Once you spend a little time in the automotive industry, you start to smell the low-level scams all over the place. The snake oil engine additives, the chinesium gadgets that don't do anything but claim to do a lot of stuff. Marketing driven crap for weekend warriors to feel good about themselves: K&N Air filters. The entire detailing industry: for people with no mechanical skills but who love their cars and want to feel like they're doing something for them. (Hint: use any strong soap, water, and dry using sheepskin, then if you're intrepid rub some wax into the car). None of this costs money, but if you have more money than sense, people will happily accomodate you.
Once you spend a little more time, you start noticing higher level scams. These scams will fool dealership mechanics and the general public alike, and are particularly insidious because those mechanics lend them a LOT of credibility, and there might even be a tiny hint of truth to what they're pushing.
Examples include this ATF additive that comes in a can. You could collect the tops and they'd give free rewards or something (huge red flag). Even Mercedes dealerships used this, but it was a gigantic bunch of baloney
Tires also fall into this category, especially motorcycle tires. Motorcycle tires that cost $300+ and have a little figure of a devil on them. "New" tires that convince you that people haven't been riding motorcycles fast until the advent of this tire, and if you use the old tire, you're going to slip and die. Read carefully their claims, the way they talk about grip will immediately become familiar to anyone that's ever bought illicit drugs before. "This is the best shit man, it has so much grip. Dude this new batch I got has so much grip you won't believe. This shit grips HARD dude, you gotta try my new stock". Yeah. I'm sure there are new developments, but it's a minor distinction that happens over decades, not every year.
The real irony is these super grippy tires last fuck all, and cost a fortune. Somehow people got convinced spending $300 for a tire that lasts 2k miles is a good idea.
Anyway, then there are the really high level scams that fool not just the general public, industry workers, but even the automotive manufacturers. Fucking AGM batteries.
"Absorbant Glass Mat" and "Gel Cell Batteries".
Supposedly they last longer (red flag here), the prices are ASTRONOMICAL, and THEY CANNOT BE SERVICED!
A lead-acid battery is an EXTREMELY simple thing: 1. lead plates, bathed in 2. Acid.
They work, they are reliable, they can be made in whatever shape/form you want. People somehow got convinced they need this specific lead acid battery, and if you get one that's shaped in such a way to go into a higher-end car (including the ZHP), spread your legs b/c you're about to get FUCKED. But if that fuckening wasn't enough, now they've come up with "Sealed" and "Valve regulated lead-acid". They promise all sorts of goodies, but you know what? If they get cold, or discharge once, they're DEAD. The battery manufacturers have turned what's generously $50 worth of material and a century old technology into a $250 piece of shit that lasts a fuckall amount of time, cannot be serviced, and is fragile and pissy.
Understand these batteries emerged on the automotive scene maybe around 2012, and people have become convinced they must put them into all their high-end vehicles, because "new electronics blah blah blah blah blah BLAH BLAH BLAH" FUCK YOU.
Yes a dying battery can wreak havoc on technology, but SEALED BATTERIES ARE NOT THE ANSWER. From now on I'm only ever installing traditional lead acid batteries with ports that I can open up. I'm so furious right now for the HUNDREDS of dollars I've wasted, and HOURS spent researching trying to buy the right one. Worse still, apparently AGM requires special chargers to actually work right, which really calls into question the point of all of it.
Fuck AMG batteries, FUCK SEALED BATTERIES, FUCK THE INDUSTRY FOR THIS GIGANTIC LOAD OF BULLSHIT.
Sulfuric Acid is one of the cheapest and most produced industrial chemicals there is. It's regulated by a retarded government bureaucracy, and that's scared the general public from getting it, and made it inaccessible, but the reality is it's plentiful and available.
Fuck this.