Paper Car Owners Manual vs Digital

Published Date: 16th Jun 2019

With the availability of manuals in electronic format and rich resources available on the internet do you really need a paper owner’s manual for your vehicle anymore?

Manufacturer’s will most likely phase out paper owner’s manuals in the coming years and some already seemed to be putting the foundations in place to go down that route.

The first phase is offering a digital version of the owner’s manual via the car’s touchscreen infotainment system, which is already in play with some manufacturers. There’s some relief here for people who are dead-set against the idea and want to stick with their trusty paper manual as the paper option is still supplied and offered in tandem with the electronic version via the infotainment system.

Technophobes and people set in their ways will likely object to a shift to digitally available manuals and any firm plans to stop supplying paper manuals.

One argument against having manuals accessible via the infotainment system is that its all well and good until the infotainment system fails or the car is completely dead and then you are completely snookered!

Those in favour of the digitally available manuals will probably argue that paper manuals take up extra space and you can lose them. Have you ever had a warning light come on your dash and reached into your glove compartment for the manual only to find its not there?

With the vast majority of us carrying a smartphone, tablet, iPad etc all of the time, there’s a wide range of expert advice and resouces are just a few clicks away. You can locate and download manuals easily from websites like the Haynes website or the official manufacturers website, once downloaded you can keep them on your trusty device for easy reference any time.

Google and in particular YouTube are also great sources of information, often watching an expert explain a fault or demonstrate how to carry out maintenance visually in a video is the perfect way to learn and carry out tasks yourself.

In any case, we think sooner or later paper owners’ manuals will be a thing of the past and if nothing else it will mean a lot less paper and a positive contribution to the ecological plight of the world we live in, albeit at the frustration of some people.