At the heart of the 3rd iteration of the right to repair law was the access to data. The UVO app collects a lot of personal information that is stored on Kia's cloud servers. Car manufacturers who fought and spent millions to prevent the bill from passing, claim that they can't safely share the personal information with small repair shops. This is just their excuse to try to prevent small shops from fixing their car. In previous iterations of the law they claimed that sharing their repair manuals will lead to unsafe repairs. That was a bogus claim just as the data claim is this time.
The question is and this is for anyone not just for folks who bought their car in MA -
Do you know what Kia collects about you?
and do you trust your dealership and anyone who works there that you may not even know or maybe had a bad experience with, more than your neighborhood guy that worked on your car for years?
The answer is, like in any other area -
OUR PERSONAL INFORMATION SOULD BE OURS AND ONLY OURS TO DECIDE WHO TO SHARE IT WITH - just like our health information.
The law is in the courts right now and may take a while before anything is decided, but it is clear - it is not the protection of personal information but about car manufacturers trying to maintain exclusivity in repairing their own cars. In the meantime KIA disabled the app in MA so it will not collect personal information it would have to share by law.
