Automakers Still Trying To Weaken Maine’s Popular ‘Right To Repair’ Law

Last November, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) to pass a new state right to repair law designed to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical data to consumers and third-party independent repair shops.

But like so many states where such reforms are passed, lobbyists for tech companies, automakers, and other manufacturers quickly got to work either trying to weaken the rules or eliminate them completely. While Maine’s law technically took effect last week, nobody has to actually comply with it yet because lobbyists have helped bog down efforts to flesh out how the rule will work in practice.

The original law mandated the creation of a new portal car owners and independent mechanics can access to reset car security systems. Automakers were also supposed to create a “motor vehicle telematics system notice” system informing new car owners how access will work. The bill also mandated that the AG create an oversight board to ensure automakers are complying with data share requests.

But automakers quickly got to work trying to claim that this new system was a threat to consumer privacy. They also convinced some lawmakers to push for new versions of the bill literally written by the auto industry that would eliminate the standardized database and the oversight entity as part of a near-total rewrite of the bill:

“I am not comfortable with that because it leaves us with right to repair in name only where the only recourse that a repair shop has is to sue an auto manufacturer if they feel they’ve been done wrong,” [Maine Rep. Daniel] Sayre said. “I think that puts small Maine businesses and Maine consumers in a very difficult position relative to the giant corporations that make our cars.”

So far, the effort appears stuck in neutral as all interested parties attempt to make the law’s goal a reality. There remains a risk that, as in New York State, the bill could be so watered down by the time it’s finally fully implemented that it becomes largely decorative. Or, as in Massachusetts, that legal challenges by an auto industry keen to protect their repair monopoly keep it bogged down by lawsuits indefinitely.

Automakers insist they just care a lot about consumer privacy — concerns that are absent from their everyday business practices. If you recall, a recent Mozilla study showcased how most modern vehicles are a privacy nightmare, collecting no limit of data on users (and their phones, when attached via Bluetooth). Without that collection being transparent with users, or that data being properly secured and encrypted by the manufacturers, it’s resulted in a flood of recent lawsuits.