> A group representing major automakers warned on Tuesday that car companies may be forced to halt sales of both new and used vehicles in California on July 1 unless the state delays vehicle technology rules that aim to prevent perpetrators of domestic violence from tracking survivors.
> ...
> The 2024 California law requires automakers to set up a clear process for drivers to submit a copy of a restraining order or other documentation and request termination of another driver's remote access within two business days. It also mandated that carmakers enable drivers to easily turn off location access from inside the vehicle.
> The bill would, beginning on July 1, 2026, apply this provision to vehicles manufactured prior to January 1, 2028, that have connected vehicle location access, and have the capability to receive software updates, as specified.
with those extra details, this "Carmakers say they'll leave CA..." headline is egregiously misleading.
but also I have zero sympathy for the carmakers here.
to start off with, the portion of the law that takes effect today only applies to vehicles that can receive software updates. so threatening to stop all vehicle sales, both new and used, is absurd. it is grandstanding at best and a form of hostage-taking at worst.
next, the law was passed in Sept 2024. they've had almost 2 years advance notice of this requirement. that should be plenty of time, even taking into account automotive software engineering having longer development cycles than a webapp.
Thanks for adding some balance to this. I find it especially unlikely that any manufacturer is going to risk losing sales in California over something as clearly beneficial to car owners as this, not to mention the number of women who buy cars elsewhere who reasonably expect the manufacturer to protect the vehicle’s owner.
The letter seems really disingenuous, too. There’s some vague fear mongering about the testing time but it’s not like this is the brake controller or something.
The requirement in the actual bill seems pretty simple so I wonder how much this is either a sign that their internal processes are poorly designed (making it hard to ship updates) or something like losing data mining opportunities if they implement it by disabling the telemetry system entirely.
yeah, I'm also getting some cartel / illegal-or-should-be-illegal anti-competitive practice vibes from this coordination of having the "Alliance for Automotive Innovation" push out the message.
because do I believe that some of the manufacturers are unable to ship a "disable location data" checkbox given a 2-year timeline? sure.
but do I believe that every single one of the auto manufacturers is unable to meet the 2-year deadline? no, absolutely not.
what seems more likely is that most of the manufacturers were able to meet the deadline, but a few of them don't have their shit together and weren't able to (possibly only for a subset of models)
and what should happen from there is the compliant cars get updated and can be sold, and the ones with updates that are behind schedule get pulled from the market until the update is available.
and like, that's the "free market" at work. if you write better automotive software that you're able to update more quickly, you'll be able to sell it even when requirements change. if you write bad software that's hard to update, you're going to end up losing sales because of it. and then companies that write better software will tend to succeed in the long run.
in particular with this regulation, it would be a significant black eye for a car dealership to say to a customer "you can't buy that car...why not? oh, well it tracks your location and phones home with that data. and that can't be turned off...to the point that their engineers had 2 years to add a checkbox disabling the feature and they couldn't do it"
so what happens instead is the automakers put up this united front where they try to insist that unless the law is changed to suit their demands, they will stop selling all cars across the entire state. which, no, fuck off, that's bullshit.
they should update the software to comply with the law. and if they can't do it, they should admit "yeah we baked location collection so deeply into the software that even on a 2-year timeframe we couldn't ship a simple checkbox that allowed disabling it".
There needs to be a law that bans the use, sale, and licensing of user data for market research, advertising, and data brokerage in general. Cut the problem off at the source and make the data worthless.
Google and Meta would collapse. I’m fine with that collateral damage.
Threats to leave California are a bit toothless. The state has an enormous economy, something like 5th largest in the world if you were to consider California as a separate country. Few companies can afford to forego that market, which is why California has so much influence in setting standards. And any company that leaves, even the biggest, will have a minor effect on the state's finances.
Unless things change we are going to end up like Cuba keeping old '57 Chevys running into the 80's. From what I've read nobody wants these modern ipads on wheels and used car prices of pre-2015 cars, regardless of miles, will continue to rise. The most telling thing is that the industry knows that if their customers knew about all the spying and there was an off switch then 99% would choose off. Perhaps they should think about something other than money.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/automa...
> A group representing major automakers warned on Tuesday that car companies may be forced to halt sales of both new and used vehicles in California on July 1 unless the state delays vehicle technology rules that aim to prevent perpetrators of domestic violence from tracking survivors.
> ...
> The 2024 California law requires automakers to set up a clear process for drivers to submit a copy of a restraining order or other documentation and request termination of another driver's remote access within two business days. It also mandated that carmakers enable drivers to easily turn off location access from inside the vehicle.
from that I was able to find the law in question: https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202320240sb...
> The bill would, beginning on July 1, 2026, apply this provision to vehicles manufactured prior to January 1, 2028, that have connected vehicle location access, and have the capability to receive software updates, as specified.
with those extra details, this "Carmakers say they'll leave CA..." headline is egregiously misleading.
but also I have zero sympathy for the carmakers here.
to start off with, the portion of the law that takes effect today only applies to vehicles that can receive software updates. so threatening to stop all vehicle sales, both new and used, is absurd. it is grandstanding at best and a form of hostage-taking at worst.
next, the law was passed in Sept 2024. they've had almost 2 years advance notice of this requirement. that should be plenty of time, even taking into account automotive software engineering having longer development cycles than a webapp.
The letter seems really disingenuous, too. There’s some vague fear mongering about the testing time but it’s not like this is the brake controller or something.
https://www.autosinnovate.org/posts/press-release/automakers...
The requirement in the actual bill seems pretty simple so I wonder how much this is either a sign that their internal processes are poorly designed (making it hard to ship updates) or something like losing data mining opportunities if they implement it by disabling the telemetry system entirely.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
because do I believe that some of the manufacturers are unable to ship a "disable location data" checkbox given a 2-year timeline? sure.
but do I believe that every single one of the auto manufacturers is unable to meet the 2-year deadline? no, absolutely not.
what seems more likely is that most of the manufacturers were able to meet the deadline, but a few of them don't have their shit together and weren't able to (possibly only for a subset of models)
and what should happen from there is the compliant cars get updated and can be sold, and the ones with updates that are behind schedule get pulled from the market until the update is available.
and like, that's the "free market" at work. if you write better automotive software that you're able to update more quickly, you'll be able to sell it even when requirements change. if you write bad software that's hard to update, you're going to end up losing sales because of it. and then companies that write better software will tend to succeed in the long run.
in particular with this regulation, it would be a significant black eye for a car dealership to say to a customer "you can't buy that car...why not? oh, well it tracks your location and phones home with that data. and that can't be turned off...to the point that their engineers had 2 years to add a checkbox disabling the feature and they couldn't do it"
so what happens instead is the automakers put up this united front where they try to insist that unless the law is changed to suit their demands, they will stop selling all cars across the entire state. which, no, fuck off, that's bullshit.
they should update the software to comply with the law. and if they can't do it, they should admit "yeah we baked location collection so deeply into the software that even on a 2-year timeframe we couldn't ship a simple checkbox that allowed disabling it".
Google and Meta would collapse. I’m fine with that collateral damage.