By Eric Peters
Eric Peters Autos
June 8, 2026
You have probably heard about what are styled right to repair laws - or efforts to get such laws passed. They are a response to the encoding of cars; more finely, to the denial of access to the coding that runs the computer-controlled modern car. Not just the engine but everything, down to the power windows (which are controlled by mini-computers called body control modules). Your name may be on the title and you're the one who paid for the vehicle - but ownership is effectively claimed by the vehicle's manufacturer, who claims perpetual ownership over the code (the software) that runs the vehicle and its systems.
It is the Bill Gates model applied to vehicles.
You may remember when you bought a box that contained a CD that had the software in it. Once you bought what was in the box, you owned what was on the disc that came in the box. You could install it on multiple computers. You could give the CD (and so the software) to your kid or a friend and they could use it, much as you could hand-me-down your old car to your kid. That changed - as regards software - when Gates decided to sell you a license to use the software rather than the software itself. This license was limited. You could not make a copy or hand it down to your kid. You also had to pay again at some point to continue to be allowed to continue to use the software.
This same business model - a polite term for it - is being applied to vehicles, piece-by-piece, in the manner of getting the frog used to the warming water. You have probably heard about how Tesla and BMW want people to buy subscriptions to features such as heated seats. You're allowed to use these features so long as you continue to pay for them. But you never stop paying for them (assuming you want to continue using them). Even if the car is paid off.
A subtler implementation of this extractive scheme is to deny the owner the right to repair his own vehicle - effectively - by denying him access to the computer code needed to diagnose and repair it. In some cases, even to the extent that a new/replacement part will not work - even if it is a correct, brand-new part and properly installed - if the computer does not "recognize" it. The vehicle must be hooked up to the vehicle's manufacturer's Hive Mind in order to "pair" the new part with the vehicle. Otherwise, the part won't work. The trick - the extractive scheme - is that access to the Hive mind is controlled by the vehicle's manufacturer, who only allows access via its "authorized" network of dealers and repair shops - effectively forcing you to pay them to "unlock" your vehicle's otherwise ineffable electronica.
Enter what are styled right to repair laws. The idea is laudable. It is that the owner ought to be the owner of the vehicle he bought. Including the invisible stuff that runs it. Or at least, he ought to be able to freely access it, so that he can diagnose and repair problems himself. This is fine - as far as it goes.
The problem is it does not go far enough.
First, even if laws are passed affirming the right to repair, what does it mean - as a practical matter - if the owner still has to buy access to the equipment needed to access the information (the data) needed to repair it?
You can buy a hand-held scan tool and plug it in to any new vehicle's OnBoard Diagnostic (OBD II) port. All vehicle made since the early 2000s have these OBD II ports and they are universal; i.e., the scan tool will plug into any and all of them. However, the scan tools don't necessarily provide all the information needed to service the car. Repair shops have access to all the latest information but they have to pay a subscription to keep it viable (updated). Right-to-repair laws would affirm you have the right to the information - but (probably) you'll still have to pay for it. If the cost is exorbitant, your "right" is as meaningless as your "right" to buy a new Ferrari.
Go right ahead - if you can afford to.
The more interesting thing brought up by these right-to-repair efforts is the broader reality that we do not control our vehicles anymore; not if they are new or made since the dawn of the connected car era, which dawned about a decade or so ago. Since that time, all new vehicles are at least in principle externally controllable, via over-the-air "updates." This "updating" is presented as benign; your car is merely receiving the very latest software - to make it run more efficiently, you see. But the fact is the vehicle can be controlled externally and by dint of that, they control you. By extension, you do not own your vehicle anymore than you own the right to your own labor or the home you paid off but which you're still obliged to pay the government thousands of dollars every year in "property taxes" - else be ejected from what isn't and can never be your property for exactly that reason.
You can at least still assert ownership over a vehicle and your right to repair it without having to pay a fee to be allowed to try to repair it - by not buying a connected or encoded car. My old muscle car is actually mine, because no one else can access it or "update" it. I control it. Every last bit of it.
If you want a car like that, you have to be willing to own a car made before encoding and connectedness became a thing, which means at least a decade old as regards the connectedness and decades old as regards the encoding. Computers began to control cars circa the early 1980s. That's how far you'll need to go back to be really free of what Paul Joseph Watson styles modernity.
He does not mean electricity or hot and cold indoor plumbing. He means the world the technocrats have in store for us. The one in which we rent to use and are thus reduced to propertyless serfs, owning nothing - and probably feeling pretty miserable on account of it.
This article was originally published on Eric Peters Autos.