Your car's location data: now yours to control, not the manufacturer's to sell
S. 3494 — Auto Data Privacy and Autonomy Act · Filed by Mike Lee (R-UT) · Introduced Dec 16, 2025 · Referred to committee
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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.
The full analysis lists 5 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
data privacy software vendors; cybersecurity firms specializing in automotive; open-source API development platforms