My dad has a Chevy Silverado 3500, and he hates it for this reason.

Every time the machine has a minor breakdown (which happens once in a while) and the ECU detects that it isn't quite as efficient as it should be, it will immediately and completely mercilessly lock your vehicle to 35 miles per hour. Doesn't matter if you drove from Minnesota to California to pick up a heavy delivery in person - you are coming home at 35 MPH, the entire way, unless you stop at a shop on the way for potentially days to get it fixed.

And as for what could trigger that, it could be anything. Once a sensor went bad on the emissions filter. It was just one sensor of many - not the actual emissions system. It tripped the 35 MPH lock, and the only way to fix it was to replace the sensor, which required taking the entire freaking back axle off. It was almost an entire day's job for the diesel mechanic.

Imagine if you were a small business owner, multiple states away from home, when this happened. That is crushing and instills complete and utter contempt for emissions standards and those who make them very, very quickly. And then we wonder why some people hate EVs, love "rolling coal", and dispute climate change. If that happened to you, I could see very quickly why you'd join the haters club.

You generally have the right to repair cars now... though the penalties for violating the clean air act are rather hefty.

I'll also point to Illegal Tampering by Diesel Pickup Owners Is Worsening Pollution, E.P.A. Says https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/climate/diesel-trucks-air...

This gets to some of the "why" that the right to repair gets into trouble - that people will "repair" it to violate other laws either knowingly or unknowingly.

Note that the 1990 clean air act required that car makers provide this information to independent shops.

I furthermore, consider the "hate EVs" because of emissions standards for diesel vehicles to be completely irrational.

> I furthermore, consider the "hate EVs" because of emissions standards for diesel vehicles to be completely irrational.

It's easy to waive your hands and call it irrational when it has never happened to you. If you want to experience the potential consequences for yourself, I dare you to drive from NY to LA (~2800 miles), while never exceeding 35 Miles Per Hour. Not once. Never. Enjoy the trip - you'll be almost entirely on backroads the whole way.

That is the potential consequence (taken to an extreme) that Diesel truck owners live with, every day, because of emissions. Irrational? I'd say completely rational - it's ridiculous to have that sword hanging over your head, that a sensor will just blow and you're stuck. If it happens to you, you want to rip the arms off any politician in the area.

Edit: As for the New York Times article, imagine if you are a business owner, delivering a product a few states away, or even just a few hundred miles. My dad, if it was not illegal, would have immediately went and did exactly as that article described, because that would guarantee that can't happen, which is important because he can't afford for that to happen. This isn't because my dad is heartless towards the environment - he'd pay $25 or $50 for a day-long emissions exemption (donated to, say, CO2 capture) to the 35MPH limit so he could rest assured that he has a quick way out if something goes wrong and he won't be trapped in the middle of nowhere.

From the post:

> And then we wonder why some people hate EVs

I consider that irrational.

The issues with difficulty to repair the emissions systems on diesel vehicles should be something to complain to the vehicle manufacture - not the clean air act itself just as the ire of "can't fix a phone" should be focused on Apple rather than people who use a dumb phone or have a pine phone.

This is not a good argument if you have watched diesel truck progression. Even if it was easier to repair, the emissions standards are what partly caused this design mess in the first place, as they were the only reasonable way to meet the standard (all diesel trucks right now are suffering design issues like this), so it absolutely takes blame. Diesel trucks were only designed like this because of the emissions standards.

Imagine a legislature mandated that all smartphones must be watertight to 200 meters deep, no exceptions. They must also be no thicker than 1/4" of an inch, no exceptions. And then if, for example, all the smartphone makers used adhesive instead of screws to do that. Your argument is that the smartphone markers are to blame for the adhesive, not the legislature. I would argue that it really is the legislature's fault.

Edit @scratcheee:

I would first look over how much damage the vehicle actually causes the environment and whether the standards are reasonable. Look up Leaf Blowers vs Diesel emissions for example - it's really ugly how unfairly biased towards Leaf Blowers and other small engines the emissions standards are. They can have absolutely absurd emissions by comparison without any restriction. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/opinion/leaf-blowers-cali...) (This is another reason why, if your vehicle was shut down due to emissions, knowing that a leaf blower is doing more damage is even more infuriating and destroys credibility and faith in the standards.)

After that, assuming that the standards aren't moving downward, I would have a self-service daily exemption system. Basically, send $25 or so to some complaint CO2 capture or similar organization, get a code, punch code into truck, get exception for the whole day. Obviously this adds up ($500+ a month assuming normal weekdays), incentive enough to get it fixed soon. My dad would be the kind of person who would be greatly relieved - because modding your truck to ignore emissions is awfully tempting whenever planning a long road trip. Just knowing you wouldn't be stranded if something went wrong is enough to kill the temptation.

Edit @lcnPylGDnU4H9OF:

Neither myself, nor my dad, bear ill-will towards EVs. Any ill-will towards them is your misinterpretation of the argument. We are, however, arguing that the stringent and very flawed enforcement of emissions standards undermines the credibility of all emissions standards, as well as faith in EVs and other marketed-as-environmentally-friendly solutions. And that, therefore, blame can be shared both ways when we see people opposed to EVs and stricter emissions standards.

Ford and Chevy have had three decades to work at making a system that has the redundancy, tolerances, and repairability to meet with the Clean Air Act requirements.

The ease of repairability isn't something that is legislated - but rather the "this is the minimum fuel efficiency and the emissions for a diesel vehicle". The placement of sensors and lack of redundancy is a choice from the company.

The existence of an electric vehicle has no bearing on using a pickup truck to do long haul loads.

That the company is making it difficult for 3rd parties to repair is exactly the issue of right to repair and intentionally making it hard for 3rd parties to fix even though they are in compliance with the requirements (by the Clean Air Act) to provide this information and parts.

(I will also point out that this sort of intentional tampering and violation of laws is what makes it harder to argue for a right to repair for other things.)

One's ire shouldn't be directed at the EPA but rather Ford and Chevy for making their trucks harder to fix and lacking redundancy in the systems to avoid the situation where it breaks and you're limited to 35mph.

Furthermore, as a working truck, it is probably necessary to have it tuned up more frequently than its passenger vehicle time schedule would suggest.

I think there's more to blame on the proliferation of the purchasing of larger vehicles, considering this will contribute a lot to diesel truck ownership. I so commonly see a diesel truck on the road that it's hard to imagine everyone who's driving one has a need for that specific kind of vehicle for the given trip (probably not even by half). There is more criticism to be aimed at the "common" truck driver who really has no business using a truck as their daily driver.

I do agree that the current state of things sounds bad with the speed limiting, especially for the commercial owner who's more likely to be responsible with the truck, but certainly it's irrational to vaguely blame "EVs" for these problems. That sounds like an anti-EV dog-whistle more than an argument.

> There is more criticism to be aimed at the "common" truck driver who really has no business using a truck as their daily driver.

The 1% trips that need the truck are enough to use it as a daily driver. The fixed costs of owning a truck (for the 1% trip) and a second car for everything else are so much that almost nobody has enough income to afford that.

Every time I say the above someone says "but you can rent", but when I look into it I discover the hassles, cost, and restrictions on renting makes me decide I can't.

> The 1% trips

It sounds like I think it's irresponsible to take those trips if it means you choose to purchase a truck despite the lack of need for 99% of your use of it.

Indeed, you can rent and you choose not to for reasons you mentioned, which is a decision others can criticize.

I took some more time to read your comments and I still must disagree with your conclusion about the frustration:

> instills complete and utter contempt for emissions standards [and how they are enforced]

Why not hold contempt with the manufacturer who has a bad solution to meet the standards? What if the manufacturer wants the solution to be bad (malicious compliance)? What if they don't care? What if they do want to have a good solution and it's just otherwise bad? You could insist that their trucks do not meet your standards and the manufacturer needs to do a better job of both meeting emissions compliance requirements and not crippling the ability of the vehicle when they fail to.

> the only way to fix it was to replace the sensor, which required taking the entire freaking back axle off

This was a design decision made by the manufacturer and it is their fault that it's so difficult to fix. This has nothing to do with legislation except for that the sensor needs to exist; the legislation does not specify where that sensor needs to be, nor does it require that the sensor ever stops functioning (again, blame the manufacturer!). The manufacturer 1) doesn't need to stay in business and 2) needs to meet emissions standards. I don't see an argument against the emissions standards that doesn't start with the assumption that the vehicle manufacturer either will or should stay in business. It's only because the manufacturer shifts the blame that you're complaining about emissions standards rather than the decisions made by the manufacturer.

Out of curiousity, what solution do you think would work (assuming you accept that enforcing any sort of emissions standards is a good idea overall).

My best attempt: perhaps as long as systems to maintain emissions standards have failed, the vehicle could be made to pay a fine per X miles travelled that approximates the cost of correcting either the actual emissions of that engine or if such data is unavailable, a plausible worst case emissions of the engine. At a vague guess I could see that being $250 per 1000 miles or so (simplifying emissions to be "4x typical CO2 emissions of a van", which could be way off, and current best-case DAC costs to undo the damage ~$250 per tonne).

That's still a fairly steep fine, but at least it isn't artificially limiting the vehicle.

Living in a state with mandatory annual vehicle inspections, these are obviously the solution. You can put non-compliant parts on your car, swap them out before inspection, find a dodgy shop that will let some things slide, etc. But for the most part it significantly raises the barrier to driving around with a derelict vehicle.

Emissions should be checked with a tailpipe sensor, as they used to do before they started to lazily rely on OBD2. Then digital restrictions on the emissions computers (etc) could then be narrowly scoped to reporting the last time the firmware was flashed. And if someone is still willing to swap that module out and back every year, then just let them. They could also just burn diesel in a 55 gallon drum in their back yard.

That does seem sensible yes, I'm also not particularly interested in preventing people from doing stupid things to their cars if they're that insistent on doing them, it just hurts everyone else.

I guess the problem is how to encourage manufacturers to ensure their emissions functions remain high quality. If the _only_ feedback is customers eventually getting failed inspections and thus higher repair bills eventually, which presumably then leads to them complaining about the cost of the cars maintenance, that's a pretty weak feedback loop compared to direct punishment for producing products that fail emissions checks.

The problem is that once you punish manufacturers more directly they start installing these braindead systems in self defense, after all, if nobody can drive their cars when they're broken then they can't be punished for failing emissions checks.

I guess you could just forbid them from blocking customers at the same time as you punish them, but that's a little unsatisfying.

Maybe just require a way to detect modification or emissions override, and anyone who does that pays the fine if they fail inspection, and for anyone else the manufacturer pays. They'd presumably be begging people to install modifications so they can hand off any fines...

> Maybe just require a way to detect modification or emissions override, and anyone who does that pays the fine if they fail inspection, and for anyone else the manufacturer pays. They'd presumably be begging people to install modifications so they can hand off any fines...

For passenger vehicles (including diesel pickup trucks but not diesel semi tractors), after you buy it, if you make modifications to it, you the owner are now responsible for it. Also note that the diesel pickup truck is classified as a passenger vehicle rather than a commercial vehicle and so needs to meet the standards of a passenger vehicle.

However... where it gets interesting is when you switch to commercial and industrial equipment. In these cases, the manufacture is always responsible unless they go out of their way to lock it down.

For example, if you made a farm tractor and could adjust the software to change the fuel air mixture to optimize it for certain altitudes (farming at 5000 feet has different tuning than farming at sea level) then if it was possible for the person using it to change that... you, the manufacture are still responsible for any things with emissions. For industrial equipment, you need to lock it down to the point where the person doing it is knowingly violating warranties and regulations.

... And then you've got John Deere with its DRM on the firmware to make sure that farmers don't modify them to go racing ( https://youtu.be/hK-WO9SzVcs ) and get the company in trouble (and the EPA is less of an issue than someone modifying the settings for a combine and getting killed).

https://www.biren.com/blog/2020/september/defective-machiner...

> Products claims over defective industrial machines are subject to many of the common defenses in products cases, including comparative fault of the user or a third party (CACI No. 1207A and 1207B), misuse or modification (CACI No. 1245), and more.

> These claims may also become a target for the sophisticated user defense, in which a Defendant accused of failing to warn argues they are not liable because the Plaintiff is a sophisticated user who, because of their position, training, experience, knowledge, and / or skill, knew or should have known about a product’s risk of harm (CACI No. 1244).

> Overcoming such a defense requires assessment of what a user knew or should have known at the time of an accident. More importantly, Plaintiffs’ attorneys should anticipate such a defense when bringing a products liability claim over a Defendant’s failure to warn, and explore other alternatives for proving defects based on defective design or manufacturing, if supported by the facts, and especially if a Plaintiff may qualify as a sophisticated user.

That misuse or modification part - https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/1200/1245... its a two part test where both parts must hold

> 1. The [product] was [misused/ [or] modified] after it left [name of defendant]’s possession; and

> 2. The [misuse/ [or] modification] was so highly extraordinary that it was not reasonably foreseeable to [name of defendant], and therefore should be considered as the sole cause of [name of plaintiff]’s harm.

Can one claim that changing the fuel settings on a tractor is extraordinary that it can't be reasonably foreseen? If not, then John Deere is still responsible unless they take every possible action to prevent it from happening.

I was curious about the legal justification for your claim, so I read your main source (biren.com). It seems like you're taking what is a possible defense against a product liability claim (CACI 1245), and pulling it out of context. But rather, for that to even apply, there still has to be a fundamental design defect in the product.

So if there is a safety interlock controlled by software, which the end user then disables by replacing the software, and then someone gets hurt - even though the manufacturer could have reasonably foreseen the modification, the manufacturer still isn't liable because their (removed) safety interlock code wasn't defective in the first place.

But regardless of the current state of the law, a new law that prohibited companies from prohibiting modifications to software on devices they sell would obviously affect that. The thing your citing is California jury instructions, that are presumably a distillation of case law. So rather than even needing to be amended by a legislature, they would be implicitly adjusted with the passage of a right to repair law.

I don't hate EVs. I do think the way emissions standards are applied to vehicles are very stupid and actually counter-productive. The grandparent to my comment makes good points about diesel vehicles, but it's not just diesel vehicles, it's also gas cars as well.

I own a small sports car. This car is designed to only run on 93 octane gas, and has three stages of catalytic converters due to emissions standards, as well as related sensors. Many parts of the US do not have 93 octane gas, only 91 octane gas, which is possible to run in the vehicle but causes it to run worse than it otherwise would and isn't great long-term. Additionally, it is extremely underpowered given its engine specifications due to the emissions controls.

If I were to illegally remove the catalytic converters and instead run resonators (for sound tuning and volume reduction) and program the ECU with a module to support using ethanol fuels, I would actually reduce the emissions output while ensuring I have effectively higher octane fuel and produce 30-40 more horsepower at the wheels. Yes, removing emissions devices can actually make a car /more/ efficient and reduce emissions if done correctly. Unfortunately, the EPA has decided that people that want to do this are horrendous criminals and any shop assisting them or importing parts is doing crimes, and has made it their mission to shut it down.

So the EPA and our stupid legislation ensures my car is less efficient, undergoes more wear, and sounds worse, in order to abide by emissions standards.

Both of the people who responded to my comment seem to have missed my point about ethanol being part of this. High-ethanol (E70 or higher) fuels have roughly half the emissions when burned that gasoline does, while having a higher effective octane rating. That said, from an energy density perspective their energy density is lower, so it requires tuning so the fuel injectors on your car inject more fuel volume at a given speed density (or other tuning method).

There's been multiple studies on this. From an environmental impact perspective, biofuels are generally considered worse than gasoline due to land-use, however at the point of use, when burned, they are massively cleaner than gasoline and don't produce the same quantity and types of byproducts. In point of fact, burning high ethanol biofuels without catalytic converters produces cleaner emissions than burning gasoline with catalytic converters. Also, my parent comment was not an argument against catalytic converters, it was an argument against the encryption of ECUs, banning of tuning components, etc. by the EPA in the name of emissions, when these things are necessary to convert a car that runs on gasoline to run on high-ethanol biofuels, which are better from an emissions perspective at point of use. You can use downstream high-flow catalytic converters with ethanol fuels for final cleaning, such as in the mid-pipe of the exhaust, but you cannot use them in the exhaust header itself as the temperature of the exhaust gas is significantly higher with high-ethanol fuels, which is part of why their byproducts are less emitting.

I don't know why EPA should care such people. Driving a car is a privilege. Also, net CO2 emission is decreased by bioethanol by theory, but it still emits toxic materials that should be caught by catalytic converters.

The catalytic converters reduce unburned hydrocarbons and reduce oxides of nitrogen. No amount of 'tuning' will every achieve that. So your statement on reducing emissions by removing the catalyst is provably false.

People under 60 have no idea how crappy the air quality was in the late 1960 through 1980. And it really didn't improve much until the mid 1990s, when most if the old cars finally aged out and left the road.

> Illegal Tampering by Diesel Pickup Owners Is Worsening Pollution

The solution to this is not to make tampering hard or illegal, but instead to simply have random spot checks and hefty fines for those caught doing it.

It would work like this:

* The truck detects tampering has occurred, and pops up a warning (repeated once a month) saying "Warning: Your emissions system may have a fault, and should be checked by a professional. Driving a vehicle that does not meet emissions laws could incur a fine of $10k."

* Each state trains a few police officers on use of a rolling road and emissions checking equipment. They pull vehicles over at random and test them. They issue large fines to those who don't pass the test (with a big discount for those where the emissions failure appears to be due to neglect rather than deliberate tampering).

* Publish in local media stories of those caught, include figures of how many people air pollution has killed in the state. Make sure you get some quotes from the mother of a trucker who has died from lung cancer, etc.

Soon far fewer people will be modding their trucks...

> The truck detects tampering has occurred, and pops up a warning (repeated once a month) saying "Warning: Your emissions system may have a fault, and should be checked by a professional. Driving a vehicle that does not meet emissions laws could incur a fine of $10k."

This is impossible. Anyone who can figure out how to modify ECU programming (this isn't trivial) can figure out how to turn off that notice.

Of course. But now they can't claim they didn't know that DIY replacing their exhaust pipe with a 'cheap' one was going to make the emissions illegal.

Any garage doing this for their customers will also have a harder time in court when they try to explain to the jury that they deliberately hid a message intended to notify their customer of illegal emissions.

If your car violates emissions the check engine light will come on. Isn't that enough - why do we need a new light for this? The scan tool will tell you why the light it one. Note that there is no general way to tell the difference between replacing replacing parts that violate emissions with the correct parts failing. That takes a mechanic looking at the sensor values and checking the entire system to see why a sensor is out of range.

Besides most of the above emissions changes are specifically about changing the programming of the ECU. While you can make mechanical changes, they typically only have a small effect and so you wouldn't notice. However if you change the ECU programming you can get a lot more power out of the engine - at the expense of engine life and emissions. Which is why I say that the only people doing this to their cars will just turn off the code that turns that light on: they are already changing the code of the ECU.

I don't see how the inability of your dad to repair his truck has anything to do with this reaction

" And then we wonder why some people hate EVs, love "rolling coal", and dispute climate change. If that happened to you, I could see very quickly why you'd join the haters club."

1.If this is a form of protest it's not working because when environmentists see a truck rolling coal they only want more regulation and enforcement. If it's a protest it's not clear because an alternative explanation could be that the people driving lifted trucks and rolling coal just want to be dicks/annoy people. It's like if I was angry at a bank so i littered at their branches

2. EVs have the same issues with right to repair so why would you hate them? Again similar issues as 1

3. Climate change is occurring and disputing it because you are upset about "limp mode" also doesn't make sense. Who is going to connect these two situations.

I never said it was my reaction or his, or that I hate EVs (if you read again) - I'm saying that if that "limp mode" happened, to a business owner or someone dependent on their vehicle, I can fully understand why they would start to view the entire environmental movement and everything tied to it as full of BS. It's a reaction (partly rational) caused from how upsetting that event is.

> It's like if I was angry at a bank so i littered at their branches

Sometimes, if you are angry enough, you protest in the only way that you know of, regardless of how rational it is. No policymaker is going to listen to your concerns, valid though they may be. What else are you going to do? Shut up and take it? I would hope that when we see people who oppose EVs, and "roll coal," that would be a sign for us to ask how they got there, instead of assuming they are idiots.

I'm sorry about tying the behavior to your dad, you mentioned him then switched to discussing why others act a certain way. I didn't read your comment carefully enough

The limp mode is not specifically tied to environmental controls. It also happens for high temperature in diffs, transmissions, etc. It protects components.

As to a rolling coal protest, people do this to also just be jerks. Basically inflammatory behavior never works as a protest. Politicians are already aware that people don't care about the environment and or hate emissions devices on vehicles.

Rolling coal is such an immature junvinile behavior, especially when people target vehicles. Imagine if someone has breathing issues and their car interior is flooded with poorly combusted diesel fumes. It's why whenever I see a lifted truck I just assume the person is an asshole.

Should I go up and ask them? What do you think would happen? They would think I'm attacking and judging them and I'm sure their response wouldn't be useful

But why are you taking your (justified) anger about poorly designed emissions controls systems on fans of EVs?

"Funny" though.

EVs have less moving parts, than any ICE vehicle. And brushless motor control isn't a complex issue at all(if your EV has brushless motors, that is). If your EV had traditional brushed motor(s) - then it's even easier.

The opposition to EV is beyond stupid at this point.

Can an EV tow 10,100 pounds? A maxed-out F150 Lightning can, in theory. The maxed-out F150 Lightning is also more expensive; has way, way less range when towing at capacity; and takes longer to refuel.

In independent towing tests, a fully-loaded F150 Lightning Platinum with maxed-out towing capacity, which is inferior to the 3500 by a few hundred pounds, could not even go 100 miles. It also takes 1.5 hours to charge at 440V, 14 hours to charge at 220V. At best, you would spend equal amounts of time charging as towing, which would be absurd (assuming you can always find a 440V charger).

I rest my case. It's like saying you don't need a Core i7 for rendering because you can survive with a Core i3. Sometimes you need a Core i7 - and you'd like your Core i7 to not randomly go slower than a Pentium if it detects its drawing too much power, right?

Edit: Removed 7700 F-150 Lightning limit, that was base model.

> Can an EV tow 10,100 pounds? A maxed-out F150 Lightning can, in theory.

The R1T can, the upcoming Silverado will be about 100 lbs short.

Note that these are still first generation products, there’s every reason to believe that subsequent generations will see significant gains over this.

> It also takes 1.5 hours to charge at 440V

It is well understood that charging at high voltages is a variable curve. So, if you are looking to maximize speeds you aren’t going to charge to 100%. More realistically you’d drive for and hour and charge for 30 mins.

I’m not going to pretend that is acceptable, mind you, but again, there is a lot of room for improvement in charging speeds. There are already vehicles on the market that charge significantly faster than that.

I'd wager very few pickup owners tow anything- around here they are all mall crawlers.

Its hard to know, I for one tow a 2500lbs tractor around a few times a year, or a load of mulch, or take it into situations where I need 4x4 high clearance.

But OTOH, probably 90% of the miles on it are driving around "to the mall" or work.

Could I rent a truck every time I needed one? Probably, but it would probably cost me another $1k+ a year or so, be massively inconvenient, etc.

OTOH, a lot can probably be done to improve the efficiency of normal trucks being used in commuter situations. Hybrid/etc style vehicles are probably just fine for my use case, since I already have the baby motor in it. Is it a bit slower/etc when I'm towing, sure, but it gets the job done.

Why is that relevant? Do the people who actually need to tow no longer matter because some people don't?

That doesn't invalidate anything. Most around here haul stuff and actually use them.

Less, moving parts, and 1000x the software bugs.

Net result is probably worse.

And despite the people claiming they will last longer than ICE, I can't remember ever replacing a car because the drive train was to expensive to fix. They get replaced because they are old/ugly and the interiors/exteriors are worn out.

OTOH, I don't really know anyone who is against EV's, but myself I find them slightly annoying because where i live they are basically being subsidized by everyone not driving one. Which isn't fair because the people driving them tend to be in the upper income/wealth brackets. Its basically a smug regressive tax, that doesn't do shit for the environment given ~50% of the power in the city I live in comes from a coal plant, and averages about 80% CO2 emitting sources after the wind+nukes are added to the picture. (And actual consumer vehicular CO2 output works out to something like 8% of the CO2 emissions).

Software bugs are a problem for ICE cars, too [1]. A modern car has a dozen controllers strewn about, including a hard-realtime one that controls the injection of fuel into cylinders; without its software / firmware, the car just won't go.

That software may be more mature than EV's software, but not necessarily so.

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apples-wozniak-toyota-has-softw...

>The opposition to EV is beyond stupid at this point.

You really ought to consider why before calling it stupid. EVs are basically a non-starter if you need to tow or drive long distances quickly for reasons such as children and trucking.

This is exactly why no matter how much money I make I still choose motorcycles or old used cars that have no network connectivity, no DRM, do what I tell them, and are easy to acquire parts for.

It does not seem possible to own most modern vehicles.

> That manufactures feel like they are liable if someone modifies their control software is one of the reasons they oppose right to repair.

That’s what they say is the reason. But I don’t believe that for a second.

They do get sued for things like that.

It's possible that's one reason and another is to force people to buy new products more often or pay for repair services. When asked however, they claim it's the first reason because it makes them look better than if it was both.

This is an extremely common manipulation tactic