I have a few thoughts...

1. Part of this is due to the fact manufacturers are trying to draw out maintnance times by adding larger volume oil sumps, fancy oils better machining and such and while these are good things people are more likely to get complacent with a 10,000 mile oil change than if they know they are just supposed to go in every 3000 miles and get an oil change.

2. All the dodges at the local dodge dealer have an owners manual with them and yes the info is also available on the line, either way the customer needs to take responsibility for not looking into things like routine maintnance.

3. Most of those really long maintenance intervals are for drivers in the absolute best driving conditions, very few drivers should ever go that far as most everyone has something that drops them into the "severe service" catagory, the salesman just wants to point out the long interval not the normal one. Again though it still comes back to customer needs to take responsibility to look up the info.

4. I don't understand how this is news, people blow up their engines all the time because they don't take care of them and subsequently get denied warranty work on them. The guy must be buddies with someone at the news org. and is trying to force dodge to do something out of the ordinary for them.

5. You can get low mile long block engines off car-part.com as low as $2500 plus shipping, my labor guide says 17 hrs for a long block swap, at $100 (I charge $80) hr thats $1700 add in antifreeze, oil, filter.. maybe $100? $2500+$1700+$100=$4300 ish? May need to throw in $300 shipping if you can't find one locally... the dealer is not the only place to get it fixed.