When you buy a car, the transaction feels unambiguous. You hand over money, receive keys, and drive away in something legally titled in your name. For most of the automobile's history, that was functionally true too. You could modify it, repair it, take it to any mechanic you chose, and the manufacturer would never be involved in your life again unless you invited them. That relationship has quietly ended.
Modern vehicles are less like appliances you own and more like services you've licensed. They run on millions of lines of software, collect and transmit data, and the companies that make them have retained control over core functions in ways most buyers don't realize at signing. The cumulative result is a form of ownership that would be unrecognizable to anyone who bought a car thirty years ago.
Software Ate the Dashboard
The average new vehicle contains between 100 and 150 million lines of code, more than a modern fighter jet. That software governs the engine, the transmission, the brakes, and the steering, and increasingly the boundaries of what the car will and won't do. When software is that deeply embedded in a physical object, who controls the software becomes indistinguishable from who controls the object.
Manufacturers have used that control in revealing ways. In 2019, Tesla pushed software updates that reduced range and charging speed on older Model S vehicles, citing fire safety concerns after a Shanghai parking garage fire. This led to class action, and Tesla eventually settled, restoring capacity and paying owners $625 each. The same infrastructure that lets Tesla push a welcome bug fix also lets it push changes that reduce the capability of something you paid for in full.
General Motors, Ford, Toyota, and virtually every other major manufacturer have moved into connected platforms requiring ongoing software relationships with buyers. Some features once included at sale have been converted into subscriptions. BMW briefly charged monthly for heated seats in certain markets before backlash forced a reversal. The hardware was already in the car. The warmth was being metered by software, which is a precise encapsulation of how ownership has changed.
The Right to Repair Has Become a Legal Battle
The right to repair your own property sounds like something that shouldn't need defending, but for cars it now does. Manufacturers have restricted access to diagnostic software, tools, and technical information that independent mechanics need to service modern vehicles. The manufacturer argument is that proprietary software is a trade secret and unauthorized access creates safety risks. The repair advocate argument is simpler: fix what you own.
This reached a visible inflection point with the Massachusetts Right to Repair law, passed in 2012 and expanded by ballot initiative in 2020 with roughly 75 percent of voters in favor. The expansion required manufacturers to share telematics data through a standardized platform so independent shops could perform the same diagnostics as dealerships. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation sued to block it, and as of 2024, the fight was ongoing. Manufacturers have spent considerable resources resisting a law that passed by a three-to-one margin.
The consequences fall hardest on people who can least afford them. When independent repair is blocked, owners are funneled toward dealership service departments at significantly higher rates. 2023 industry data shows dealership labor rates often exceeding independents (e.g., $168 vs. $120 in Texas markets), hitting used-car owners hardest amid rising repair costs.
Your Car Is Also a Data Collection Device
Modern vehicles collect a staggering amount of information. Driving behavior, location history, braking habits, music preferences, and in some cases biometric data from driver-monitoring cameras are all logged and transmitted. A 2023 Mozilla Foundation investigation of 25 major automakers found every single one collected more personal data than necessary and most shared or sold it to third parties. The researchers called cars the worst product category they had ever reviewed for privacy.
Most owners have no awareness of what their vehicles are transmitting or to whom. The data collection is disclosed in terms-of-service agreements running to tens of thousands of words, presented at purchase in conditions not suited for careful reading. General Motors was reported in 2024 to have shared driving behavior data from millions of customers with insurance companies through its OnStar Smart Driver program, resulting in premium increases for drivers who had no idea their car was reporting on them.
What this means is that the car you buy becomes a revenue-generating asset for the manufacturer long after the sale closes. You are, in the connected vehicle market's economic logic, simultaneously the customer and the product. The title in your name covers the metal and the glass, but the data the vehicle generates and the software that makes it run remain under someone else's terms. That's a different kind of ownership than most people thought they were getting.
