The statute says the car maker does not have to release any trade secrets and anything provided must be at a “reasonable cost”.
At what point is a trade secret determined and what is a “reasonable cost”?
If a car maker spends 5 years and 20 million dollars engineering one component what would be a reasonable cost for releasing info about the service and repair of that one component?
VW spent a pile of millions designing and building the Bugatti Veyron and they lose something like 5-10 million dollars per car on every one of them that were made. Reasonable cost could translate into a substantial stack of money.
The thing that makes me a bit uneasy is the logic that Company A spends X dollars and X years doing the footwork on something and is then expected to hand it over to everyone on the block.
Why not carry this over to every other profession? Force doctors and lawyers to make available at reasonable cost all legal and medical advice as an example.
Since almost every car owner knows less than zero about a car (most don’t even raise the hood to check the oil nor do they even care) I think most that voted on this are under the rosy impression they will all get off on the cheap now.
Theoretical question. Customer Smith (known to be frugal) enters the shop with a glitch that requires a buy-in for info or tools in regards to his problem. What if the buy-in was 500 dollars? How is that scenario going to play on out?