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Comment by madanparas

11 hours ago

Hyundai received 61 cents per vehicle from Verisk. Honda received 26 cents. California's $12.75M fine against GM, the largest CCPA penalty ever, is less than the $20M GM made from selling the data.

20 comments

madanparas

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Gigachad  11 hours ago

It's also surprising how little money is being made. If I was buying a new car and there was an option where I could pay 61 cents for the privacy respecting version, it would be a no brainer.

  • jandrewrogers  10 hours ago

    The automotive OEMs are really bad at monetizing this data. How much they make is not how much could be made if the same data was in the hands of more capable entities.

    • bluGill  1 hour ago

      I question how much they could really make though. It seems like my phone has better data on me and where I go - it is always with me and I use it for more things. Thus the car makers have data but it is a lower quality source for more things. The car makers also have less direct actions they can take - they can't show a video ad while I'm driving (unlike many phone apps) and when I'm not driving they can't do anything.

      They do have better information about maintenance needs of my car. However they are limited to giving that to the dealer who already can guess most of that anyway.

    • chii  8 hours ago

      So you as a privacy-desiring car buyer could offer 2 or 3 times more than 60cents to the car OEM. Or, even 10x more. The monetization of that data by the third party surely cannot be 10x their cost - that would be an enormous margin that seem unrealistic. But increasing the price of the car by $6 is almost a rounding error to the car price.

      Plus, if you were allowed to opt-out, the rest of the opt-in data from other people become _slightly_ less useful.

      Therefore, all the gov't needs to do is to mandate that car manufacturers offer the option at a reasonable price (where the 10x price is considered reasonable).

  • DanielHB  4 hours ago

    Car business is ruthless, any profit margin is squeezed as much as possible. The reason the infotainment performance is bad in a lot of cars is cost-cutting on the chips used.

    Procurement is expected to find ways % in cut costs continuously, every year, forever. Although data-gathering and selling is not part of procurement it is not surprising if car companies are exploring this.

  • haritha-j  7 hours ago

    That's what really gets me. Wasting an hour of my time is worth a few cents of advertising to instagram. That's how little my time is really worth.

    • pwagland  4 hours ago

      That's the advantage of externalised costs. It doesn't matter how high they are, you don't have to pay them!

      You see this in all sorts of places, for example, stealing an EV charging cable. To a thief, a $500 charging station is just $10 worth of copper waiting to be melted down. They don't care about the $490 deficit they left behind because that’s the victim's problem. Social media platforms, and apparently now car manufacturers, look through the exact same lens.

  • ehnto  10 hours ago

    Surely it costs more than that to run the internet connection as well. I know they choose to do that for other features and probably get good network deals, but the cost is tangible and I would be surprised if it worked out long term.

    • DanielHB  3 hours ago

      The hardest part is managing providers across multiple countries, if you want, for example, connectivity in Kazakhstan you either use a super expensive provider that supports a lot of countries, or you have to set up and manage separate contracts with providers in Kazakhstan.

      However if you care only about a one or two markets and cars are often already built inside that market...

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