> It really just smacks of greed and nothing else... selling cars has a long history of being a profitable business on its own. You don't need to steal your customers' data to turn it into another revenue stream, but it sure looks good on a financial report.
Its not only greed, its also a race to the bottom. If you're GM, you might prefer not doing that, but if your competition starts doing that, then you're at a competitive disadvantage, because they'll have more money to invest in engineers/production optimization, etc. So the logic then goes that you might as well do it first.
This is a case where you need government regulations to enforce mutual disarmament.
Or GM could not do it, and loudly advertise the fact that their cars are more private than their competitors, who snitch on you to insurance companies. The marketing alone would be worth far more than they gain from selling the data.
Its not only greed, its also a race to the bottom. If you're GM, you might prefer not doing that, but if your competition starts doing that, then you're at a competitive disadvantage, because they'll have more money to invest in engineers/production optimization, etc. So the logic then goes that you might as well do it first.
This is a case where you need government regulations to enforce mutual disarmament.