If you send your car out for car wash, I would say, to save to coating, as the car wash would inadvertently scratch and remove your coatings off. It could be the constantly used and rarely washed clothes used to go through your car, or even the chemical mixture they used to quickly remove dirt from your car.
Coatings are more for people whom have the time and place for their vehicle, proper are away from sun and rain, personal time to wash own car to ensure clothes and chemical used are not detrimental to the coating and car paint.
One of the main reason for coating is to protect the paint, full stop. It acts as a sacrificial layer above the oem clearcoat. Stone chips, it chips away the coating, bigger stone would definitely dent the car and that is another issue altogether (it does not make it bullet proof 😂). Yes, good coatings could be strong with 9H ratings but end of the day, it still is a sacrificial layer from sun and rain. That is the reason for the maintenance, to add back the layers.
Then you would ask, y do coatings.... I could just repaint same price or cheaper, end of story. Depends, if you are not fussy on your paint, you would go to any under tree shop and they spray one layer of paint on your silver colour d segment sedan, after let it dry under the sun for 3 hours, then it is definitely cheaper. But the proper way of respraying a car is to first remove the original paint by compounding, takes few days, need to remove pieces to individually remove as well( front and rear bumpers, fenders). The painting also need to cover nooks and cranny of your car, not just outside ( engine bay certain parts, tight spaces between door. Then you actually need to do the base layer (car in white), followed by few layers of your correct car colour based on oem recommendation. In between each layer, car need to be dried, if drying outside dust might settle on the car and your paint will be marred with small dots. Then final layer is a clear coat. If the drying is not enough, you will encounter dripping effect on your paint. All in all, takes few days or weeks, if the shop have more people doing just your car, you need to take on the cost of their workmanship. You get what you pay.
So in that perspective, coating is much cheaper. Oh yaaa, we have not talk about the paint needed. Some cars have super expensive paint. No I’m not talking about the silver paint of an mpv, imagine Benz diamond silver metallic, bmw Brazil brown metallic nd not to mention other brands like Ferrari or Porsche.
I once did a front bumper for a bmw 3 series, just respray according to oem standard at approved paint work shop, rm1,700 for grey metallic. Even kelisa special edition orange oem paint to do proper for front, fender, and hood is rm700.
Just a comparison.
To add on, you can't respray back the original paint from Car manufacturers from outside no matter how much you pay for. One is hand spray paint one is machine. Any skillful second hand car trader wikk easily notice touch up paint vs non