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Seventy percent of post-warranty work in the U.S. happens at independent shops. That number comes from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.
Dealer visits get recorded in a manufacturer portal against the VIN. Independent shop visits get recorded in whatever system the shop runs, and the owner walks out with a receipt to take home. Those two records have never been connected, and a used EV with a $15,000 battery pack and an eight-year warranty loses value fast when the buyer can’t verify what service the independent shop actually did.
Most of the receipts from those shop visits end up in a glove box. A fair number end up in the trash. The VIN record carries dealer work forward to the next owner, but says nothing about the 70 percent of maintenance that happened somewhere else. Coolant work on the battery thermal system. Software updates the dealer didn’t handle. None of it is visible to the next person who runs the VIN. Shops that do this work every day have no mechanism for pushing it into the vehicle’s permanent record, and the manufacturers have not built one.
Legislative Action
Bill Hanvey at the Auto Care Association told Autobody News in March 2026 that manufacturers “increasingly control the data needed for diagnostics” as vehicles get more connected. U.S. PIRG published a report in February 2026 called “My Car, My Data” that tracked how manufacturers use the telematics data flowing off connected vehicles to steer owners into dealer service bays. Independent shops sit outside that pipeline. The REPAIR Act, H.R. 1566, would require automakers to open it up, giving independent shops access to the same telematics data that dealers get.
Massachusetts put a telematics access measure on the ballot in 2020 and it passed with 75 percent. Maine followed three years later with 84 percent. Neither state has managed to get the law fully operational, and the federal bill was on the House Energy and Commerce Committee calendar for a spring 2026 markup without a confirmed date. It’s hard to run a shop when the rules about what data you can access change depending on which state capitol managed to finish its rulemaking that year.
California’s battery durability rules for 2026 and later model years will require owners to have access to battery health data that manufacturers have kept proprietary so far. Battery condition sets the price on a used EV more than mileage does. Right now, the only way to pull a full diagnostic on most packs is through the manufacturer’s dealer software. High-voltage battery warranties on most EVs run eight years and 100,000 miles. The records that prove whether the previous owner’s shop performed the service those warranties require sit in a local database at that shop, and most buyers don’t know which shop to call.
Automakers and repair groups announced the SAFE Repair Act in early 2025 to guarantee independent shops the same data access as dealer networks. It has not reached a vote. Used EVs keep showing up on lots with clean dealer records and independent shop documentation that amounts to an auto repair receipt someone left in the center console, if that.
