[Dave-ROR]

Originally Posted by 86fanatic

I poked around in the owner's manual but didn't see a maintenance schedule.

Might also depend where you live. Again, I'm in Phoenix. My AC is usually on full blast for much of the summer, and that is hard on a lot of components. It's also pretty dusty here. Those things affect the life time of things like air and cabin filters.

Also the heat here is very hard on batteries. A few of my friends have gone through one or two batteries a year depending on use.

Also didn't even factor in things like brake fluid, transmission fluid, etc.

There's a lot of odds and ends in vehicle maintenance. I'm not really trying to defend any number here, just the fact that the 2 year free covered maintenance is not a non-trivial difference. BMW and Mercedes offer covered maintenance plans for several thousand dollars.

BMW includes it for free for 4 years/50k. No idea on MB as they offer nothing I'm even remotely interested in

The BMW guys I know don't bother as it only includes the required, not suggested so it's not worth bothering with. Scion is the same, it includes the required, which means minimum required, not suggested or what those who overly maintain their cars would do. There are people that still do 3,000 mile oil changes, you won't be getting those for free from Scion.