On the other hand, I've done my own cooking more than not.
You make choices about what you do yourself and what you have others do for you.
For the consumable stuff every car owner has to deal with, nothing has really changed in 40 years, honestly! A brake service is still done the exact same way, same with virtually all the fluid services.
I just find far more people parrot "modern cars are so complicated" today and don't even consider that in fact, it is relatively simple to change a brake pad and disc, or your own oil, perhaps an air filter, even on most brand new cars. Fluids filters and brakes are like 90% of most people's maintenance needs nowadays.
YouTube has also massively lowered the barrier to working on cars, given there are multiple easy to follow guides for just about any car service for any car model you can think of.
Also similarly as with iPhones, many cars require connecting to the authorized service to change headlights and other parts since they are paired with the MCU.
I know how to work on my car but I am not able to because someone decided to lock it down.
> https://www.brakeandfrontend.com/quick-answer-electronic-par...
You typically need the piston fully retracted to replace pads, which very rarely happens just by disengaging the park brake.
If you are old enough to have changed a manual handbrake pad, you normally had to screw the piston back in before you could fit the thicker new pad with a "caliper rewind tool" even if the handbrake was off, the electronic parking brake service mode essentially does this for you, or unblocks the piston permitting a rewind tool to work.
> https://www.thedrive.com/guides-and-gear/how-to-use-a-brake-...
FWIW, I've never found an electronic parking brake I couldn't rewind myself after a few minutes on google.
On the cars I've worked on, the hand brake did not actuate the primary caliper so retracting the piston wasn't an issue.
(Air filters are, admittedly, pretty easy.)
I can attest that changing a brake pad is mission impossible level without the proper tools. The tools and experience are what make it look easy, for someone that has both.
I also choose not to mow my lawn at this point. I'm perfectly capable of doing so but just prefer not to do so,
Not everyone needs to know how to compile their own kernel, build their own furniture or clean their laundry perfectly. Everyone has their own interests and areas of expertise they want to delve in to. Now I can screw up a brake job working on it all day and rewatching YouTube videos wondering what I missed, or I can take it to a shop and get it done in an hour for cheap. That's just me though. I spent a lot of time working on cars in my youth and I'm just tired of spending my time on it. I don't like it and I am more than willing to pay someone who does like it to do it.
That is irrelevant to the argument he is making that things have not gotten harder in the last 40 years in regards to car maintenance that you can do at home.
His point is that the perception that car maintenance has gotten harder for the average joe does not match reality. Almost all of the things that need periodic on modern cars are more or less the same as they were in 1985.
BTW just before Covid, or during Covid, I took a car mechanic course from the local De Anza college - no hands on, so that's why I think it was during Covid. But after 5 years and no experience, I have forgotten except the abstract concepts. Then imagine people who never had to look under the hood -- ever.
But my primary takeaway was that this is hard & dirty work, and there are numerous ways in which you can make mistakes that ruin the car and/or endanger your safety, so generally paying a professional to do it is a more sensible way.
Of course, if you enjoy doing this, or have a very old car, or more time than money, the trade-offs are different.
Cabin air filter and wiper fluid, sure. Headlights and taillights used to be a no-brainer, but now those are often sealed LED assemblies and difficult to access as well.
Again it is like 5 mins of hands on work if you are taking your time.
What is so noble about changing your oil?
Where new cars get shitty is the electronics that get shoehorned in to control systems that were previously controlled by a button or dial.