[pluc]

I don't know about that... There's a whole industry of performance parts that softly depend on ECU modifications. There's much less of an incentive to swap parts if your ECU doesn't keep up with the performance gains.

But you are absolutely right on the loss of money aspect.

[numpad0]

Most "ECU tuning" are just minor config file changes. The map is sufficiently complex being an R^2 data, enough to justify it being a skill. Actual car-guy-firmware-hackers are ultra rare.