Automakers warn a California law could halt new car sales July 1, but experts say the threat is exaggerated. The real dispute is over disabling vehicle tracking in existing cars.
If you only read the headlines, you might think California dealerships face an empty showroom crisis on July 1.
That's when automakers say a new state law could force them to halt vehicle sales. In reality, the odds of that happening are microscopic.
The warning comes from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a lobbying group representing nearly every major automaker selling vehicles in America.
The group is urging lawmakers and Governor Gavin Newsom to quickly pass SB 719, a bill that would delay portions of California's domestic violence survivor protection law known as SB 1394.
Industry Already Meets Core Protections
Automakers have already implemented the law's requirement that survivors can submit documentation and have another person's access to connected vehicle services terminated within two business days.
That process is already in place.
Instead, the fight is over a requirement that vehicles offer a way to disable location access from inside the car itself.
“Changes involving connected services must be engineered and validated to ensure they do not interfere with GPS, theft prevention systems, emergency services, advanced driver assistance systems, or other vehicle functions,” the group writes.
It wants the deadline pushed to July 1, 2027 for older vehicles and to 2031 for “all vehicles.”
On one hand, the industry has a point. Retrofitting millions of existing vehicles isn't as simple as pushing a software update.
Different vehicles use different hardware, software, telematics systems, and connected-service architectures. Adding new functionality without disrupting navigation, theft recovery, or other systems is a real engineering challenge.
Real Fight Is Over Tracking Existing Cars
The bill doesn't just push for a later deadline.
It also removes a protection that would indicate to someone inside the vehicle when someone outside accessed its connected services or vehicle location information.
Automakers aren't exactly innocent bystanders here.
For years, they invested heavily in systems that collected location and vehicle data because those systems created value for the companies.
Privacy controls often lagged behind.
Now the industry argues that adding those controls retroactively is difficult because the systems were never designed with them in mind.
As for the threatened California sales freeze?
Expect lawmakers, regulators, automakers, or some combination of all three to find a solution long before the state's dealerships start collecting dust.