You're not far from that now.

Bosch supply engine management ECU's that are basically the same and are fitted to a range of cars from a range of manufacturers, the manufacturer just tweekes the parameters to suit their application. That's why a LOT of manufacturers have been caught out by the VW dieselgate scandal - they all had a similar cheat operating, but just haven't been found out, eg DS now uses 1 litre of adblue per 1,000miles rather than a fraction of that on the pre-2017 version.

It's the silly stuff like body control modules that tend to be bespoke that are going to be more troublesome - far less of them produced, so far less incentive to reverse engineer, then code a newer module.
Contrary to popular believe software costs, and it costs a lot (Disco sports don't come cheap, and I have to feed it lots of adblue), it's only when you amortise it over several hundred thousand units it becomes pennies per unit - while the material costs stay constant. Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
Replaced by Ewok what a mistake - now a happy Disco Sport owner

I was surprised that when I googled 'car electronic interface standards' I found that there didn't seem to be a common single industry standard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_bus

Even in a single car Land Rover seems to have adopted several different protocols.
https://workshop-manuals.com/landrover/l32...n/general/

I would have thought that, by now, a single industry standard set of interface layers would have been agreed, so that we could all use similar components.

Also standard size/mounting electronic boxes with a standard physical(plug/pin) interface would allow the control of proprietary (or better still common) mechanical items in the car.

This should make cars both cheaper and easier to maintain. The electronics and quite a few parts would be readily interchangable.

Look no further than the electronic device that you are reading this post on, most of it's components are common whatever make you buy.

It's not Rocket Science ---- or perhaps it should be. FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 76k+ miles) (MY2015)

You really are missing the point - why should LR use a part that you can buy from a Ford dealer?

Make everything unique, force the mugs to use your dealerships at their vastly inflated prices, and force the dealerships to use your software at vastly inflated prices. It took legislation to force manufacturers to use a common standard for engine management diagnostics, and even then they only release to four figure codes, rather than the six figure codes.

Even if you don't make it unique (like the FL2 ashtray, or Haldex filter), give it a unique part number, to make the mugs have to guess where it's used. Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
Replaced by Ewok what a mistake - now a happy Disco Sport owner

about 5 years ago, the Indy I use had a Jaguar in for some work. It needed a part that was clearly labelled as a Ford part. The jag part number was (for example) £50 and the ford part number was £20... exactly the same part with the same labelling etc.

He went to ford for the part but was told they had to have a registration number in order to sell him the part, but because he didn't have one except the Jag registration number they wouldn't sell him the part (he didn't have another Ford he could use the registration off).

Electronics can and do fail, and whereby a mechanical part can be fixed by pretty much anyone with a set of spanners the electronics require more specific skills and equipment, and the equipment is becoming harder and harder to get outside of the main dealer networks except at a very high cost.

IIRC manufacturers have only a requirement to keep stock for up to 10 years ( could be wrong on the timescale) so after 10 years, if an electronic component fails taking the car off the road, then there is no way to get it fixed even by main dealers.

10 years after last production is normal.

As an aside (even further aside), I write the majority of my software for Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), which are very expensive compared to their ability. I was asked last year to make a job as cheap as possible, so used an Arduino controller as used by school kids - worked well. Here's the rub the unit is no longer available, so when it fails it's a software upgrade/rewrite. PLCs normally have a production run in excess of 10 years, and a guaranteed availability of another 10 years. So your production plant can still get spares 20 years after it was installed. They usually start to fail around 20 years, imagine a PC that was turned on and was still running 20 years later without ever giving the blue screen of death, or needing a reboot. Tangiers Orange - gone, missing her
Replaced by Ewok what a mistake - now a happy Disco Sport owner