Always you go, your car is collecting data about you. Where you are going, how fast you drive, how hard you brake, and even how much you weigh.
All that data is usually not available to the car owner. Instead, it is gated behind secure restrictions that prevent anyone but the manufacturer or authorized technicians from accessing the information. Car manufacturers can use the same digital gates to lock out owners without making repairs or maintenance, such as changing their brakes, without paying the manufacturer’s service fee.
The Repair Act, a pending piece of legislation discussed in a subcommittee in the US House of Representatives on Tuesday, would mandate that some of that collected data be shared with car owners, especially the bits that could be useful for repairs.
“Automakers are trying to use a kind of marketing advantage of exclusive access to this data to push it to the point of sale where they know what caused this information,” said Nathan Proctor, senior director of the right-to-repair campaign at PIRG. “Fixing would be faster, cheaper, easier if this information were widely distributed, but it isn’t.”
Today, the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing called (deep breath) “Exploring Legislative Options to Strengthen Auto Safety, Ensure Consumer Choice and Affordability, and Strengthen US Auto Leadership.” The session included potential laws on improving road safety, regulating autonomous vehicles, and helping people protect their power converters from theft.
The proceedings picked up tone when the discussion turned to the Amendment Act. The House bill, introduced in early 2025 by representatives Neal Dunn of Florida and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, requires car manufacturers to give car owners and third-party repair shops access to telemetry, or the ability to access all the data collected by modern cars. This action is supported by organizations representing car suppliers as well as car maintenance shops.
Bill Henvy, CEO of the Auto Care Association, which has long called for automakers to share owner data, testified at the hearing that the threat to owner data has been growing over the past decade.
“The need for the Corrections Act is serious and real,” Hanvey said at the hearing, calling today’s cars mostly equipped with on-wheel computers that manufacturers then release to prevent consumers from accessing them. “Make no mistake about it, the car manufacturers collectively control the data, not the car owner. It could be your car, but at the moment it’s the manufacturer’s data that they can do with whatever they choose.”
The Amendment Act has been opposed by car manufacturers and car dealers, who cite concerns about their intellectual property being used by third parties. They say they’ve done enough to make their data and tools accessible and that if you need to fix your car it’s not too hard to find someone authorized to peer inside its digital brain.
“Car owners should be able to fix their cars wherever they want,” said Hilary Cain, senior vice president of policy at the auto industry group Alliance for Automotive Innovation, testifying at the hearing. “The good news is that car manufacturers already provide independent repairs with all the information, instructions, tools and codes needed to properly and safely repair a vehicle.”
Cain says that ultimately automakers support a comprehensive federal repair rights law, though one that protects company property and “doesn’t force automakers to provide aftermarket parts manufacturers or auto parts dealers with data unnecessary to diagnose or repair a vehicle.”
