Blog · Industry
Access by design, from 12 September
What the Data Act asks of connected vehicles, and what the platform provides.
In two days, on 12 September 2026, the last of the Data Act's three dates arrives. A connected product placed on the market after it has to be built so that its user can reach the data it produces.
Three dates
- 11 January 2024: the regulation entered into force, twenty days after it was published in the Official Journal.
- 12 September 2025: it applies. Users may access the data their product produces and share it with a third party.
- 12 September 2026: access by design, for connected products placed on the market after this date.
Access by design is Article 3(1). Product data has to be accessible to the user by default, free of charge, in a machine-readable format, and directly where that is technically feasible.
Who is in scope
Not every manufacturer, and not all at once. Article 7 spares micro and small enterprises from the access duties, unless they are linked to a larger group. A medium-sized manufacturer is in scope, with one year after each new product reaches the market. Everyone larger is in scope with no grace period.
It applies to every manufacturer selling into the EU, wherever it is based.
What the platform provides
c.technology is built for what the Act describes. The owner or driver sees the vehicle's data in the manufacturer's app. A third party the user chooses, a workshop, a fleet or an insurer, gets its own access, granted per organisation and per vehicle. The data is the same structured record the manufacturer's own systems read, over REST and streaming APIs.
Access is resolved on every request, so when the user withdraws it, it ends at once.
Between businesses the Act allows reasonable compensation. On the platform that is the manufacturer's own price for connectivity, set per vehicle and paid by the partner through checkout. Derived data stays the manufacturer's: predictive maintenance models, scores and other results of its own work are not raw vehicle data.
What we do not do is make anyone compliant. Nobody can say that for a manufacturer. We provide the mechanism the Act describes, and compliance stays with the manufacturer.
The dates, Article 7 and how the Act maps to the platform are on the Data Act page. To go through it for your own vehicles, talk to our team.