Your car's location data: now yours to control, not the manufacturer's to sell

What it does

This bill requires car manufacturers to let owners access and control all data their vehicles generate or collect—location, driving patterns, sensor readings—at no extra cost, in real time, and through open interfaces. Manufacturers cannot sell this data to foreign adversaries (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela) or to anyone else without explicit written consent, and the FTC enforces violations as unfair trade practices.

Why we flagged it

The bill's core mechanism is straightforward: it establishes affirmative consent requirements for data access/sale, mandates owner access to vehicle data, and bans transfer to hostile foreign governments. This is consumer protection legislation, not a hidden carve-out or subsidy.

What the text implies

• Requires manufacturers to build open APIs and wireless data-transmission infrastructure, which may impose significant engineering and compliance costs that could be passed to consumers or delay new vehicle features.
• The 3-month implementation window is aggressive for an industry with long product-development cycles; manufacturers may struggle to retrofit existing models or may lobby for extensions.
• Banning data sales to five named hostile nations is clear, but the bill does not restrict sales to other foreign governments, allies, or private foreign entities—a potential loophole for data brokers.
• The FTC enforcement mechanism relies on existing appropriations; no new funding is authorized, which may limit the agency's capacity to investigate complex automotive data breaches or foreign access schemes.
• Preemption of state privacy laws (Section 4) means no state can impose stricter vehicle-data protections, potentially creating a federal floor rather than a ceiling for privacy.

Who it affects

Ordinary car owners gain direct control over their own vehicle data, transparency about what manufacturers collect, and protection against unauthorized sale or foreign access. The bill shifts power from manufacturers to owners and closes a significant privacy gap in an increasingly connected product category.

Who stands to gain

• data privacy software vendors
• cybersecurity firms specializing in automotive
• open-source API development platforms

Named in the bill

Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Transportation (DOT), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Attorney General, Motor vehicle manufacturers, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, People's Republic of China, Russian Federation, Islamic Republic of Iran, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Where it stands

• Dec 16, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
• Dec 16, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation”

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

Money around this bill

7 lobbying clients named this bill on 9 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $3,521,500 in lobbying spend. A filing names 3 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 86% of bills with at least one filing.

Mike Lee, the sponsor, reported $241,000 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.

• Toyota Motor North America Inc (tma) — $1,930,500 on 1 filing
• National Automobile Dealers Association — $1,191,000 on 1 filing
• Avis Budget Group, Inc. — $240,000 on 1 filing
• Enterprise Holdings, Inc. Dba Enterprise Mobility — $60,000 on 2 filings
• Enterprise Mobility — $60,000 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.