All that data is usually not available to the vehicle owner. Instead, it is surrounded by secure restrictions that prevent anyone other than the manufacturer or authorized technicians from accessing the information. Vehicle manufacturers can use similar digital gates to prevent owners from making repairs or modifications, such as replacing brake pads, on their own, without paying a premium for service.
The REPAIR Act, a piece of pending legislation discussed at a subcommittee hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, would mandate that some of the data collected be shared with vehicle owners, particularly those bits that would be useful for making repairs.
“Automakers are using the marketing advantage of exclusive access to this data to try to get you to go to a dealership, where they know what caused this information,” says Nathan Proctor, senior director of the Right to Repair campaign at PIRG. “Repairs would actually be faster, cheaper, and more convenient if this information were more widely distributed, but it is not.”
Today, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing called (deep breath) “to examine legislative options to strengthen motor vehicle safety, ensure consumer choice and affordability, and strengthen American automotive leadership.” The session discussed potential legislation on improving road safety, regulating autonomous vehicles, and helping people protect their catalytic converters from theft.
The hearing took a contentious tone when the discussion turned to the Reparations Act. The House bill, introduced by Representatives Neal Dunn of Florida and Mary Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington in early 2025, calls on automakers to give vehicle owners and third-party repair shops access to telemetry, or the ability to access all the data collected by modern vehicles. The Act has been supported by organizations representing vehicle suppliers as well as auto care shops.
Bill Henvy, CEO of the Auto Care Association, who has long called on automakers to share vehicle owners’ data, testified at the hearing, saying threats to owners’ data have been increasing over the past decade.
“The need for the REPAIR Act is significant and real,” Hanvey said at the hearing, calling today’s vehicles essentially computers on wheels that produce data that manufacturers block from reaching consumers. “Make no mistake about it, the vehicle manufacturers control the data unilaterally, not the vehicle owner. It may be your car, but currently it is the manufacturer’s data that they choose.”
The REPAIR Act has been opposed by automakers and car dealerships, who cite concerns about the use of their intellectual property by third parties. They say they’ve put a lot of effort into making their data and tools accessible and if you need to get your car fixed it’s not too hard to find someone authorized to peek inside its digital brain.
“Vehicle owners should be able to get their vehicles fixed anywhere they want,” Hillary Cain, senior vice president of policy at the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an automaker industry group, said in testimony at the hearing. “The good news is that vehicle 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 right-to-repair law, although that law protects company intellectual property and “does not force automakers to provide aftermarket parts manufacturers or auto parts retailers with data that is not necessary to diagnose or repair a vehicle.”
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