The right to repair argument began with phones and laptops, over access to parts and manuals. In cars it has moved to a harder question, and one with more money attached: who gets to see the data the vehicle produces.
Fortune reports that while advocacy has concentrated on mechanical parts and hardware, the unresolved issue is software, and that automakers can currently block access to repair data generated by their vehicles.
A screw as a statement of intent
The clearest illustration is a small one. BMW filed a patent with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office in 2024 for a screw whose drive structure incorporates the shape of its logo, requiring BMW-specific tools to turn.
The patent is explicit about the purpose. The design, it states, provides "a screw which has a specific drive structure which cannot be tightened and/or unscrewed, or can only be tightened with a small number of standard screwdriving tools," and the shape "prevents the screw from being loosened or tightened using common counter-drive structures by unauthorized persons."
BMW has not put the screw into production. As a signal of where manufacturers would like the boundary to sit, it is hard to improve on.
Where the law stands
The main federal vehicle proposal is the Repair Act, introduced in 2023 and reintroduced in 2025. It would require manufacturers to provide vehicle owners and independent repair facilities with the same diagnostic repair information and tools already available to franchised dealerships, and would direct the Federal Trade Commission to enforce against manufacturers that fail to comply.
It is a bill, not a law, and that distinction is worth holding onto given how often proposed legislation gets described as though it were already in force.
The shift that changes the stakes
What makes this urgent now is electrification, and the reason is not obvious.
"We've always been able to adjust, but now what we're beginning to find is that the data that we need to be able to repair those vehicles is not being made available through conventional means," said Bill Hanvey, chief executive and president of the Auto Care Association. "Now, with many of these EVs, all of that repair and maintenance data is transmitted systematically back to the car manufacturer, and it's not being made available to the consumer."
For most of automotive history, a car's condition was legible to anyone who opened it. Diagnostic ports narrowed that, but the information was still obtainable at the vehicle. When telemetry flows continuously to the manufacturer's servers instead, the manufacturer becomes the gatekeeper of something a garage needs to do its job, and no amount of skill or equipment at the roadside substitutes.
The commercial stakes
Dealer service and parts are among the more profitable parts of the automotive business, which is the context for any argument about repair access.
A study commissioned by the Auto Care Association, an interested party in this debate, found that 51 percent of independent repair shops reported sending up to five vehicles a month to a dealer because of vehicle data restrictions. Hanvey argues aftermarket repair can be done for up to 36 percent less than at a dealership.
Independent analysis points the same way on price. A Congressional Research Service report noted that many automakers limit the software made available to outside parties for competitive reasons, and that price increases for auto maintenance and repair have been running ahead of inflation for parts, new cars and used cars. "The increases may reflect the power of suppliers in a concentrated market to raise prices above a competitive rate," it said.
The manufacturers' case is real
The counter-argument is not merely self-interested, and this piece would be dishonest to present it as such.
Opening vehicle systems to third parties widens the attack surface on a machine that carries people at speed. Louay Abdelkader, director of product management at QNX, framed it as a trade-off rather than an absolute: "There has to be a fine balance between giving the consumers the ability to do certain things with a car and at the same time also ensure the integrity of not just the data, but the car itself."
That concern is not hypothetical, as our recent reporting on over-the-air updates and vehicle security showed. Any regime that opens repair data has to answer how access is authenticated and revoked.
What happens when the manufacturer disappears
The sharpest argument for the aftermarket has nothing to do with price.
Fisker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2024, less than a year after beginning deliveries of its Ocean SUV. Owners were left holding vehicles whose software depended on a company that no longer existed. Some of them, organised as the Fisker Owners Association, brought in independent experts to reverse-engineer the software and keep the cars running.
That is the scenario nobody plans for. A vehicle is a ten-to-twenty year asset; a startup automaker may not be. If the ability to maintain a car depends entirely on the continued existence and goodwill of its manufacturer, then the buyer has purchased something more contingent than they probably realised.
