Massachusetts Voters Overwhelmingly Pass Car Right-to-Repair Ballot Initiative (vice.com) 32
Massachusetts overwhelmingly voted to extend its automobile right to repair law, in a huge win for consumers. From a report: Question 1 was the most expensive measure battle in Massachusetts history with the auto industry (and independent repair companies) spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying, according to the Boston Globe. The measure is an essential win for independent mechanics, auto-repair shops, and consumers, as it will require car manufacturers to continue to make diagnostic tools available for years to come. Under the law, car manufacturers will be required to use an open-data system in cars using telematics. This means mechanics will have access to wirelessly sent repair data -- whether they are associated with an official car dealership or an independent shop. While cars currently use a wired connection for diagnostics, there was concern among independent repair professionals that car manufacturers would switch to a wireless system in order to circumvent a 2012 right to repair law that required car dealers make wired repair codes universal. As new car models are produced in coming years, the thought is many will ditch physical diagnostic ports and instead, cars will wirelessly send repair information. Tuesday's ballot measure closes a loophole in the 2012 law that would have exempted wireless diagnostics from the law. Right to repair advocates have hailed the measure. iFixit's Kevin Purdy wrote of the significance of the vote, "that means that independent repair shops will have a level playing field with car makers and dealerships, which have turned increasingly to locked-down wirelessly collected repair data, or telematics. Car owners, too, will be able to see their cars' maintenance information through a smartphone app. And it opens the door for innovations, like wireless diagnostic apps for iOS and Android."
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Re:Scope of accessibility? (Score:5, Informative)
force to provide whatever data on a vehicle they have stored in their cloud servers.
Nope, there's nothing in the law about accessing data on cloud servers. The data is to be accessible "directly from the motor vehicle via direct data connection"
with the law as written in the ballot question, all you need to get complete access to a vehicle telemetry is its VIN number.
Again, nope. The initiative does not mention anything about using the VIN number to get access, and also specifically says access is to be "upon the authorization of the vehicle owner".
Here's a link to the text of the initiative as passed:
https://www.mass.gov/files/doc... [mass.gov]
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Or the mechanic trying to access data proves he works in Massachusetts at the very least. The customer wouldn't have to be from Massachusetts, as long as he brought his car there for repair.
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I'd presume this opens the door for other states to adopt similar or identical measures. When enough of those measures are passed, it's probably easiest for manufacturers to comply on a broad basis, rather than attempting to make restrictions state by state.
California has done quite a bit to push forward industry standards like this, simply because they're such a large market that they have that sort of influence on the rest of the industry.
Of course, when California goes off the rails, people just stick a
And Ranked Choice Voting failed (Score:4, Insightful)
Win some, lose some. Those with a firm grasp on power don't want you to have more voting power. They'd prefer you be coerced into a choice of two lizards, and not having to offer a decent candidate.
That, and they have the money to convince enough people that it's a bad idea.
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According to Ballotpedia, most of the money was on the support side [ballotpedia.org]: $9.7 million in support, as opposed to $0.003 million to oppose. (Yep - all of $3,576.77 was spent opposing it.)
As for why it didn't pass - I dunno, I never got anything pushing it so I'm not sure what that $9.7 million was spent on. I expect people just didn't know what it was trying to accomplish and just voted to keep things as they are.
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Thank you for those numbers and that citation. I'm surprised by the distribution of the money also, and it seems that some research should be done into why it didn't pass (to prepare for the next ballot opportunity in a couple years).
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Now that I've actually read the subject and realize that we're talking about ranked choice voting here, I have to say that I don't think much research is required into why the initiative didn't pass. The reason is simple, most people think that it's more complicated for no good reason because they don't understand just how bad the simple plurality method that they're using already is. To most people one vote per person to cast for one candidate seems like the model of democracy: simple and honest. The more
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I agree with you on the evils of FPTP—it's a terrible system and I hate it—but ranked ballot voting has its problems too. In Canada, our Conservative party has been using it to select their leaders in the last few years, and what they end up with is terrible candidates that nobody likes. Instead of getting the least of all possible evils or the greatest compromise, they end up with a Candidate that's in the mushy middle that everyone agrees is kind of garbage. I'm pretty left wing, even by Canad
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According to Ballotpedia, most of the money was on the support side [ballotpedia.org]: $9.7 million in support, as opposed to $0.003 million to oppose. (Yep - all of $3,576.77 was spent opposing it.)
Recheck your source. The numbers you quote are for ballot question number 2: ranked choice voting.
For question number 1, which is the right to repair question we're discussing here, the numbers were $24,355,549.14 in support and $26,536,516.94 in opposition.
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D'oh. Rereading that, I now realize that you were both talking about ranked choice voting. It's there in the subject, just not in the actual body of your posts. Please disregard what I wrote.
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Please disregard what I wrote.
Or post on a forum that lets you edit your comments.
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I don't really have a problem with it. Honestly, discussion is better if people aren't able to go back and change what they wrote. Not that editing would be bad, per se, but it should be handled in such a way that what was edited was clear and the original is still obvious. So, maybe if there was a way that I could have put my admission of error and retraction inline without removing the original, it would be fine, but just being able to wipe out the record just seems wrong.
So, this way seems fine except fo
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You trying to change voting laws? Why. Which major party are you fraudulently supporting for! This is America, you can take my 1700s era FPTP voting system when you pry it out from under the fingers that grip my constitution and my firearm!
But seriously not being able to pass such a basic reform which would improve choice and representation is a clear indication as to why the USA won't ever be rid of it's stupid electoral college or 2 party system.
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If you lived in Massachusetts, you were inundated with Question 1 ads. They popped up on websites, social media, and streaming services too, even obscure ones. About 90% were from the car industry, but you'd also have heard the opposing view as well. All told about fifty million dollars was spent on advertising trying to sway voters one way or the other on right to repair.
I heard exactly nothing about ranked choice voting in the run up to the election. If I hadn't looked up what was going to be on the b
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What does "Make available" mean? (Score:2)
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Someone will post a copy then just hit up Astalavista for the crack or patch
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Someone will post a copy then just hit up Astalavista for the crack or patch
These days the software commonly has to phone home for codes to unlock modules, and it always has to phone home for update firmware for those modules. A cracked version of the software won't let you do everything you need to do because cars are now often shipped in an unfinished state, and patched later... just like every other kind of software.
Mom and Pop Tesla repair (Score:3)
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think about the OEM parts
But... (Score:1)
Wireless diagnostic apps? (Score:2)
And it opens the door for innovations, like wireless diagnostic apps for iOS and Android.
Uhh...I've had a wireless diagnostic app for years. For $15-20 you can pick up an OBD2-to-Bluetooth adapter [amazon.com] that plugs into the industry standard OBD2 port that you'll find in any car from the last few decades. From there, you can find dozens of apps available to connect to the adapter, thanks in large part to the fact that there are only a few companies making these components, so almost all of the adapters are simply a rebranding of the same parts as every other adapter. A couple of companies—such a
Re:Wireless diagnostic apps? (Score:4, Informative)
The referendum was about getting information that is not available from the ODB2 port. Your dongle will do nothing about this.
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There is also a lot going on over the OBD-II port that your general purpose diagnostic software won't handle, because the modules are locked, and the unlock codes are retrieved from the mothership in realtime by the diagnostic software, which requires an internet connection and a login. And they use nonstandard commands for many diagnostic functions. Only the stuff mandated by the spec is available with standard commands, and in standard locations.
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Go try hooking up any of those apps to the OBD-II on a Tesla, you'll get the VIN number and few other trivial pieces of information. The actual diagnostics require you to connect to another, non-standard connector with CAN buses and Ethernet, and log in using a Tesla Toolkit software (restricted). Even to get to the diagnostics menu on the internal screen you need a code from Tesla mothership which changes every few hours. Can it be hacked, sure, but no, you cannot buy a tool off of Amazon to do it.
Question (Score:2)
the thought is many will ditch physical diagnostic ports and instead, cars will wirelessly send repair information.
What happens when, not if, this data isn't being sent? How does this get fixed? Does the car have to be torn apart to see if the antenna is broken? Is there a board which needs replaced?
If the idea is that car manufacturers are too lazy to put in a physical port to get the data out, what happens when the wireless doesn't work?
Re:Question (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that they're too lazy to put in physical ports, but that before there was a law that customers had to be able to access data over physical ports (the previous "Right to Repair") so the car makers made it wireless to exploit a loophole.
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Yup. Tesla did this. While you CAN splice a ODB2 connector to the Can Bus wires (example: for model 3, at the back of the center console) it's not officially supported and the latest 2020 Tesla documents say it'll void the car's warranty.