[deehunk]

Mahindra service centers discourage the use of the Owner's manual and prefer to use the App for all service and other job works. In fact, from my experience of 3 years, it is completely paperless for a customer except for the gate pass. There is nothing wrong with discontinuing those pocket series-type manuals and going paperless.

[DCEite]

Well, if my driving license, RC copy, insurance copy can be digital then why not Owner's manual ?

Do we realize that sale of passenger cars alone is around 3 Million per year, and think about it, its substantial saving for environment considering papers ultimately are manufactured at the cost of Trees.

[Sankar]

Originally Posted by deehunk

Mahindra service centers discourage the use of the Owner's manual and prefer to use the App for all service and other job works. In fact, from my experience of 3 years, it is completely paperless for a customer except for the gate pass. There is nothing wrong with discontinuing those pocket series-type manuals and going paperless.

Why does the gatepass need to be paper? Is it difficult to rig a system which shows the vehicle details on a screen in the guards cabin with green/red as the vehicle approaches the gate? I have wondered. Maybe its for tracking and accountability.

Service job card is electronic in Maruti since many years and Toyota since a few years, in India it was Maruti who pioneered it. Owners manual, job card and gate pass are three different things.

Pocket series manuals should be discontinued, I don't know what it is, but going by the name if it fits in a shirt/jeans pocket its probably useless.

Originally Posted by DCEite

Well, if my driving license, RC copy, insurance copy can be digital then why not Owner's manual ?

For claiming insurance with any nationalised insurance (and reputed private like Royal Sundaram, MS Chola, HDFC Ergo, ICICI Lombard to name a few) company they still need hard copy of policy document, hard copy of RC book, hard copy of driving license, hard copy of PAN. For the paperwork.

So is your RC Book and DL, digital only? Or does it exist in the physical form too? Similarly the owners manual should exist as a printed book with a digital copy. But not as digital only.

[shankar.balan]

Best to move totally paperless. However, the PWA/ App etc all need to function perfectly and not hang. The hosting services have to be top class as do the data centres. Too often these things get compromised on.

I am all for this e- way. Paper is a terrible waste and involves too much tree cutting for my taste.

[vinu_h]

Those wanting a hard copy, always have the option. We did this for Kia and response has been overwhelming.

The Kia Owner's Manual App is a customer-friendly mobile app that explains the name and functions of features found inside Kia models using the smartphone camera. Instead of having to refer to the printed owner’s manual, drivers can use the app to more easily find information about individual features. The easy-to-use app also has the advantage of being able to explain functions simply and conveniently.

[DicKy]

Get stuck in a place with no help nearby, no mobile network coverage and a smartphone with a dead battery, and let us see how many would want to save the planet by omitting a printed owner's manual. I had been in such a situation a couple of months back. It was a simple battery changing of the key fob, but I just couldn't get the cover removed. Fortunately had a spare coin battery. It was raining torrentially, no network coverage and since it was not my car I didn't have a downloaded owners manual in my phone. Guess what came to the rescue. The owners manual in the glovebox. This was a simple issue. Imagine being in an FNG and they are clueless about certain specs of your low selling car and you are in the same network-less situation.

On the flip side, have seen some premium cars getting encylopedia thick books covering all the features, especially the infotainment. Which might have prompted this migration to digital only. Even then they can continue to give the basic car details and maintenance schedules of the car in a hard form while keeping the infotainment stuff in a soft form.

By the way, @Sankar. Guess we can download the User manual in the Toyota i-Connect app and access it offline only through the app without signing in. But without a smartphone or if it is not our own car, then it back to square one.

[Sankar]

Originally Posted by DicKy

By the way, @Sankar. Guess we can download the User manual in the Toyota i-Connect app and access it offline only through the app without signing in. But without a smartphone or if it is not our own car, then it back to square one.

Yes, possible. But difficult to use. See for yourself. This is the maintenance schedule. If I zoom in to readable size full info is not contained and have to move left and right and keep doing that for each item. Left right Up Down. The app doesn't auto rotate either, it is stuck in portrait mode. Phone has a 6.4" display.

Screenshots actually don't do justice to how it looks on a 6.4" mobile screen. Because mobile screenshots on computer monitor blow up very well due to high mobile phone display resolutions.

[GrammarNazi]

You're thinking from our perspective, whereas car-makers are analysing the data which they get - viz. something like 95% new car owners never even open the Owners Manual booklet during their ownership. Leave alone study it like we do.

By the time the car is resold in the used car market, most customers have probably lost the physical Owners Manual altogether.

I can guess this decision was taken the same as any other decision about production & sale of mass-market cars. If they see that well paying buyers emphatically demand things a certain way, only then will it be part of the final product.

[Sankar]

Originally Posted by GrammarNazi

By the time the car is resold in the used car market, most customers have probably lost the physical Owners Manual altogether.

This is another advantage having an owners manual. I have seen old cars with "original owners manual and original spare key" in the used car market often asking a slight premium. Having the original owners manual + spare key is sort of like a validation that the car had been cared for and maintained. Taken care of part may not be true in all cases but having the original owners manual book and original spare key is definitely a plus for the buyer. I'm the 3rd owner of a 11year (12 next May) old i10 AT which has both owners manual and spare key, it is not being used much but its in good condition mechanically.

[Jeroen]

I am a total nerd, so yes I actually read every manual. Whether I buy a toaster, a torch, an electrical drill or a car. I will sit down, cup of coffee at the ready and will make my way back to front! I love to buy a new gadget, tool and find a massive manual. Only to be disappoitned as it has the same text in 45 different language, which means there is only 3-4 pages in English or Dutch.

BUT, even amongst car enthousiast reading the car manual appears not to be something everybody engages in. Look at this poll right on our forum from a couple of years ago:



https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shift...r-vehicle.html (Have you read the full manual of your Vehicle?)

A quarter of the TeamBHP community does not read the manual. So whether is provided in paper or digital format would not make any difference. Might as well stick to digital format, save some money and some trees.

My wife doesn’t even know her Fiesta has a manual in the glove compartment. The other day she was complaining about her window wipers going to slow intermittently. It so happens I had driven her car and moved the setting on the stalk to the lowest cycle. She has driven this little car for over 6 years, more than 85000 kilometres and see did not know you could adjust the wiper intermittent setting! I told her she should have read the manual. But apparently it was my fault for not informing her and most likely the designer was a man and had no clue as to how the female mind works.

I love manuals and I love to have them on paper too. On my recently bought Jeep Cherokee I got myself the official Workshop Manual as a PDF file and had it printed. All 2700 pages of it. Damn the cost and the trees!!

By the way, I don’t know about India, but here in the west the same has happened to sales brochures. Most brands do not have any paper documentation anymore. When you visit the dealership and ask for a brochure they hand you an internet address.

A few years ago I visited the Porsche dealer as I was interested in the Porsche Panamera. The brochure was a gorgeous hard cover booklet! I still have it and I still look through it now and then. You just don’t do that with a PDF I find. Or perhaps I am just an old git stuck in the past. Which is very likely, but I still like my paper brochures, owner manuals, magazines and books. I have taken to reading my newspaper on my iPad. But only because we live out in the sticks and they don’t deliver new papers out here.

Jeroen

[GrammarNazi]

Originally Posted by Sankar

... I have seen old cars with "original owners manual and original spare key" in the used car market often asking a slight premium. Having the original owners manual + spare key is sort of like a validation that the car had been cared for and maintained. Taken care of part may not be true in all cases but having the original owners manual book and original spare key is definitely a plus for the buyer...

Having the spare key is a legal requirement, and also essential for buying or even claiming insurance.

But you're right, anyone who's taken care to hold all documents pertaining to ownership (original bill, manual, registration card, extended warranty documentation), Key card, music system code card (if applicable), fuel logs(actually!), servicing (service history - ASC & FNG Job Card slips and bills, AMC - if any, tyre change bills, battery bill & warranty card, any wheel alignment documentation), successive PUC certificates, insurance (successive yearly renewal certificates, any documented accident claims/settlements) documents in a neat folder, is a key indicator that the car would've likely been actually cared for & looked after well.

[mukeshgoel]

Originally Posted by DCEite

Well, if my driving license, RC copy, insurance copy can be digital then why not Owner's manual ?

Digital copies of driving license, RC (and mostly insurance) are in addition to originals.

That may be future but imagine today getting only digital copies of the documents you mentioned.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by GrammarNazi

Having the spare key is a legal requirement, and also essential for buying or even claiming insurance.

But you're right, anyone who's taken care to hold all documents pertaining to ownership (original bill, manual, registration card, extended warranty documentation), Key card, music system code card (if applicable), fuel logs(actually!), servicing (service history - ASC & FNG Job Card slips and bills, AMC - if any, tyre change bills, battery bill & warranty card, any wheel alignment documentation), successive PUC certificates, insurance (successive yearly renewal certificates, any documented accident claims/settlements).

Having all these documents in a neat folder is a key indicator that the car could've likely been actually cared for & looked after.

Absolutely. although the spare key requirement might be an Indian specific requirement.

I keep every piece of paper, other than the fuel bills, of all my cars. So I have a whole stack of folders, in my book case. The Alfa Spider and the Jaguar have two thick binders each!! I keep all the invoices from parts or parties that worked on the car, all the insurance papers, all the alignment reports, MOT certificates, valuation reports etc etc. I also tend to collect articles in magazines or the internet pertaining to my cars, print them and stick them in the binder.

If anything I can guarantee if you want to sell the car, potential buyers will be impressed if you have kept a meticulous record of your car. It is probably a good indication how well you looked after it.

I enjoy looking through all of this. And especially on classic cars, being able to provide prominence ups the price, or at least make the car more saleable.

If you buy second hand you do need to check whether you do get all the relevant documents. In particular key codes and radio/audio codes. Although it is usually possible to retrieve them later via the dealer it tends to be a huge PITA and could prove expensive. I still have the original audio centre code for my Jaguar. And also the original code certificate for my aftermarket Kenwood radio in my Spider and Grundig in my Mercedes.

One small caution; you might want to hide these folders/binders from your spouse. Because it is of course also a perfect paper trail for how much money you have been spending!

Jeroen

[anshuman_b]

+1 to this. I took delivery of my Creta last month and all I was provided was a service manual. It’s a pretty feature rich vehicle, so I had to search youtube to understand the functionalities as I found it cumbersome to search in a online manual.

[deehunk]

Originally Posted by Sankar

Pocket series manuals should be discontinued, I don't know what it is, but going by the name if it fits in a shirt/jeans pocket its probably useless.

The first approach towards paperless will be to reduce the size, then reduce content and finally paperless. I would rather suggest a built in owners manual and service booklet in the ICE system.