Capacity With Repairers
The changes of the last 5 years and those still coming at us rapidly are significant more for their wide application than for their technology. Many of the features which are seen as “new” were being used by high-end manufacturers such as Mercedes Benz in the mid to late 2000s. But with only a few manufacturers using this advanced technology on a small percentage of the overall vehicle fleet, it was possible for these manufacturers to control the repair process and ensure that the technicians working on the cars were properly trained.
Now every manufacturer is using very sophisticated technology and materials in even their least expensive cars and with so many of these cars on the road they are not yet able to control the repair process.
A Difficult (Impossible?) Task To Find And Train People
Mercedes Benz had to train maybe several hundred or at most a few thousand technicians and facility managers to work in their rigorous system. The industry was large enough that this relatively small number of motivated people could be found despite the stubborn industry culture of resistance to learning and training. It is easy to imagine that even if only three or four of the mass market manufacturers wanted to get to this level, they would face a difficult, if not impossible, task to find and train the people needed.
These manufacturers are saying the right things about standards and verified repairs, but the reality is that the industry is not ready and only a small percentage of these cars are being correctly repaired.