Manufacturers doing away with printed owner's manuals: Right or wrong?

Online ONLY owners manual and service booklet is a wrong trend! A full printed owners manual is a basic requirement during the course of vehicle ownership.

BHPian Sankar recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I don't know how long since this has started but there is a trend amongst manufacturers in not providing printed "Owners Manual with Service Booklet" instead making it online only which is NOT downloadable for offline use. I just cannot understand the logic or the logic of the people who make such decisions? What one gets with the vehicle is a "User Guide" which is a thin booklet which will teach you how to access the online owners manual and has some other very basic things about the car. Its about as thick as a biweekly children's comic book.

Something as basic as the owners manual with the service information and schedules are now being made online only. I.e., the customer can only access it on a smartphone or on the computer after entering the vehicle VIN and mobile number for OTP etc. It is not available for download either, it always has to be accessed online. I am talking about Toyota here and don't know who all else follow this system.

To know the maintenance schedule for eg: Air filter clean/change interval, engine oil change interval etc and to find out even the model type specification details for eg: tyre size or engine oil quantity one has to go online to find out.

Online ONLY owners manual and service booklet is a wrong trend! A full printed owners manual is a basic requirement during the course of vehicle ownership. Why complicate it? Not everyone has access to or likes to use a smartphone or a computer to access an owners manual. Its OK when the online manual is in addition to printed full owners manual but NOT OK as the only option. I do like to read the manual, a printed one at that.

Here's what BHPian HighRevving had to say on the matter:

Also, it is quite possible that someone is stuck in a remote location with no mobile network. A hard copy of user manual + downloadable PDF (easier to search) are absolute necessities.

Service booklet however, could be online and/or offline but not her having owners manual is a deal-breaker for me.

Here's what BHPian RedTerrano had to say on the matter:

Perhaps they are trying to go green by saving paper?

I got curious and googled around.

From my finding, all Maruti owner manuals are available for download here

And Nissan

Tata as well

Ditto for M&M

Here's what BHPian narayans80 had to say on the matter:

Oh man, don't get me started on this. I had a small section in my Alcazar ownership thread for this shameless cost cutting. Cost cutting on a printed manual for 20 lakh rupee car is just absolute puppy shame!

This is what I wrote on the first week of taking delivery:

Manual

You don't get the full manual book here. Only the service booklet and a small headunit troubleshooter. Weirdly you get the table of contents and QR code for the manual on the service booklet.

The manual is a total snooze fest with so many if equipped sections, including some options that are not sold in India at all (like the section on iMT transmission).

The entire point of the manual is that, it is useful to troubleshoot when you are caught out of the blue.

And I really don't really understand what is the point of adding trim options that are not even sold in the country.

The amount of paper work for loan processing is far fatter than any car manual.

The PDFs are rarely mobile friendly. So many pages switch from portrait to landscape and vice versa. I needed a 24-inch monitor to properly read the tables. Eventually am going to print it out partly.

I have the manual in my cloud storage in case OEMs decide to cost cut for that measly 10 MB too.

Here's what BHPian starter had to say on the matter:

Totally agree Sankar. This seems to be a recent phenomenon. My '21 June Crysta and & '21 September Fortuner came with proper owner manuals (booklets)

I would any day prefer to have a bound owners manual over the pdf version.

Here's what BHPian shancz had to say on the matter:

It seems to be a part of the go green initiative and the manufacturers won't mind saving some amount in the process for something that not even 5% of their customers ever read.
Sounds like fair play? Not quite, IMO.

While it is valid for electronic gadgets but considering that vehicles are capable of going to places out of internet coverage and also quite capable of breaking themselves down there, it is a useful piece of kit.
So why not give it as an option to customers who need at a nominal charge say 200₹ ? But then what is 200₹ in a car costing at least 4 lakhs ? And if anyone wants to go through the "charge" route please include the service manual too.

Before anyone suggests an on board manual, do note that when stranded you won't find it very attractive to consume precious battery power while trying to troubleshoot on a 10 inch screen

Here's what BHPian DicKy had to say on the matter:

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.

Read BHPian comments for more insights and information.