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"Ford will continue to provide customers in India with ongoing parts, service, and warranty support." That is Ford Motor Company's own sentence, from its 9 September 2021 release ending local car manufacturing, and the line it would rather owners stopped quoting. Read it beside a shuttered showroom and see what it leaves out: how many Ford service centres, and for how long. Owners reporting closures are not imagining a broken promise. The promise never held a number.

Will Ford continue to service cars in India?

Yes, on paper: Ford's September 2021 release promises Indian customers continued parts, service and warranty support, but it commits to no measurable figure, so a workshop near your home is something Ford never actually promised you.

Ford also said it "will continue full customer support operations for these vehicles with service, aftermarket parts and warranty coverage." That puts the duty on Ford, not the franchise that stamped your service book, so write your claim to Ford India.

Worse, Ford promised to help dealers move "from sales and service to parts and service support": a licence to shrink, with nothing counted. Europe attaches duties to repair, as its EU right-to-repair directive shows, and takes sealed-battery devices off EU shelves by a fixed date. Ford's pledge reads like the draft before anyone asked for dates.

Why leave the number out? Ford's release booked more than $2 billion in India operating losses over 10 years. An exit priced on losses treats after-sales as a cost to cut, and an uncounted pledge lets it shrink quietly.

Four numbers decide whether you trust the pledge or plan around it. Ford's release gives the depots, the Government of India's IndBiz portal the Chennai investment (31 October 2025), and Tata Motors' filing of 10 January 2023 the Sanand plant price: Rs 725.7 crore, cash Ford recovered on exit. Two cards are our arithmetic.

The depot card reaches your driveway. Ford kept warehouses in Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Sanand and Kolkata, with no promised delivery time, so a car laid up in a district town waits on a metro courier.

Where can I service my Ford car in India now?

At whichever outlet Ford India confirms in writing as authorised today, because the company publishes no fixed count and a dealer you used before 2021 may since have stopped servicing Ford cars altogether.

Find your situation in the first column; read across for the step and why it holds.

Worked example: the third row's sum. Assume the nearest confirmed outlet is 120 km away (a 240 km round trip), a diesel car doing 15 km a litre, and diesel at Rs 90 a litre, our assumption. Fuel: 240 ÷ 15 = 16 litres; 16 × Rs 90 = Rs 1,440 a visit. Two services a year cost Rs 2,880 before a lost working day.

Now run yours in under a minute: double the road distance to your confirmed outlet, divide by your car's mileage, multiply by your last fuel price. If that beats the gap between the authorised quote and a local garage's, the garage wins on cost, though not always on warranty.

Ford service centres: what the pledge leaves out

The pledge leaves out every number an owner could enforce: Ford names no minimum outlet count, no maximum distance to an outlet and no year when support ends, so a shrinking network breaks nothing Ford actually wrote.

The strongest case against Ford is its own spending. IndBiz reports the Chennai project will build 235,000 engines a year from 2029, yet Ford has not published a simple list of authorised workshops. A company building engines in Tamil Nadu cannot plead it has left India.

Our view, and it is opinion: "ongoing" ought to mean reachable. Whether a consumer commission would read a minimum reach into that word is unsettled; a pledge with no figure gives it little to measure. Europe's Cyber Resilience Act rules make connected-product makers state a support period. Ford's owners got no end date. Or rather, no date at all.

Watch for these before switching:

• A dealer's signboard is not proof it still services Ford cars.
• A part "on order" with no date is normal when it ships from a metro depot.
• Non-genuine parts fitted outside the network may give Ford grounds to refuse a warranty claim; read your terms first.
• A dealer-sold extended warranty may depend on its underwriter; find that name on your paperwork.

Ford wrote the pledge; make it produce a number. This week, email Ford India's customer care with your registration number and ask for the nearest authorised outlet handling warranty work. If the reply names one you can reach, stay authorised. If it cannot, that written silence is the figure the 2021 pledge never gave you, and a trusted independent garage fitting genuine parts is the better call. Under a warranty requiring authorised servicing, escalate through the National Consumer Helpline first.

Replaceable batteries stop being a courtesy on 18 February 2027. The rule makers would rather not quote is short: a battery must come out safely, with or without tools, by someone with no repair training. Miss that test and the product cannot carry a CE mark, which means it cannot be sold in the EU at all.

Why replaceable batteries become a sales question

A glued-in battery stops being a repair problem and becomes a sales problem, because under the rule a product that cannot be CE marked cannot be sold in the EU at all. The maker's design choice now decides its market.

The wording does the work. Removable means safe removal by an end user or an independent professional, with or without tools, and the end user is an adult with no battery-replacement knowledge. The test is that adult, not a technician with a bench. A 2026 law-firm summary of Article 11 in Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 sets out that reading. It sits alongside the EU right to repair directive, which has applied since 31 July 2026.

Specialised tools must be supplied free of charge, and a maker cannot require its own proprietary tool for the swap. That closes a familiar door: a battery kept behind the brand's service kit is no longer a sales feature. The sanction is market access, not a warning letter. The same pattern shows up in packaging, where the EU packaging regulation has been live since 12 August 2026.

Four numbers set the stakes, and one of them is our own count. The count runs from this article's date, 16 October 2026, to the cutoff. The other three come from the guidance and the standard it follows, and each one changes what a buyer can check at the shelf.

The tool count matters most to a repair shop. The rule grades the kit a swap needs, from basic tools up to proprietary ones, rather than the brand printed on the box. For a removable design, a shop's access no longer depends on owning the maker's kit.

Which models does the removal rule actually reach?

The rule works by device category rather than brand, so the first question is which category a model falls into, and that matters more than the brand name on the box. Phones and tablets appear only as devices that may require removable batteries, and laptops and e-bikes are not named at all.

Read the table as a buyer's decision aid. Each row names one dimension, and the glyph at the start of the last column says which way that row pushes.

The table makes one thing plain. A buyer's risk is timing and device category, not the brand's promise. Check the sale date first, then the category, and only then read the warranty.

Can a glued-in battery still be sold in the EU?

Yes, in two cases: stock placed on the market before 18 February 2027, which is unlikely to be affected, or a product an exemption covers, which needs individual assessment. Anything else placed later must pass the removal test.

Stock is the easy part. The harder part is the exemption list, because a product only gets through it after an individual assessment and evidence that replacement is not possible with current technology. Wet-environment appliances and some medical devices sit on that list, so expect a maker to claim one before it shows the proof.

Compliance is also a reporting question. The EU Cyber Resilience Act reporting duties have been live since 11 September 2026, which shows regulators now write product deadlines with teeth.

Two gaps make the rule harder to use than it reads. The guidance sets no period during which replacement batteries must stay available, so removal is promised and spares are not. It also gives no publication date, and its removal classes follow the EN 45554:2020 standard, so the test a product is judged against has no date of its own.

• Ask for the spare-battery period in writing before you buy.
• Treat an exemption claim as a claim until the maker shows the assessment.
• Read "may require" as a question for the category, not an answer for the model.
• Count "unlikely to be affected" as a risk, not a guarantee.

Before you buy anything placed on sale after 18 February 2027, open the product page and find out whether an adult can remove the battery with basic tools. If the page is silent, treat the model as glued in and buy the one that says otherwise.

“It was opened by an unauthorised shop, so the warranty is void and we can't repair it.” Makers have leaned on that line for years, usually with a discount code for a new model. Since 31 July 2026 it has been the wrong answer. The EU right to repair, Directive (EU) 2024/1799, makes that refusal and most of its cousins unlawful for covered phones and large home appliances. It does not set the price, and that is where the fight has moved.

Which refusals does the EU right to repair now ban?

The Directive strips makers of their two favourite refusals for covered goods, the expired warranty and the earlier third-party repair, and leaves them one lawful excuse: that repair is impossible, in which case they may offer a refurbished unit.

Start with “out of warranty”. Law firm Fieldfisher reads the text bluntly: past the legal guarantee, the maker must still repair goods in the Directive's annex, counted from the last unit of that model sold, not from your receipt. That excuse now describes their sales policy, not the law.

Does the EU rule cover products bought before July 2026?

Yes, the manufacturer's duty to repair applies to covered products bought before 31 July 2026, so a phone or washing machine from 2022 qualifies; only the guarantee extension for choosing repair is limited to newer purchases.

Can a maker refuse because a third-party shop opened it?

No, a manufacturer can no longer refuse to repair a covered product because an independent shop or the owner repaired it before, and it may not use contract terms or software locks to block that repair.

Compatible second-hand and 3D-printed parts that meet safety rules cannot be shut out either, so the old advice to stay with authorised centres is outdated. The same devices face other EU duties too, from the Cyber Resilience Act's 24-hour incident reporting duty to the EU packaging regulation that went live in August.

Four numbers decide how hard you can push: Fieldfisher on the duty, Acer's battery prices and a laundry audit reported by Cybernews on 8 September 2026, and Right to Repair Europe's tally of the Commission's notices.

Look hard at the battery range. One brand, one part, and the dearest tier costs about nine times the cheapest: on our arithmetic, a €114 gap that the word “reasonable” does nothing to close. Ask which tier yours falls into, in writing, before you hand it over.

What the rules give you, line by line

Read the table as a checklist: each row pairs a refusal or charge you might hear with what the Directive now says, so you can see at once whether the law backs a repair or leaves you exposed.

The crosses fall on coverage and on finding a repairer, never on what a maker may refuse. Price and paperwork are where you push.

That paperwork gap is measurable. Right to Repair Europe and iFixit, reviewing smartphone records in EPREL, the EU's product database, reported in September 2026 that about 80% lack the repair information makers must publish. The official database will not hand you a parts price.

Where will makers still push back?

Makers will push back on price, because the Directive demands reasonable prices for parts and tools without defining them, and on enforcement, because most member states missed the deadline to write the rules into national law.

Right to Repair Europe has flagged the gap: the text says “reasonable” and stops. Our view, which is opinion, not settled law: a repair quote above the maker's own trade-in deal on a new unit is hard to call reasonable, and that comparison belongs in your written complaint.

On 25 September 2026 the Commission sent late-transposition notices to France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the rest of that group, each with two months to reply: on our count, a first deadline of 25 November 2026. Buyers in Germany, Austria, Ireland and Denmark, absent from that list, stand on firmer ground. Readers in Great Britain get none of this; their rules run separately, like the new UK subscription cancellation rules.

• A refurbished swap offered as “repair impossible” with no reason given.
• A parts quote given by phone only, never by email or on paper.
• Vague “parts unavailable” answers for a model that is still on sale.

So here is the decision. If your device is covered and the only refusal on offer is the warranty or a past independent repair, refuse the replacement. This week, email the manufacturer and ask for three answers in writing: whether it claims repair is impossible and why, which price tier your part falls into, and, for anything bought since 31 July 2026, how long your guarantee runs afterwards. A maker that answers has given you a quote to compare. One that won't has given you evidence.

Related: replaceable batteries under the 2027 EU removal test

Related: why Ford service centres in India still come with no promised number