US law obliges manufacturers to make car data readable

A bill passed in the US state of Massachusetts obliges car manufacturers to make the telemetry data from cars readable, so that anyone who wants to can retrieve data from the car. This should give all garages the opportunity to repair cars.

Residents of the US state could vote for or against the bill on Tuesday and AP reports that now 95 percent of the votes have been counted, the result is certain and that most people have said ‘yes’ to the proposal. The proposal received support from nearly three-quarters of Massachusetts voters.

The proposal obliges manufacturers to make the telemetry data of cars readable for everyone from 2022. There must also be documentation to send commands to parts of the cars if the purpose is maintenance or repair. In addition, the information must be made available to car owners themselves via a smartphone app.

The proposal is part of a larger Right to Repair campaign to make electronics more repairable. Repair site iFixit is happy with the result . According to the site, car manufacturers are increasingly trying to make reading data more difficult by requiring proprietary tools or software. This new law makes this illegal for models from 2022 in the US state.