Alliance for Automotive Innovation today urged the California Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom to enact Senate Bill 719 before a technically unworkable state requirement takes effect July 1 and potentially forces the suspension of new and used vehicle sales in California.
SB 719, authored by Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, updates the implementation schedule for vehicle technologies required under SB 1394, legislation enacted in 2024 to prevent perpetrators of domestic violence from using connected vehicle services to track, monitor, or harass survivors.
“Without SB 719 being signed into law before July 1, there is substantial risk that auto sales in California will be suspended,” said Curt Augustine, senior director of state affairs at Alliance for Automotive Innovation. “Automakers are already implementing the domestic violence victim protections required by SB 1394, but compliance with some elements of the law is impossible this year. The additional year provided by SB 719 merely aligns implementation with the reality of vehicle design and manufacturing.”
Despite the bill’s unanimous legislative support to date, last-minute opposition threatens to prevent its enactment before the July 1 deadline.
“Passage of Sen. Cabaldon’s bill is being complicated by last-minute opposition and misinformation by the trial lawyer ally Consumer Federation of California,” Augustine said. “Their misleading attempt to keep this bill from passage before July 1 should be confirmation that our members will be vulnerable to frivolous lawsuits for vehicles that cannot comply with the current deadline.”
SB 719 does not eliminate the protections established by SB 1394. Automakers have already implemented the law’s online process, allowing a qualified person to request the termination of another person’s access to connected vehicle services. That protection remains in effect, including the requirement that a completed request be acted upon within two business days.
The bill instead revises deadlines for in-vehicle technologies that require extensive engineering, testing, and integration across different makes, models, model years, and vehicle systems.
What SB 719 Changes – And What It Preserves
| Current Law Under SB 1394 | SB 719 |
| Requires a secure process through which a survivor or other qualified requestor can terminate another person’s access to connected vehicle services. A completed request must be acted upon within two business days. | Makes no substantive changes to the request process and two business-day deadline already in effect in California law. |
| Requires an in-vehicle mechanism to disable location access beginning July 1, 2026, for vehicles manufactured before 2028 that can receive the necessary software updates. | Moves the deadline to July 1, 2027, for model year 2027 and older vehicles, unless implementation is technologically infeasible. |
| Requires the in-vehicle disabling mechanism beginning Jan. 1, 2028, for vehicles manufactured on or after that date. | Requires implementation for 2028–2030 model year vehicles as soon as practicable after sale, unless technologically infeasible, and for all vehicles beginning with the 2031 model year. |
| Beginning Jan. 1, 2028, requires a vehicle to indicate when someone outside the vehicle has accessed connected vehicle services or vehicle-location information. | Beginning with the 2031 model year, requires the vehicle to clearly indicate whether connected vehicle location access is enabled. |
Vehicle development begins seven to eight years before a particular model reaches the road. Changes involving connected services must be engineered and validated to ensure they do not interfere with GPS, theft prevention systems, emergency services, advanced driver assistance systems, or other vehicle functions.
Those challenges are particularly significant for existing vehicles. Different makes, models, and trim levels use different combinations of hardware and software, and some vehicles cannot receive the required functionality through a software update alone. SB 719 recognizes those technical realities while requiring automakers to implement the protections wherever technologically feasible.
The automotive industry also has supported similar protections at the federal level. Alliance for Automotive Innovation supports the bipartisan Safe Vehicle Access for Survivors Act, introduced by Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), which would give domestic violence survivors in all states the ability to terminate or disable an abuser’s access to shared connected vehicle services.
SB 719 is currently pending before the Assembly Appropriations Committee and needs to be passed by both the full Assembly and Senate (on concurrence) and signed into law by Gov. Newsom before July 1.
