The shops and distributors who win the next decade won’t win it just because they got the vehicle data feed. They’ll win it because they used it to their advantage.
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce just advanced Right to Repair legislation — but not the version the independent channel was hoping for. The broader REPAIR Act, with its wireless telematics access provisions, got stripped out.
What passed codifies the 2014 memorandum of understanding (MOU) between automakers and the independent repair industry: same diagnostic and repair information as franchised dealers, standardized interface, enforceable by the FTC. Rep. Neal Dunn, the REPAIR Act’s lead sponsor, is already pushing to expand it when the full bill hits the House floor.
The debate is far from over. But some version of this was always going to land, and the more interesting question was never whether independents would get access. It’s what they do with it.
Performing versus Competing
I spend a lot of time on the OEM side of this business, and there’s a distinction I keep coming back to. Performing and competing are two different things. A dealer with a nice waiting room, free coffee, and a shuttle is performing. A dealer that has your part on the shelf before you call, knows your vehicle needs brake work before you do, and makes it easy to pay: that’s competing. Some OEMs have been working hard at both. Others have leaned on data lock to do the competitive work for them. Right to Repair is going to sort out which is which.
The Affordability Squeeze
The US car parc is aging. The average vehicle age is already around 12.5 years and heading toward 13 by 2035, according to new research from Strategy& and MEMA. The vehicles aging into the non-warranty aftermarket are bigger and more complex than what came before. SUVs are now 58 percent of new sales and climbing, which means more expensive repairs, more technical diagnostics, and more consumers making hard decisions about whether to fix the car.
Historically, about 60 percent of consumers have delayed or skipped needed repairs because of cost. Auto maintenance has gone up roughly 50 percent since 2015 while disposable income is up about 21 percent.
For shops and distributors, that affordability squeeze is already showing up at the counter. Customers are holding onto vehicles longer, shopping harder, and reaching for Buy Now Pay Later to approve repairs they would have deferred a year ago. Service chains embedding financing at checkout report 15 percent higher close rates. If customers are walking out without approving the work, the financing question is worth revisiting.
The Automakers’ Telematics Advantage
Right to Repair gives the independent channel access to the wireless diagnostics that have been largely locked inside OEM systems. It levels the playing field on access. What it doesn’t do is hand anyone a customer.
What the forward-thinking OEMs deserve credit for is that they’ve been investing in telematics because connected vehicle data genuinely improves service. When a dealer knows a vehicle needs brake work before the customer calls, that’s not just gatekeeping: that’s a better customer experience.
The OEMs who built those capabilities are sitting on an advantage that has nothing to do with exclusivity. They know what’s coming in before it arrives. That sets the bar for what competitive looks like across the whole service channel.
The Preventive Maintenance Agreement Lock-In
If you can’t engineer exclusivity, you build it through preventive maintenance agreements. You lock in the service cadence, keep the revenue in the network, and turn unpredictable repair visits into something closer to recurring revenue. This has played out in heavy equipment for years and it’s moving into automotive.
For independent shops and distributors, this is the signal worth acting on now. A customer inside an OEM-aligned maintenance agreement isn’t comparison shopping the next time their check engine light comes on. The customers who aren’t in those programs are your pool, but that window closes as more OEMs get this right. Parts distributors that ally with service providers to build their own maintenance programs aren’t a far-fetched idea. The OEM model here is a template, not a monopoly.
Large multi-location chains are taking a growing share of automotive light repair as single-location operators exit. It’s the same pattern American farming followed over the last 40 years. The big get bigger, the mid-size get absorbed, and the independents who survive are the ones who made deliberate capability investments.
ADAS calibration, EV diagnostics, software tools: that’s where the work is going. Electrification and ADAS parts categories are projected to grow at around 23 percent annually through 2035, and the gap between shops that can do that work and shops that can’t will widen. Capital requirements will push more consolidation, and private equity is already building scaled regional platforms around exactly those capabilities.
Access to telematics data matters. But the shops and distributors who win the next decade won’t win it just because they got the data feed. They’ll win it because they used it to have the part ready, make it easier to pay, and know the customer’s vehicle better than the customer.
The waiting room and free coffee still matter. They just aren’t enough anymore.
Benjamin Groeneveld is Senior Director of Solutions Consulting at Syncron, which provides aftermarket service lifecycle management software to global OEMs and manufacturers.
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