While the EU Commission Delegated Act C-ITS favours Wifi as the baseline technology for connected cars, there is reason to worry that the Commission is playing favorites with technology.

So says Fred Roeder, managing director of the Consumer Choice Center who expresses consumers’ concerns at the Commission’s behaviour: “The Commission ought to provide a framework in which innovation and new technologies can make consumers’ lives easier and more affordable.

The delegated act on connected cars, however, doesn’t seem like a framework but our regulators crowning one particular technology as the champion for connectivity between cars and their surroundings,” said Roeder.

“We don’t know yet which solution will succeed by providing the best value to consumers. This we need to facilitate choice and competition. Imagine some regulation would have favoured Betamax in the early ’80s? We would probably still not even have the DVD but got stock with large disks. How would a technology jump from CDs to MP3 have been possible if a regulation would have prevented it?” said Roeder.

“For the sake of consumer choice and future innovation, the Commission needs to strictly adhere to technology neutrality and not pick winners of contests that are still ahead of us,” Roeder elaborated.

The CCC represents consumers in more than 100 countries across the globe. They monitor regulatory trends in Ottawa, Washington, Brussels, Geneva and other hotspots of regulation, and inform and activate consumers to fight for ConsumerChoice.

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