Gadgetory

I'm Brian Cooley from CNET on cars taking another one of your emails about high-tech cars and modern driving this one comes in from dr. Ron in Reno Nevada who says some of us like to add equipment to our cars that the manufacturer only offered on a more expensive model or not at all case in point he says I put vmw zone night-vision system into his 2016 328i sports wagon that's a model that doesn't offer BMW night vision pretty creative he says he used an independent shop after the dealer said they wouldn't do it and told him it would void his warranty he says I did it was sacrificed my cupholders to make room for the LCD screen you can see some of those photos there where he put the screen and where he put the front sensor he says could you explain to your audience how the 1975 Moss Magnuson warranty act affects consumers who choose to add options or obtain service not approved or provided by the manufacturer interesting topic Ron this is so big and weighty I'm actually gonna do a whole car tech 101 on it in our next episode episode 84 the meantime let me give you a couple of quick pointers here on the three entities that have something to say about this first of all as you mentioned the Magnussen Moss Warranty Act of 1975 this one's enforced by the FTC the Federal Trade Commission here in the US what Magnussen law says is you don't have to use factory parts and you don't have to go to the dealer to get your work done to keep your car in warranty the caveat to that is if you go use aftermarket parts that are crap or go to a lousy independent shop and either of those cause damage to the car that is not under warranty the next one I want to tell you about is what's called CPE Insurance this is customer provided equipment it's an insurance industry term you are insured in your insurance policy for the stuff that the factory put on the car if you go and say add a fancy tire and wheel package to your car or put on a completely cool stainless aftermarket exhaust and that gets damaged in a collision it may not be covered the insurance strictly covers what was put there by the factory for the most part anything substantial beyond that may not be in your coverage you got to look for the CPE language in your policy and/or see if your insurer requires you to take out a separate CPE writer to cover the specific things you've added it's kind of like adding jewelry to your home insurance policy you know that works you got sometimes do declared a special coverage above and beyond the basics and the third and final one here is a more of an outlier but becoming a big topic lately and that is the DMCA the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which has lately been interpreted to say if you go into a car and change its firmware its software that lives on chips you are in theory breaking the DMCA you're breaking a copyright law that says you can't reverse engineer or hack into that kind of technology that intellectual property which the car maker has burned into the chips in your car the most recent interpretations though are saying you have the right to at least go into the firmware to diagnose a car and work in the code of the vehicle you don't have to stay out of there and leave it to the dealer but a lot of the stuff is being tested and figured out right now we'll talk more about it in car tech 101-80 in our next episode