buy a car that has been over engineered hence huge maintenance costs? Maybe it’s just my Scottish blood? I’ll try to do better ;^)
But this is America, one is free to do as they please.
Agree but from some of the questions we get we know a lot of people don’t do regular maintenence I wonder how many don’t even know how to open the hood let alone what to check.
But why buy a car that has been over engineered hence huge maintenance costs?
There will always be people with more money than sense that will buy thing’s like that.
Not the first, entirely the second.
Even overly rich people don’t care what kind of battery their car has.
For the same reason my mother bought her BMW. She wanted that roundel on the hood. She got mad when I suggested she buy a sticker on Ebay and put it over the H on her CRV. 
And wouldn’t consider Lexus/Acura because they lacked sufficient “prestige.” I nearly sprained my eyeballs when she said that.
She kept the BMW for less than 3 years before she dumped it for an Acura. It gave her nothing but problems.
Well, at least she had to good sense to dump it before the warranty expired!
Didn’t help. Every time she had an electrical problem the dealership blamed the battery and replaced it to the tune of $250 - the battery wasn’t warrantied. I kept telling her to call me before she authorized service, but… Well, she’s stubborn.
But look back over history at the outrageous status symbols and BMWs are relatively benign. Binding the feet of young girls, stretching the lips out to the proportion of duck bills, lopping off a joint from a finger and one I find totally insane today is sailing solo around the world in a row boat. Celebrity and status are real important to some of us.
The days of carburetors, points, chokes and drum brakes all around aren’t coming back . . .
I am real . . . and I’ve accepted the fact that there are many standard operations on modern cars that can’t be performed without access to special tools
Translation . . . the mechanic diagnosing your mom’s car was as dumb as a bag of rocks
probably couldn’t diagnose a flat tire
Thankfully.
Every time there’s been an advancement in technology there have been a group that resist it. Even though that technology has proven to be vastly superior. We still have people in this forum who hate disc brakes.
Great question!
I’ve also always was puzzled how it happens that the people who can not afford the maintenance of premium brands are so drawn to buy these cars on the part of car life-cycle where maintenance indeed becomes very much needed and so very expensive.
There was a young (EE) professor where I work. From the Caribbean.
Had a thing for 2nd hand 7-series BMW sedans.
Luckily, he liked to tinker. Not a month went by without him in the parking lot with the hood open.
I remember one particularly interesting problem.
The alternator had its own electric cooling fan(!) which failed.
We had lots of small 12V fans around, from old computers and other gear.
But the BMW fan had a speed signal output, and the managing computer wouldn’t let things work without that speed signal.
So he had to get a BMW fan.
Don’t know if he went to the scrapyards, or paid $$$ for a new one.
Most definitely. I mean, how’d she start the damn thing to drive it to the dealership if the battery was so bad that the entire center console kept going dark, the hatch wouldn’t stay closed, and the ABS kept turning off?
But hey, they made $750 off of her doing that at probably a higher profit than they’d have seen doing actual warranty work so it must’ve worked out for 'em.
Why didn’t he just wire it up to the ignition side of the fuse box. When car is on…fan is on.
I would not be surprised if that BMW would shut down if it could not communicate via Morse code to that fan 
Drum brakes are still very common in class 7 and 8 trucks . . .
But even I know that the move to air disc brakes started a few years ago
I seem to recall there were/are a few vehicles with alternators which have coolant circulating through them.
Do you happen to know what the underlying problem was . . . ?!
Body control module?
“fuse box” . . . ?!
I put that last one in parentheses, because we all know that many fuse boxes are in fact far more than that. They are control modules, which need to be initalized and programmed