Automotive Technology
Introduction
Automotive technology is reshaping what a car is, from over-the-air software updates and driver-assistance systems to connectivity, electrification, and the data your vehicle collects. This hub is your evergreen guide to the tech under the hood and behind the dashboard, and to the debates over repairability, ownership, and privacy that come with it. The Auto Wire covers ADAS, infotainment, telematics, and the friction between automakers and the people who buy their cars. Use this page to understand how the technology works, where it is heading, and how it connects to safety, reliability, and the electric future.
Table of Contents
- The Modern Connected Car
- Driver-Assistance and Autonomy
- Infotainment and Connectivity
- Over-the-Air Updates and Software
- Data, Privacy, and Telematics
- Right to Repair
- The Future of Car Tech
- Latest News
- Related Guides
- Expert Resources
- Recommended Reading
- Frequently Asked Questions
The Modern Connected Car
Driver-Assistance and Autonomy
Levels of Automation
Limits of Self-Driving
Infotainment and Connectivity
Over-the-Air Updates and Software
Feature Subscriptions
Software-Locked Hardware
Data, Privacy, and Telematics
Right to Repair
The Future of Car Tech
Latest News
[DYNAMIC BLOCK PLACEHOLDER — auto-populate with latest posts tagged Technology / industry / Government Regulation.]
Related Guides
[INTERNAL LINK PLACEHOLDER — link to sibling hubs: Electric Vehicles, Car Safety, Vehicle Reliability, Traffic Incidents, Car Recalls.]
Expert Resources
[EXTERNAL AUTHORITY PLACEHOLDER — SAE International, NHTSA ADAS resources, manufacturer tech pages, Repair.org.]
Recommended Reading
- [Article placeholder] Jim Farley Thinks Your Car Is Too Dumb — /2026/06/22/jim-farley-thinks-your-car-is-too-dumb/
- [Article placeholder] Cops Are Using License Plate Readers — /2026/06/22/cops-are-using-license-plate-readers-to-stalk-their/
- [Article placeholder] Automotive Physics Lab — page ID 30736
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a connected car?
What are the levels of driving automation?
Is full self-driving available today?
What data does my car collect about me?
What are over-the-air updates?
Why are automakers charging subscriptions for features?
What is right to repair and why does it matter?
Can car software be hacked?
Are ADAS features standard on new cars?
Will my car become outdated as software changes?
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Latest News (Auto-Updating)
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Porsche Signed A $1.46 Billion AI Deal. Investors Sold The Stock Anyway.
Porsche spent this week trying to sell investors a story about artificial intelligence. The stock market read the same press release and sold the shares instead. On August 25, Porsche AG signed a five-year, roughly €1.25 billion ($1.46 billion) services agreement with Tata Consultancy Services, the Indian IT giant that is also acquiring MHP, Porsche’s…
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Mazda’s New Safety Feature Sounds Great Until You Realize Mazda Built None Of It
Mazda wants credit today for making the highway shoulder a safer place. Read past the headline, and most of that credit belongs to two other companies, using technology that already existed, that only works if the driver behind you happens to be running the right app. That’s not a knock on the idea. It’s a…
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Porsche Sold Its Own Consulting Arm, Then Paid Four Times as Much to Rent It Back
Porsche spent three decades building a consulting firm from scratch, spent 2023 buying out the last outside shareholders so it would own all of it, and on August 24 sold the entire thing to an Indian technology conglomerate that most Porsche owners have never heard of. That’s not even the interesting part. The interesting part…
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Hyundai Just Settled Its Strike. Its Next New Hire Doesn’t Need a Raise, a Union Card, or a Retirement Age.
Hyundai Motor and its union reached a tentative agreement this week to end the company’s first full-day strike in a decade, and on paper it reads like a clean win for labor: a raise, a bigger bonus, hundreds of new jobs, and a real shot at a longer working life. Union members vote on it…
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Blame Yourself: America Lets the Fastest Drivers Write the Speed Limits
AAA says speeding is the new normal. The deeper story is that America sets speed limits from how fast drivers already drive, and every new car already knows the number.
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Hyundai Cut Crash Test Review Time By 90 Percent. That’s Not Even Close to the Interesting Part.
Hyundai’s AI numbers are big. The real story is a 2019 data infrastructure decision that most competitors haven’t made yet — and that seven-year head start is the actual competitive advantage.
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Reynolds and Reynolds Got a Manager to Sign a 66-Month DMS Extension. The Dealers Say It Wasn’t His To Sign.
Sixty-six months. That’s not a contract. That’s a sentence. A standard Reynolds and Reynolds dealer management system agreement already runs three to five years, with four percent annual cost increases locked in from day one. Now imagine someone signed your stores into an additional 66-month extension on top of whatever was already in place. Five…
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Toyota And Hyundai Got Caught Tracking Drivers. GM Already Put A Price On It: $25 Billion.
Five years before Australian regulators opened a file on Toyota and Hyundai, General Motors stood in front of a room of investors and put a number on exactly what a modern car’s data is worth. Not a guess. A target, published in a press release and repeated in filings with U.S. securities regulators: $20 billion…
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Cars.com Just Had a Record Quarter – By Politely Admitting Fewer People Are Showing Up
Cars.com told investors this week that it just posted the fastest revenue growth in its history as a public company, excluding the freak rebound after the pandemic. Then, a few slides later, it told them something that should have been the headline instead: fewer people are actually visiting Cars.com than before. Management didn’t bury that…
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This State’s New AI Truck Cameras Aren’t Really About Safety. They’re About Lawsuits.
New Hampshire announced this week that its Department of Transportation is wiring artificial intelligence cameras into its state vehicles. Local coverage played it like a gadget story: smart cameras that spot crashes, log near-misses, and watch snowplows work through a storm. That’s the press release version. The real story sits one layer down, in a…
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GM Built 250,000 EVs That Could Power the Grid. The Hard Part Was Never the Technology
Somewhere in Michigan and Northern California, a handful of GM electric vehicles are already sending electricity backward, out of the battery and into the grid. That is not really the news this week. The news is that GM has built more than 250,000 vehicles capable of doing exactly that, and almost none of them ever…
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LAPD Quit Flock’s Camera Network Two Weeks Ago. Connecticut’s Smallest Towns Just Reached the Same Conclusion.
Somewhere in Killingworth, Connecticut, population barely 6,500, a handful of elected officials just made the same call as the Los Angeles Police Department, the country’s second-largest police force. Both walked away from Flock Safety’s license plate camera network within weeks of each other. That’s the real story hiding under this summer’s headlines about sawed-through camera…