WASHINGTON — The U.S. Government Accountability Office within the coming months will look at “right to repair” points involving the auto trade, the congressional watchdog confirmed Wednesday.
In an e-mail to Automotive News, spokesman Chuck Young stated the workplace accepted a request final week to check the subject and plans to start the trouble in about six months “when relevant staff complete other work and become available.”
The motion comes after Rep. Jan Schakowsky urged the GAO to look at “federal agencies’ efforts to ensure consumers’ right to repair” with respect to light-duty vehicles and vehicles.
The Illinois Democrat requested the GAO to check how federal businesses would possibly stability issues equivalent to “addressing cybersecurity risks that may be associated with greater access to vehicle data and whether technology exists to ensure both data access and cybersecurity protections,” in line with a letter despatched June 6 to GAO Comptroller General Gene Dodaro.
Schakowsky additionally pressed the GAO to look into the effectiveness of the auto trade’s self-regulation and the way it has stored tempo with advances in expertise in addition to the competitiveness of the automobile restore market within the U.S.
The House lawmaker additionally requested for suggestions to different federal businesses to make sure customers’ proper to restore primarily based on the GAO’s examine of the difficulty.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most main automakers within the U.S., stated it welcomes the extra examine.
“Right now, most post-warranty work — 70 percent — is done by the independent aftermarket,” the alliance stated in an announcement. “In fact, the [Federal Trade Commission] has cited the automotive industry as a positive example of the market working well.”
Schakowsky, within the letter, argues a 2014 memorandum of understanding between automakers and unbiased garages and retailers “predated the use of telematics to wirelessly transmit vehicle data to manufacturers.”
“The data transmitted to manufacturers includes those used for diagnostic and repair purposes — potentially undermining the industry’s self-regulation of right to repair via the 2014 memorandum,” she wrote.
In February, U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., launched a invoice mandating that automobile homeowners and unbiased restore outlets have the identical entry to restore and upkeep instruments and information as automakers and their franchised dealerships.
Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., even have every launched right-to-repair laws.
Rush’s invoice is much like a controversial poll measure in Massachusetts that was enacted by voters in 2020. The measure expands the present right-to-repair regulation and requires makers of automobiles bought within the state to equip automobiles that use telematics programs with a standardized, open-access information platform, starting with the 2022 mannequin yr. It additionally offers automobile homeowners and unbiased restore outlets entry to real-time data from the telematics, equivalent to crash notifications, distant diagnostics and navigation.
In an ongoing authorized battle with Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, the alliance has argued that the state’s amended proper to restore regulation conflicts with a number of federal legal guidelines, poses cybersecurity and automobile security dangers and units an unimaginable timeline for compliance.
U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock is anticipated to subject a ruling on the case by July 1.
Source: www.autonews.com
