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Will my car become outdated as software changes?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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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…
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Ford’s Self-Assembling Car Fortress Isn’t Really About Stopping Thieves. It’s About a Battery Problem Nobody Talks About
Ford has a patent application describing cars that arrange themselves into a defensive ring around other cars, and it reads exactly as strange as that sounds. But strip away the wall-of-cars headline, and the interesting part isn’t security at all. It’s what the filing quietly assumes has to be true before any of this works:…
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Your Headlights Aren’t Illegal. They’re Just Legally Blinding You.
Somewhere on a two-lane road tonight, a lifted pickup or a three-row SUV is going to fill your mirrors with enough light to make your eyes water. You’ll flip the rearview to night mode, squint anyway, and mutter something about whoever engineered that thing. Here’s the part that should actually bother you: nothing about those…
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The Grappler Was Built To End Deadly Police Chases. Almost Nobody Actually Has One
Somewhere in Mesa, Arizona, in June of 2023, a fleeing driver who had just struck a pedestrian at an intersection takeover got run down not by a spike strip, not by a PIT maneuver, but by a net. An Arizona Department of Public Safety sergeant fired a device called the Grappler Police Bumper, wrapped the…
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The Kill Switch Already in Millions of Financed Cars
Ask any repo agent how the job used to work, and you’ll hear the same story: a truck, a slim jim, a 2 a.m. tow, and a homeowner yelling from a window. That version of repossession is already fading in one fast-growing pocket of the auto market. Increasingly, the repo doesn’t need a truck at…
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Hyundai And Kia’s Self-Disinfecting Cars Aren’t Really About Germs. They’re About Cars No One’s Left To Clean.
Hyundai and Kia just told the world they’re building UV lights into car interiors to kill bacteria and viruses. Read the announcement and you’ll come away thinking this is about a fresher-smelling back seat. Read between the lines and you’ll notice something else: nobody in the press materials talks about who is supposed to be…
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Ford’s New Remote Kill Switch Isn’t Really About Stopping Car Thieves. It’s About Owning The Off Switch.
Ford wants you picturing a thief. Someone jimmies open your F-150, leaves your own key on the seat, and floors it down the interstate while you stand on the curb reaching for your phone. That’s the scenario in every headline about Ford’s expanded Start Inhibit feature this month, and it’s a real scenario the technology…
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A Zoox Robotaxi Drove Blind Into a Wall of Smoke at a Fire Scene. A Human Had to Rescue It
On June 20, an empty Zoox robotaxi drove into a wall of smoke on a street in Las Vegas, hard-braked, tried to steer around a fire scene it couldn’t see, and stalled out short of it. What got the car moving again wasn’t its cameras, its lidar, or a single line of self-driving code. It…
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Flock Killed Its Scream-Detecting Microphones. The License-Plate Dragnet Bolted Next to Them Is Doing Just Fine
Flock Safety wants credit for backing off something creepy. Fair enough. It earned some. The company has ended a pilot feature called Distress Detection, which used its network of gunshot-sensing microphones to listen for human screaming. Seven months of pressure from privacy advocates did the trick. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had been sounding the…
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The New Mazda CX-5 Aces IIHS’s Nastiest Crash Test. The 2025 Model Would’ve Just Plowed Through the Motorcycle
Somewhere at an IIHS test facility last year, a Mazda CX-5 was aimed at a motorcycle-shaped target and told to stop itself before impact. Most of the time, it simply didn’t try. Run the test six times, at three speeds, from centered and offset angles, and five of six trials ended the same way: the…