Every 30 seconds, each electric vehicle made and driven in China is obliged to send data to the Chinese government including such details as the car’s position, direction and speed.
The figures can pinpoint the location of the car to within a metre, and generate an “insane amount of data” — in the order of 1 gigabyte per car per month — for the government, according to one engineer working on the project.
All companies producing electric vehicles are obliged to collect and share this data under Chinese laws and technical standards passed over the past three years. They are part of a wider move by Beijing to pressure companies into ceding more control of their data.