Automakers Warn California’s Stalking-Victim Law Could Freeze New Car Sales July 1. Don’t Bet On It

Automakers are sounding alarms over a California law that could, in theory, halt new car sales starting July 1, but the actual risk of a showroom shutdown is vanishingly small. The dispute isn’t about whether automakers comply with core protections for domestic violence survivors—those are already in place. Instead, the fight centers on a far more contentious requirement: forcing automakers to let drivers disable location tracking directly from inside their vehicles. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents nearly every major automaker in the U.S., is urging lawmakers and Governor Gavin Newsom to fast-track SB 719, a bill that would delay parts of SB 1394, California’s domestic violence survivor protection law. The industry argues that retrofitting millions of existing cars to add a one-tap location-disabling feature is a monumental engineering challenge. Different vehicles run on varied hardware, software, and telematics systems, and disrupting GPS, theft prevention, emergency services, or advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) could have serious consequences. The group is pushing for a deadline extension to July 1, 2027, for older vehicles and 2031 for all vehicles—dates it claims would give automakers the time needed to implement the change safely. However, the bill doesn’t just seek a delay. It also removes a provision that would alert vehicle occupants if someone outside the car accessed its connected services or location data. Automakers aren’t exactly blameless here. For years, they’ve heavily invested in systems that harvest location and vehicle data, often prioritizing corporate value over robust privacy controls. Now, they’re arguing that retrofitting those systems with privacy safeguards is nearly impossible because they were never designed with such features in mind. Despite the dramatic headlines, insiders expect lawmakers, regulators, and automakers to hammer out a compromise long before California’s dealerships face an empty-floor crisis.