The Car Conservatory
Founder
Warranty claims and field service data often hide an expensive reality: high No Trouble Found (NTF) rates frequently signal systemic diagnostic breakdowns rather than the absence of a fault. As software-defined vehicles (whether Phase I, II or III) introduce complex distributed architectures and intermittent failure modes, traditional service models are failing to keep pace.
Drawing on experience spanning OEM software development, analytics, and hands-on independent facility ownership, Tyler Betthauser examines why diagnostic processes break down on the shop floor. This session unpacks how legacy flat-rate pay structures inadvertently incentivize component swapping over root cause isolation, the growing technical capability gap in the field, and how diagnostic efficiency must be redefined around first-time fix rates and dwell time. Attendees will gain an actionable blueprint for how OEMs and independent repairers can collaborate through modernized service literature, transparent module-level data access, and diagnostic feedback that directly informs vehicle design.
Tyler Betthauser is an engineer, data scientist, and shop owner with extensive experience across the automotive industry, spanning Quality, Supply Chain, Software Engineering, and Manufacturing. Throughout his career at major OEMs like GM and Ford, as well as startups like FreightVerify (now Overhaul), he has led impactful projects including Service & Labor Time Validation cost reductions, automated verbatim-categorization analytics, and a patent-pending “self-healing” mechanism for software-defined vehicles (SDVs). Additionally, he developed logistics algorithms for finished vehicles and parts, built a software lessons-learned process at Ford, and created data pipelines for EV thermal runaway propagation and battery-life modeling.
