Tech devices in California’s new cars create thorny political issues

Automobiles have gradually evolved over the last two decades from mechanical devices into electronic platforms featuring computer screens and numerous other digital capabilities.

A few years ago, the California Air Resources Board began requiring automakers to install devices in vehicles to record and store operational data that the agency could access to determine how well emission reduction programs were working.

It was one aspect of the state’s announced goal of phasing out cars and trucks powered by gasoline and diesel fuel and replacing them with zero-emission vehicles.

The auto industry opposed the data collection mandate, arguing it would violate the privacy of vehicle owners. At one point the industry threatened to stop producing cars for California.

The agency insisted it would not collect data involuntarily. But its regulation fueled — pun intended — suspicions in some quarters that recording how and where cars were being used would allow them to be tracked, much as cellphone usage can be traced.

Or, some said, as gas and diesel use declined and gallonage taxes dropped, the state could begin charging drivers by miles driven, based on their recorded data.

As the data collection mandate was being implemented, another aspect of the situation surfaced — fears that the tracking software to help motorists obtain help in emergencies, such as General Motors’ OnStar system, could be misused by abusive spouses to find and attack their mates.

Two years ago, the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted a law aimed at countering that potential abuse. Senate Bill 1394 required automakers to provide an internet process by which a “connected vehicle service” could be quickly terminated. Those seeking termination would have to prove they either owned the vehicle or possessed it via a divorce decree or domestic violence restraining order.

That was the relatively easy part of SB 1384.

The more contentious portion of the law required new cars to be equipped with a “mechanism that can be used by a driver who is inside a vehicle to immediately disable connected vehicle location access.” The mechanism had to be “prominently located, easy to use, not require access to an online application, not require a password or login information, and only allow re-enabling of the connected vehicle location access by a driver who is located inside the vehicle.”

The deadline for meeting that requirement was last week. The industry has insisted that was, from a practical standpoint, impossible to meet because it is a complex engineering problem that involves dozens of different auto models, and automakers would have to maintain existing electronic tools, such as GPS navigation, and helpful services, such as OnStar.

Without a change in the mandate, the industry’s lobbyists warned, automakers could be compelled to suspend sales in the state, echoing a threat they made about the Air Resources Board’s data collection mandate earlier.

It was something of a political standoff until Senate Bill 719 emerged from backroom negotiations late last month. Just one day before the deadline, Newsom signed the bill that narrows the application of the requirement, eliminates the hard deadline for it and substitutes a series of deadlines tied to model years and “technological feasibility.”

Thus it is impossible to say for certain when, if ever, cars will be equipped with the ability to disconnect location tracking software.

These two instances imply that the conversion of the automobile from a mechanical device to an electronic one has created a bottomless well of potential issues involving privacy, governmental regulation and the politically heated topic of how California would change the way motorists are taxed once the gallonage taxes on fuels disappear, if they ever do.