Gearbox Technologies

Connected cars can send diagnostic and maintenance information beyond the dashboard. That changes a basic ownership question: if you choose an independent repair shop, can you also authorize that shop to get the information it needs to work on your car?

Imagine the check-engine light comes on. The vehicle records a fault code and related information. On a connected car, some information may also be transmitted to the manufacturer. You decide to use a local independent shop. The practical question is simple: can you authorize that shop to get the repair information it needs?

That question is becoming one of the most important parts of automotive right to repair.

On August 17, The Guardian, citing the consumer group PIRG, reported that legislators had introduced more than 50 right-to-repair bills across 22 states in 2026. Those proposals cover many kinds of products. Cars are a particularly complicated case because they combine mechanical parts, software, wireless connections, personal information and safety-critical systems.

So this is not an argument for giving every third party every piece of data a car can collect. It is a narrower ownership question: when information is legitimately needed to diagnose, maintain or repair a vehicle, how much control should the owner have over who can access it?

Why connected cars changed right to repair

Right to repair is not new. Independent shops have worked on electronically controlled vehicles for decades. In 2014, automaker and aftermarket groups signed a national memorandum intended to extend key Massachusetts-style access to repair information and tools across the country.

What changed is where some of the information goes.

Telematics is the term used for a vehicle system that collects data and sends it wirelessly to a remote location. Massachusetts describes it in similarly plain terms: the vehicle generates information while operating, and the telematics system transmits that information to another device where it can be stored. The federal REPAIR Act uses a comparable definition.

The Congressional Research Service identified telematics access as a focal point of the modern automotive right-to-repair debate. That is the key shift. A repair shop can physically have your car in its bay and still face a different access problem than it did when nearly everything useful came through a local diagnostic connection.

What the federal REPAIR Act would change

The broad federal proposal is the Right to Equitable and Professional Auto Industry Repair Act, or REPAIR Act. The House version is H.R. 1566. A Senate companion is S. 1379.

The easiest way to understand H.R. 1566 is to focus on what it would let an owner do.

The definition is also narrower than the phrase “car data” may suggest. H.R. 1566 defines vehicle-generated data around diagnostics, repair, service, wear and calibration. It excludes personally identifiable information. The bill also limits how recipients may use or transfer the data and includes deletion rules, with exceptions for records that need to be retained for purposes such as maintenance, accounting and safety.

That does not remove every legitimate privacy or security concern. It does mean the actual proposal is more specific than “open all vehicle data to anyone.”

What is actually law right now?

The broad federal REPAIR Act has not become law. That is the most important status point to keep straight.

H.R. 1566 was introduced on February 25, 2025. On February 10, 2026, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade forwarded it to the full committee by voice vote. Congress.gov still lists the bill at the introduced stage. S. 1379 was introduced on April 9, 2025 and referred to the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, where Congress.gov lists no later action.

A separate House vehicle package moved further. On May 21, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 48-1 to report H.R. 7389, the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act of 2026, as amended to the full House.

Its right-to-repair section is materially narrower than H.R. 1566. The committee substitute would require manufacturers to comply with specified provisions of the 2014 passenger-vehicle repair memorandum and a 2015 commercial-vehicle memorandum, make violations enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission, and direct the FTC to study aftermarket practices including restrictions on wireless telematics access. It does not create H.R. 1566’s direct nationwide owner-and-designee telematics-access framework.

There was also a separate federal development this summer. On June 29, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum titled Lowering the Cost of Living by Promoting the Freedom to Fix. It directs the EPA to clarify lawful emissions repairs and improve pathways for compliant aftermarket emissions parts. The memorandum says its guidance is limited to the matters it specifies. It matters for repair and aftermarket parts, but it is not a nationwide owner-access rule for general vehicle telematics data.

EPA followed on July 1 with guidance restating manufacturer obligations for emissions-related service information, training materials, diagnostic information, reprogramming information and tools. That is a separate Clean Air Act repair track, not passage of the broader REPAIR Act.

Massachusetts and Maine show what the issue looks like in practice

Federal legislation gets most of the attention, but Massachusetts and Maine are useful because both states have already written vehicle-data access into law. Their histories also show why it is important to separate a legal right from the technical work required to implement it.

Massachusetts

Massachusetts voters approved an automotive right-to-repair law in 2012, and the Legislature reconciled the state’s repair statutes in 2013. Voters returned to the issue in 2020 and approved an expansion aimed at connected-vehicle telematics.

The Massachusetts Attorney General now explains the rule this way: if a model-year 2022 or later vehicle uses a telematics system, state law gives the consumer the right to directly access mechanical data through a mobile application. The owner can also authorize an independent repair shop or dealer to directly access that mechanical data for diagnosis, maintenance and repair.

The definition matters. Massachusetts is talking about mechanical data used for or related to diagnosis, repair or maintenance, not every category of information a connected vehicle might collect. The exact data available through telematics varies by vehicle.

Maine

Maine’s Attorney General similarly tells owners that state law gives them the ability to access a vehicle’s mechanical data through a mobile device and authorize an independent repair facility to access mechanical data for diagnosis, repair and maintenance.

Maine changed the implementation framework in 2026. Public Law 660 created a Motor Vehicle Right to Repair Commission, replaced older terminology with owner-authorized independent repair facility, and moved the manufacturer deadline for the interoperable, standardized owner-authorization access platform to September 1, 2027.

That distinction is easy to miss. Maine describes owner repair-data rights today, while the 2026 amendments give manufacturers until September 1, 2027 to meet the revised standardized-platform requirement. An older version of the statute can therefore give the wrong impression about the current implementation timetable.

The hard part is not whether security matters. It does.

A modern car is not a phone with wheels. Electronic systems can be tied to braking, steering, propulsion, airbags and other safety functions. Poorly designed remote access can create real cybersecurity and safety risks.

NHTSA’s own cybersecurity guidance captures the balance better than either side’s slogan. The agency says the industry should provide strong vehicle cybersecurity protections that do not unduly restrict owner-authorized third-party repair. It also says cybersecurity should not become a reason to justify limiting serviceability, and serviceability should not weaken strong cybersecurity controls.

Automaker and dealer groups argue that existing repair-information arrangements already support independent repair and that broader telematics mandates can introduce privacy, cybersecurity and safety concerns. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation points to longstanding commitments to provide independent shops with repair instructions, tools and diagnostic codes. NADA supports the narrower H.R. 7389 committee approach.

Right-to-repair advocates disagree that the existing arrangements are enough for connected vehicles. The Auto Care Association argues that wireless vehicle data can create a new access gap as repair-relevant information moves beyond the physical diagnostic port, and it supports H.R. 1566 and S. 1379.

Those trade groups are participants in the policy fight, not neutral referees. The useful question is narrower: can owner-authorized repair access be designed with authentication, limited permissions, data-use rules and protections around safety-critical systems?

H.R. 1566 reflects some of that middle ground. It preserves cryptographic and technological protections, excludes personally identifiable information from its defined vehicle-generated data, and restricts use and transfer of the covered data.

The FTC’s broader 2021 Nixing the Fix report is useful background, too. It found limited evidence supporting many manufacturer justifications for repair restrictions across consumer products. That report does not settle how a connected-car access system should be engineered in 2026, so it should not be used to wave away vehicle-specific security concerns.

Why ordinary drivers should care

Most drivers will never read H.R. 1566. They should not have to.

What matters is what happens when a car needs work five, eight or twelve years after it was purchased. S&P Global Mobility reported that the average U.S. light vehicle reached 12.8 years old in 2025, with about 289 million light vehicles in operation. That means many vehicles will need years of maintenance and repair after the original sale.

Over those years, owners move. Cars change hands. A dealership may handle one repair and an independent shop the next. Tires may come from one place, brakes from another and routine maintenance from somewhere else. A useful ownership system cannot assume that one company will hold the complete story forever.

That is why data access and record keeping are related, even though they are not the same issue.

Right to repair asks whether the owner can choose a qualified repairer and give that repairer the information needed to do the job. A good vehicle record asks whether the owner can still understand what has happened to the car after the appointment is over.

The owner of the car should not be the least-informed person in the repair conversation.

What this means for GRBX users

This matters to GRBX for a simple reason: repair choice is more useful when the owner can carry a reliable vehicle record from one service provider to the next.

GRBX today is vehicle maintenance software for drivers and families. It organizes maintenance, service history, reminders, recalls, documents and vehicle-specific questions. It can keep that context with the owner instead of leaving it scattered across memory, receipts and individual service-provider accounts.

That already matters in a right-to-repair world. If you choose where your car is repaired, you also need a practical way to carry your own context from one shop to the next. Which services were completed? At what mileage? What was recommended but deferred? What receipts do you have? Is there an open recall? What did you notice before the appointment?

The future possibility is different from the current feature set. If the automotive industry eventually settles on secure, standardized, owner-authorized ways to share repair-relevant vehicle data, products built around the owner’s vehicle record could have more useful information to work with. In principle, that could reduce manual entry, improve the context an owner carries into a repair conversation, or make it easier to preserve relevant maintenance information over time.

That is a future possibility, not something GRBX does today and not a promise about what any final law will require.

That distinction matters. GRBX should be useful with the records and tools drivers can control today. If secure owner-authorized repair data becomes more portable later, products like GRBX could use it to make an owner’s record more complete. That access does not exist in GRBX today.

Related Gearbox reading: How to Keep Track of Car Maintenance Without Relying on Memory and GRBX Is Building the Smarter Standard for Vehicle Maintenance.

What vehicle owners can do today

You do not need to wait for Congress to build a better ownership record.

Those habits sound basic because they are. Good ownership usually starts with having the facts in front of you before a problem becomes urgent.

My view: technology should give owners better choices, not fewer

I do not think the right answer is unlimited access to every system in a connected car. Vehicles are safety-critical machines. Security, privacy and intellectual property are real constraints, and any serious rule has to account for them.

I also do not think “the car is connected now” should become a reason that an owner has less practical choice than they had before.

A good system should be able to answer three questions clearly: What information is actually needed for the repair? Who did the owner authorize to receive it? How is that access protected and ended when the work is done?

If the industry can answer those questions well, connected vehicles can improve repair instead of making it harder to understand who controls the process.

The bottom line

Automotive right to repair in 2026 is no longer mainly a fight over wrenches, scan tools or service manuals.

The fight now also includes what happens when a car creates useful repair information and some of that information moves outside the car.

The broad federal answer is still unsettled. H.R. 1566 and S. 1379 would create stronger owner and repairer access rights, but they have not become law. The House Energy and Commerce Committee reported a narrower right-to-repair approach to the full House as part of H.R. 7389. The White House and EPA acted separately on emissions repair and aftermarket parts. Massachusetts and Maine have moved further at the state level, though implementation details continue to matter.

The laws and proposals will keep changing. The ownership principle should be easier to hold onto.

A car can become smarter without making its owner a bystander in how it is maintained.

Sources & editorial note

What this article relies on

Primary government sources control claims about laws, bills and official actions. Trade associations are included to represent the arguments of the automotive aftermarket, automakers and dealers; their policy claims are identified as stakeholder positions. The Guardian article is the news report that prompted this piece, not the sole source for legislative facts.

Primary sources and background

Stakeholder positions

Source review date: August 21, 2026. Legislative status can change quickly, so H.R. 1566, S. 1379 and H.R. 7389 should be rechecked on the morning this article is published. This article is general informational commentary, not legal advice, repair advice or a substitute for official recall instructions.

FAQ

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