Automakers excoriated by Senators for fighting right-to-repair

December 20, 2024:

Yesterday, US Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Joshua Hawley (R-MO) sent letters to the heads of Ford, General Motors, and Tesla, as well as the US heads of Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, Stellantis, Subaru, Toyota, and Volkswagen, excoriating them over their opposition to the right-to-repair movement.

“We need to hit the brakes on automakers stealing your data and undermining your right-to-repair,” said Senator Merkley in a statement to Ars. “Time and again, these billionaire corporations have a double standard when it comes to your privacy and security: claiming that sharing vehicle data with repair shops poses cybersecurity risks while selling consumer data themselves. Oregon has one of the strongest right-to-repair laws in the nation, and that’s why I’m working across the aisle to advance efforts nationwide that protect consumer rights.”

Most repairs aren’t at dealerships

The Senators point out that 70 percent of car parts and services currently come from independent outlets, which are seen as trustworthy and providing good value for money, “while nearly all dealerships receive the worst possible rating for price.”

OEMs and their tier-one suppliers restricting the supply of car parts to within their franchised dealership networks also slows down the entire repair process for owners as well as increasing the cost of getting one’s car fixed, the letter states.

As Ars noted recently, more than one in five automotive recalls are now fixed with software patches, and increasingly the right-to-repair fight has centered on things digital—access to diagnostics, firmware, and connected services. The percentage of non-hardware recall fixes will surely grow in the coming years as more and more automakers replace older models with software-defined vehicles.

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