Your car's data is yours—but manufacturers keep broad loopholes

What it does

This bill requires car manufacturers to give owners direct, real-time access to all data their vehicles generate—including location, biometric data, and driving behavior—at no extra cost, without restrictions on how owners use it or share it with third parties. Manufacturers cannot sell this data without the owner's explicit opt-in consent, and cannot sell it to hostile foreign governments; the FTC enforces violations as unfair trade practices, and the bill preempts all state laws on the subject.

Why we flagged it

The bill's core mechanism is a data-access and consent mandate—owners get real-time access to vehicle data and manufacturers must obtain opt-in consent before selling sensitive data. This is a privacy/consumer-protection bill, not a subsidy, deregulation, or commemorative measure.

What the text implies

• The bill's preemption of state law (Section 6) eliminates any state-level privacy or data-protection rules that go beyond the federal floor, potentially weakening protections in states that would have imposed stricter standards.
• The 'lawful purpose' language in Section 2(3) is broad and undefined—owners can share data with third parties for any lawful use, which could include data brokers, insurers, or advertisers, creating secondary markets the bill does not regulate.
• Fleet vehicle drivers' opt-out right (Section 3) does not apply to employment-related driver behavior data unless it will be used for profiling outside the employment context—employers retain broad rights to monitor and use driver data without driver consent.
• The exceptions in Section 3 (research, diagnostics, warranty, merger/acquisition) are broad and could permit significant data transfers without owner notification, especially the 'affiliate' carve-out and the 'asset transfer' exception.
• Manufacturers retain the ability to collect and use deidentified, pseudonymous, or aggregate data without restriction, and the definitions of these terms are not tightly constrained—manufacturers may argue that location or behavior data is 'deidentified' even when re-identification is possible.

Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.

Who it affects

Vehicle owners gain enforceable rights to their own data, transparency about what is collected, and control over commercial use—addressing a real asymmetry where manufacturers have harvested location and behavior data without meaningful consent. The bill does impose compliance costs on manufacturers, but those are not passed to citizens as a direct fee; the public benefit (data ownership, opt-in consent, FTC enforcement) outweighs the regulatory burden.

Who stands to gain

• vehicle owners (data access and control rights)
• third-party data processors and analytics firms (potential new market for owner-authorized data shar
• cybersecurity and privacy-compliance vendors (compliance infrastructure)

Named in the bill

Federal Trade Commission (FTC), motor vehicle manufacturers, motor vehicle fleet owners, vehicle owners and drivers, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, People's Republic of China, Russian Federation, Islamic Republic of Iran, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Where it stands

5 cosponsors: 4 Republicans, 1 Democrats.

• Dec 12, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
• Dec 12, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Energy and Commerce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce”

Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.

Money around this bill

30 lobbying clients named this bill on 38 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $22,563,449 in lobbying spend. A filing names 4 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.

More lobbying clients named this bill than 98% of bills with at least one filing.

Diana Harshbarger, the sponsor, reported $727,520 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle. $1,000 of that came from 1 PAC tied to these lobbying clients.

• General Motors Company — $3,460,000 on 1 filing
• Fedex Corporation — $2,930,000 on 1 filing
• Enterprise Holdings, Inc. Dba Enterprise Mobility — $2,710,000 on 2 filings
• National Association of Manufacturers — $2,030,000 on 1 filing
• Toyota Motor North America Inc (tma) — $1,930,500 on 1 filing

Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.