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Why Your New Car Is Nearly Impossible to Fix (And It’s Getting Worse)
(www.carsandhorsepower.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2026
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Technology
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I still don't get how telemetry is even legal.
If I purchase a vehicle from a previous owner, I do not have any agreement with the manufacturer regarding collection of my data.
Clickwrap should have been made illegal when they started doing it a quarter century ago. If I put a tracker on your car, I'm a criminal, but if every automaker drops a clause into the "user terms" on their vehicle sales, then every car you buy gets tracked forever, perfectly legally.
You agree when you use the car.
At least that is the legal claim.
There is a disclaimer when you start the car.
Who is there to agree with - the car is my property. All they own is the copyright to distribute copies of the software. Imagine a disclaimer on the front page of your copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.
Their legal claim will be the bullshit 1201 of the DMCA preventing you from breaking a digital lock on your own property to "rip out that first page".
Wait... Every car I ever rented, borrowed or owned never showed a disclaimer anywhere. What are you driving that shows a disclaimer?
I'd check owners manuals, and any rental policies, or bill of sale/contracts. Sometimes this may show up when the vehicle is first taken out of pre-delivery mode and never again.
If it's only at pre-delivery or in manual, then I buy the car second hand without a manual am I still legally complied to the disclaimer?
Not a lawyer. No idea, but possibly. Seems like it would be covered by some sort of clause about taking on those risks and responsibilities if you ride in or drive the car but how enforceable is that?
Would be an interesting court case... If I'm not even shown or given a method to see a disclaimer, can it disclaim anything (is that even good English? You know what I mean but there must be a way to say it)?
Part of me says no. The company should make safe devices, a lamp is certified by ul and a car us way more dangerous.
Part of me say yes. People are really stupid sometimes. Companies shouldn't need to design everything with bubble wrap and people need to know not to slam their head into a coffee mug.
The sad part is this will/has gone to court and the first case will determine the future. Like someone is like "Nissan video recorded me buying lunch at McDonald's and saw my pin code" court says there was no damage since you can change your pin and no record of fraudulent charges. From then on there is legal precedent they can take your pin code. Year 2056, you see a Ford employee emptied your bank account by buying door dash, court states "Sorry, 30 years ago these other people said someone seeing your bank account data with your car camera is fine, just deal with your empty bank account."
I honestly think they are banking on it never having to go to court. Most people don't read contract terms, EULAs and TOS's, and for the most part all three are written in legalese so most people have a harder time understanding them. If nobody knows it's there they don't have to worry about people taking them to court over it. So they think it's better to beg forgiveness (or the court) than to ask permission (follow what few privacy laws we have).
I think that's why people were so scandalized when Mozilla made their report about the data car companies collect on drivers and passengers and so on. A lot of car features that spy on people are marketed as safety and convenience features.
Onstar started the whole "if you're ever in a crash or the car becomes disabled" etc thing and car companies decided that was a brilliant idea and they have been collecting data about everything they can ever since.
About the same time they decided that the less maintenance a person could do on the vehicle the more they could make for repairs (locking in parts distribution with certified labor at dealerships). And then they realized cars that are expensive to fix and that people can't fix themselves sort of snowballed into people can (and will) just buy new cars so we can sell more cars etc etc.
So it's all a whole interconnected plot of convenience, safety, telemetry data, data collection, and fixability leveraged against buying new cars every few years. And car companies have already proven to us again and again that they'll bet against our knowing enough to know we're being taken advantage of so they figure it's cheaper to do it this way and fight the few lawsuits that do crop up.
Partially you are right. My only disagreement is while most people don't read those documents, 1 lawyer who is bored and sees a pay day is all that's needed. Like someone has a law degree but can't find a practice to hire them so they go to a dealership, test drive a vehicle, sit down to sign paperwork, read everything and are like "hold up... Can you give me a copy of this?... Thanks, tell your boss to expect a letter from me."
It's like general computer security, you can block 500 bugs and security flaws but if 501st is discovered it's a really bad day.
What choice do consumers have, anyway? Return the car cause you don't agree with the disclaimer?
and then what are you gonna buy instead, a second hand car from the mid 90s before they all started adding telemetry modules.
I did literally that.
The real solution is regulatory, though, because obviously my boycott has done absolutely fuck-all to change manufacturer behavior.
yeah they know most people don't know or don't care, maybe selling the data from the telemetry to a data broker who on sells it to ICE might change some peoples minds...
Or if ICE starts connecting to the telemetry modules directly on older less secure models...