Canada Set to Side With China On EVs (www.thewirechina.com)

submitted 1 week ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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[-] LoveCanada@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Its odd you only point to one kind of car and one country.

Not odd at all. Germany has no plans to dominate the entire world economy last I checked. Or the Japanese. Or France. China does.

[-] hildegarde 4 points 1 week ago

then why bring up data at all? Or EVs? Proper data protection laws will protect Canadians regardless of the state of the market.

China dominating the world's market can be a bad thing on its own merits. There's no need to conflate these issues.

[-] LoveCanada@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Because an EVs oft touted "feature" is over the air updates. Gas/diesel vehicles dont generally update anything significant over the air because you CAN'T update mechanical parts over the air but you certainly can for a car thats basically a computer on wheels with software that controls everything.

So despite your comment, no, most gas/diesel cars are not designed to be permanently connected to the internet and transmitting data at any time, without your knowledge like EVs are most definitely like Chinese EVs will be.

I wish I had your confidence in 'proper data protection laws' in Canada. The EU seems to have done a half decent job on that but Canada and the US are so far behind that by the time we update our privacy laws everything that can be collected already will be.

[-] hildegarde 4 points 1 week ago

Mozilla did a study on cars and data collection. They found it was an industry wide problem. Every manufacturer tested collected tons of personal data and didn't keep it secure or private. Their writeup does not mention EVs, and it implicated brands like subaru which does not sell an EV in Canada or the US at time of writing.

This is not an EV problem.

Most cars have an internet connection. Many have a cellular modem built in. Modern infotainment systems use the internet and upload the data that way. Many cars also store data internally that is only accessible to authorized service centers through a proprietary tool, which will upload the data when serviced by a dealer. Data is valuable. Companies don't just refuse to exploit that value on principle.

I don't trust the laws as they currently exist, which is why I am advocating they be changed to stop this data collection.

All cars have this problem. EVs are not the issue. But not just cars, any device with a computer and an internet connection does this exact same thing. You can't play whack a mole banning countries in specific industries and do anything. The only solution is broad data protection laws.

The OTA updates thing is mostly the result of tesla's ineptitude and willingness to ship a defective product in the hopes they can fix it with a patch. They are not the only cars with internet connections.

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