BYD New Zealand puts data storage in the spotlight
Words: Autocar
BYD New Zealand reckons the personal data held by your car consists of a VIN number and an email address.
While it’s kept on Australian servers, you can turn the whole connected system off if you want to.
BYD Auto NZ general manager Warren Willmot made the case on a livestream the company ran to walk fleets and private owners through what its connected cars collect and where it goes.
He went straight at the question that follows every Chinese brand around.
“The car is not listening to you talk to your partner. It’s not watching you pick your nose,” Willmot says. “That data is simply not going anywhere.”
Most of what a BYD generates is operational, he says, things like battery status, diagnostics and performance data that the car needs to run. Much of it isn’t stored for long. The personal part is small: a VIN, an email and login details, passed to BYD Australia so the app and remote access work. Willmot says there’s no biometric data, no facial recognition and no tracking beyond that.
The VIN and email list is reportedly housed on Amazon servers in Australia.
“It’s not going to China. It’s not going anywhere globally,” he says.
Willmot says the systems use encrypted communications, secure HTTPS, multifactor authentication and regular vulnerability scanning, in line with ISO and UN cybersecurity standards. Location data, when the car uses it, is deleted once it’s done the job.
You can also reportedly switch the connected features off, decline updates or delete your data, he says, and if you are still not comfortable, BYD can disconnect the car from the network completely.
“Ultimately, this is your data,” Willmot says.
His pitch is that the data is worth more to owners than it is to anyone wanting to snoop, because it lets the car charge smarter and feed into things like digital road user charges.
“We don’t see data as something to exploit,” he says. “It’s something to protect, respect and use responsibly.”
