I changed out a 12v battery. Then I ‘needed’ to update the battery monitor module (or some such). Which was a trip to the Ford dealer, to run the Ford software - $$$$.
Kind of the same thing when my wife’s German import needed a battery. The guy at autozone said they didn’t even carry a replacement for my vehicle.
He went on to explain that the new battery would have to be “registered” with the manufacturer and to do that the shop doing the work would have to have the “proprietary” software from the manufacturer.
Failure to do all that would result in the vehicle not functioning properly, or even at all.
Fortunately we have a great shop we use for maintenance that allows us to avoid the dealer thank goodness.
So after all was said and done, battery and labor was $300.....and that’s HALF what the dealer wanted.
Ford is not the only one that does that.
BMW does too
The manufacturers are also making replacing major components like transmissions with good used units impossible because the computer system won’t resync with the used unit and car.