(By You Yunting) Recently, Porsche has been sued in the United States by car owners for illegally monopolizing the vehicle repair service market. Some car owners believe that even routine maintenance is becoming increasingly difficult to perform outside the official system. In fact, this issue is not unique to Porsche or the automotive industry. In recent years, more and more manufacturers have designed their product systems to be increasingly sophisticated and complex, locking consumers firmly into official repair channels and charging maintenance fees far above market average rates. This trend is known in Europe and the United States as the “Right-to-Repair” controversy. Today, let’s discuss the global legal battle over the right to repair.
1. Porsche Engine Oil Changes Require Visitsto Authorized Dealerships
In the complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, car owners allege that Porsche has achieved a de facto monopoly over after-sales maintenance services by designing its vehicle electronic architecture and software systems. Porsche refuses to grant independent repair shops and freelance mechanics access to essential diagnostic, repair and calibration capabilities for servicing vehicles, and declines to provide full technical interfaces. Its core permissions such as software programming, control unit coding, and system calibration are only available to Porsche-authorized dealers. Independent repair shops are often unable to gain low-cost access or obtain full permissions.
Under such a closed-loop architecture, even routine maintenance items (such as oil changes, fault code clearing, and basic electronic system resets) may require Porsche’s proprietary diagnostic system to complete. Otherwise, car problems may arise, such as malfunction indicator lights remaining on (e.g., after an oil change), system error alerts popping up, and partial vehicle functions becoming restricted.
2. iPhone Battery Replacement Requires 36 kg of Tools
Apple has a similar high-profile case. Apple products are renowned for their high integration and precision: they extensively use adhesives instead of screws for assembly, adopt non-standard screw specifications, and permanently solder memory and storage chips directly onto motherboards. These designs make disassembly and component replacement extremely difficult, and ordinary tools can easily cause irreversible damage to internal components.
Facing mounting pressure from the “Right-to-Repair” controversy, Apple launched a self-service repair program in 2022. Yet, when a U.S. blogger attempted to replace an iPhone battery independently, Apple delivered two large boxes of official professional tools weighing about 36 kg, including a specialized heating station, torque screwdrivers, prying tools, anti-static tools, and pressure fixtures, with rental fees and deposits approaching $300. This overblown, over-complicated approach is essentially designed to deter ordinary consumers and small repair shops through excessive complexity and cost.
3. Monopolistic Motives Behind the “Legitimate” Complex Design
On the surface, the practices of both Porsche and Apple are technically justifiable. Porsche’s complex control systems are requisite for protecting vehicle safety, cybersecurity, and repair personnel safety—the vehicle’s high-voltage system poses a risk of electric shock if operated by non-professionals. Apple’s highly integrated, fully adhesive-sealed, extremely tight-tolerance devices are indeed prone to damage to delicate internal components with ordinary tools, and unauthorized disassembly of lithium batteries also carries fire hazards. Both Porsche and Apple also share concerns about intellectual property protection, standardized repair quality, and brand reputation.
Nevertheless, these justifications can only explain why product complexity exists, not why manufacturers push complexity to extremes. An oil change does not involve the high-voltage system, yet Porsche locks down electronic diagnostic access as well. Battery replacement could have been designed to be simple and user-friendly, yet Apple requires a full set of industrial-grade equipment. The complexity in design has long transcended mere safety necessities and evolved into an artificial entry barrier that confines consumers’ repair demands to official channels.
4. Misalignment Between China’s Regulations and Practices on the Manufacturers’ Right to Repair
China primarily relies on administrative regulations to protect the right to repair. In the automotive industry, the Provisions on the Administration of Motor Vehicle Maintenance clearly stipulates that, except for manufacturers fulfilling mandatory recalls of defective vehicles and “three guarantees” (repair, replacement, refund) responsibility for product quality, no entity or individual may forcibly designate maintenance service providers directly or in a disguised form.
In the smartphone industry, the currently effective Provisions on the Liability for Repair, Replacement and Return of Mobile Phone Products also have the following clear clause: the “three guarantees” policy shall not apply if damage is caused by disassembly conducted by repair personnel without “three guarantees” responsibility. In practice, however, these regulations have been circumvented and rendered ineffective by mainstream smartphone manufacturers. Currently, mainstream smartphone manufacturers generally invalidate all product warranties for any unofficial disassembly, regardless of whether such disassembly caused actual device damage, thus depriving consumers of their “three guarantees” entitlements.
Taking Apple’s Terms and Conditions for Repair as an example, we have summarized several situations where unofficial repairs void the “three guarantees” warranty coverage:
(1) Unauthorized modifications will classify all subsequent repairs as out-of-warranty services;
(2) Additional fees will be charged for original products rendered non-functional due to unauthorized modifications;
(3) Apple reserves the right to charge diagnostic fees (including delivery costs) for unauthorized modifications;
(4) Apple assumes no liability for product damage arising from unauthorized modifications, repairs or component replacements performed by non-Apple or non-Apple Authorized Service Providers;
(5) If device damage occurs, even if the product is covered by the standard warranty or AppleCare service plan, Apple will seek consumer authorization to charge additional fees required to complete repairs.
Apple is not alone; mainstream smartphone manufacturers in the industry have adopted similar clauses. These terms actually presume that any damage to consumers’ phones is caused by disassembly at an unofficial repair shop, shifting the burden of proof to consumers. When consumers attempt to safeguard their legal rights, they will face two insurmountable hurdles of evidence collection and technical appraisal. Consumers are almost incapable of proving whether device damage stems from inherent design defects by the manufacturer or improper third-party repair operations.
We conclude with the European Union, which addresses “Right-to-Repair issues related to battery replacement directly through product access standards. The Batteries and Waste Batteries Regulation adopted by the EU in 2023 explicitly mandates that, from 2027, portable electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets sold in the EU must support battery replacement by users using ordinary household tools, and formally bans the sale of smartphones with non-replaceable built-in batteries in the future. Even so, the EU’s mandatory standards also remain controversial. Non-replaceable batteries enable slimmer, lighter phone design and improve waterproof performance. In addition, manufacturers’ increased R&D costs to comply with the new standards may be passed on to consumers, leading to higher smartphone retail prices.
This actually reflects the current regulatory dilemma, and serves as a real-life interpretation of the economic adage that there is no free lunch: when regulators force manufacturers to remove unreasonable entry barriers, sometimes they may inadvertently also tear down reasonable windows.
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