I wonder about that. Company A says "you can repair it anywhere" while Company B says "you don't have to repair it". Guess who wins the sale, even if Company B's sales claim is a bit dicey but aren't they all already.
Also, I think the backyard tinkerer is increasingly a rare breed. For any modern car, you need all kinds of specialty testing equipment and tools to do anything more than replacing the wiper blades. In addition, such equipment is not like a wrench which is pretty obvious how to use but rather take training to use properly.
I recognize that your situation, bruto, does not meet the usual car buyer profile but it's also true that not many car buyers live in Smalltown, VT so your not the target buyer anyway.
I probably should have said "service anywhere" rather than "repair."
The backyard tinkerer is a dying breed, I know. But the independent garage that can fix things is less so. There are plenty of these which do possess specialized equipment, and which can access a number of parts sources, and they would be handicapped if the manufacturers insisted that such work voids warranties, or cancels contracts for service, or simply bricks the machine. "Right to repair" issues now applicable mostly to farmers will, I think, end up important to motorists.
In the case of other vehicles, I think there has been some legal action to insure, for example, that routine service by third parties will not cancel a warranty or prevent a car from being used. I think there will have to be some further judgment on where that line is drawn in the age of constant connectivity, if the dealer is able essentially to spy on the owner and modify a car's operation on the fly.
Again of course I speak as a minority, but out here in the sparse parts of the country, many auto brands are not locally represented. We depend a lot on third parties, even if we don't do the work ourselves. Some brands are well represented, but others have no dealers within 50 miles or more. Some things like immobilizing locks are more or less under dealer control, but still, if you lose your keys, the relatively local locksmith, with expensive proprietary equipment and the like, can probably get you going without having your car towed away.
Of course I am a little biased, because not only am I an incorrigible bricoleur, but one of my sons is a mechanic at a third party establishment. Their business would be gone if they had to call customers and say "sorry, we fixed your car, but now it will won't start."
I suspect also that as such things become more widespread, there will be a fledgling industry of hackers sidestepping these issues, as is developing on the John Deere front, where you can, I gather, now buy East European programs that bypass the need for dealer input to unbrick a tractor.
In addition though the problem might be fairly rare, I also suspect that internet glitches and outages and dead zones will come to haunt some car manufacturers who depend on connectivity. If it happens often enough that features you've paid for are disabled when you drive past the ledges, or when some data gets corrupted or whatever, people are going to be unhappy.
Right now such events are likely very rare, and will probably always be statistically rare, but as more people use more electric cars for more things, they will become more anecdotally visible. Right now, few people buy electric cars for long trips, for example, but down the road, if you buy one and expect to take a three-charge trip, and find that what was expected to be a half hour charge takes three hours, or that some emergency repair leaves your car stranded, the resulting squawk will be a public relations problem even if the event is quite rare.
