The Dashboard You Trust
Modern cars are incredible machines. They parallel park themselves. They warn you before a collision. They remember your seat position, your favorite radio station, your climate preferences. They connect to your phone, stream your music, pull up directions before you even ask.
You paid $30,000, $50,000, maybe $70,000 for all of that. And somewhere in the process, you clicked “I agree” on a screen you couldn’t read while the salesperson waited. That click gave away more than you think.
The car you drive isn’t just a car anymore. It’s a surveillance device you make monthly payments on. And the convenience features you love — the GPS, the Bluetooth, the connected apps — are the same features that are quietly logging everything you do behind the wheel.
What Your Car Is Actually Doing
90% of new cars sold in America collect data about their drivers. A connected car can process up to 25 gigabytes of data per hour — where you go, how fast you drive, how hard you brake, where you stop, how long you stay. Your car knows your daily routine better than your spouse does.
That data doesn’t stay in the car. It gets transmitted — often in real time — to the manufacturer. From there, it enters a marketplace most drivers have never heard of. Data brokers buy it in bulk. A 2024 Senate investigation found that automakers sell this data for pennies — Honda got twenty-six cents per car, Hyundai sixty-one cents. They’re selling your driving habits for less than a pack of gum.
In 2024, the FTC took action against General Motors for collecting and selling precise geolocation and driving behavior data from millions of vehicles — without meaningful consent. GM was sharing this data with companies like LexisNexis and Verisk, who packaged it and sold it to auto insurers. Drivers saw their premiums go up and had no idea their own car was the reason.
Toyota faces a class-action lawsuit over its connected vehicle data practices. The company’s privacy policy — the one nobody reads — reserves the right to collect and share driving data with third parties for “business purposes.” That language covers almost anything.
Your car collects your location, speed, braking habits, and driving patterns. That data is sold to insurers, data brokers, and companies you’ve never heard of — often without your meaningful knowledge or consent.
Follow the Money
This isn’t a glitch in the system. It’s the business model.
Automakers discovered that selling a car once is less profitable than selling its data forever. A new revenue stream opened up: connected vehicle data services. GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai — they all have data monetization programs now. Some are public about it. Most aren’t.
Data brokers like LexisNexis and Verisk act as middlemen. They aggregate driving data from multiple manufacturers and sell packaged profiles to insurance companies. The insurers use those profiles to adjust your premiums — not based on your claims history, but based on what your car reported about last Tuesday’s commute.
A 2018 Frost & Sullivan report estimated the potential value of connected car data at nearly $100 per vehicle. The actual prices are even more insulting — pennies on the car. But across 280 million registered vehicles, it adds up to a multi-billion-dollar industry built entirely on data that drivers never knowingly agreed to share. The car companies get paid. The brokers get paid. The insurers adjust your rates. The only person who doesn’t get a cut — or a choice — is you.
I drive a used 2017 Toyota 4Runner. Gets about 20 miles per gallon on the highway. I’ve thought about trading it in every time gas prices spike, but I haven’t. Here’s the thing — I used to think Toyota wasn’t collecting data on a vehicle that old. Turns out, Toyota started installing Data Communication Modules in 2017 model year vehicles. My 4Runner almost certainly has one. It connects to a cell network and streams driving data back to Toyota, who reserves the right to share it with affiliates, vendors, and business partners. I didn’t agree to that. I bought a truck.
I use Waze for navigation. It’s a great app — crowd-sourced traffic, real-time hazard alerts, faster routes. It’s also owned by Google. Every trip I take feeds a data profile that follows me across the internet. I know this, and I use it anyway, because the alternative is worse maps and longer commutes. That’s not a real choice. That’s a hostage negotiation dressed up as a feature.
I don’t want to take Waze away from anyone. I want the district to lean into AI so we can build our own navigation tools — same crowd-sourced benefits, but the data stays on your device or within the community. No broker pipeline.
The technology itself isn’t the problem. I don’t want to go back to paper maps and carburetors. I want the technology without the surveillance. That should be an option. Right now, it isn’t.
What Real Privacy Looks Like
We don’t have to choose between good technology and basic privacy. We just need rules that put the driver back in control.
- Data ownership legislation — your driving data belongs to you, not the manufacturer. No collection, no sharing, no selling without explicit opt-in. The default is off — you have to choose to share, not choose to stop sharing. Not buried in a 47-page terms-of-service document. A clear, plain-English question: “Do you want your car to share your driving data with third parties?” Yes or no. And “no” doesn’t disable the car. The app works either way — you just choose whether to share.
- A true “data off” mode that actually works — right now, most “privacy settings” in connected cars are theater. You can turn off some features, but the underlying telemetry keeps running. Manufacturers should be required to offer a genuine disconnect — a mode where no driving data leaves the vehicle, period. The car still drives. The GPS still works locally. But nothing phones home.
- Insurance fairness protections — ban insurers from using covertly collected driving data to set premiums. If you voluntarily enroll in a usage-based program, that’s your choice. But your rates shouldn’t change because a data broker sold your braking patterns without your knowledge.
- Privacy-respecting community navigation — open-source, community-driven navigation tools that provide the same crowd-sourced benefits as Waze without feeding a corporate surveillance pipeline. The technology exists. What’s missing is the will to fund and support alternatives that don’t monetize the driver.
None of this requires giving up the technology. It requires giving up the assumption that the price of a modern car includes unlimited access to your life. You already paid for the car. You shouldn’t have to pay again with your privacy.