It’s been several months since we surveyed top automotive executives and insiders on the major legal issues facing the industry for our 2023 Automotive Trends Report.
As the automotive world continues to evolve and navigate a shifting legal landscape, we look at some of the major themes driving it forward… and the ones that might be in the rearview mirror.
With automotive cybersecurity progressing at lightspeed, Dante Stella, Kimberly Holmes, and Cinthia Motley predict what’s next.
Technologies like built-in navigation, driver-assistance systems and integral telematics, and mobile device synchronization increasingly bring data privacy to the forefront in the auto industry. While the EU has taken a top-down approach, individual states on this side of the pond continue to pass legislation in this space. The latest effort comes from Texas. And it should come as no surprise that it’s Texas-sized.
Continue Reading Texas Passes One of the Strongest Data Privacy Laws in the Nation
Increasingly, sophisticated autonomous vehicles (AVs) use computers both for guidance purposes and for the collection and processing of data, including information whose collection and dissemination is controlled by generally applicable (or “legacy”) privacy and data security law.
Continue Reading Adapting the Law to Autonomous Vehicles
The California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), Cal. Civ. Code 1798.100-199, presents some interesting questions for mobility businesses and service providers that handle data developed or transmitted by vehicles. Although the CCPA was passed with an effective date of January 1, 2020, the regulations implementing it are still in flux—and are on their second iteration. But whether final regulations are in place or not, enforcement by the California Attorney General’s office could start as early as July 1, 2020. Because the CCPA provided only limited exemptions for information collected by the automotive industry—information collected under the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 and certain information developed and exchanged by new auto dealers and vehicle manufacturers in connection with warranty work or vehicle/part recalls—significant questions remain as to how the CCPA will be applied to the mobility industry.
For the past hundred or so years, most vehicles did not have the electronic brains to require a CCPA “gut check.” When electronics made their debut in automobiles, tools like OBD allowed vehicles to store diagnostic codes, and eventually event recorders (now regulated by the Driver Privacy Act of 2015) recorded pre-accident conditions. Telematics began to change the picture in the late 1990s, with automobiles transmitting information to central locations using cellular (and now wireless) technology. Modern connected vehicles can collect vast amounts of data when driven—and they can pass large amounts of it to manufacturers and service providers. And even when they are not actively transmitting this information, such information can be extracted from vehicles by service personnel. SAE Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicles will necessarily be more dependent on connectivity both to central data sources and to each other—and can be expected to drive an explosion in data transmitted and analyzed on a central basis. Some of this will be regulated by data privacy laws, such as the CCPA, despite the above noted exceptions for automotive information.
Continue Reading CCPA: Keeping the Wheels on the Road