China to track EV data, including driver locations

One of these centers, the Shanghai Electric Vehicle Data Collection, Monitoring and Research Center, can collect information on all electric vehicles driving on Shanghai's roads – more than 222,000 vehicles. And the screens show where each vehicle is in real time.

Naturally, this type of practice raises issues of confidentiality. "The government wants to know what people are doing at all times and react as quickly as possible," said Maya Wang, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch for China. AP. "There is no protection against state surveillance.Vehicle surveillance is one of the main objectives of their mbad surveillance." And the Chinese government is known to track down its citizens. She recently launched a program where she could start searching for all new cars with RFID tags.

But Ding Xiaohua, deputy director of the Shanghai center, said the goal was not monitoring. Instead, the data is meant to be used to help the government enhance public safety, inform infrastructure planning, and fight subsidy fraud. "We can provide a lot of consumer data to the government to help them improve their policies and their planning," said Ding. And while admitting that the government could request the information gathered by its center, he said at the AP that the center did not share data with the police, prosecutors or courts. He also claimed that the system included a firewall for the protection of privacy and that the center could not connect a car to its owner without the badistance of the manufacturer of the car.

However, Ding also noted that this does not mean that the government can not follow the citizens and their vehicles. "Frankly speaking, the government does not need to monitor via a platform like ours," he said.

A handful of companies, including Volkswagen, GM, Tesla and Daimler, told the AP that they transmit data to third parties when the law requires it. Volkswagen noted that personal data is not included in this data exchange.

While many may be concerned with this data tracking, others seem to think it's completely normal. "If you're concerned," Min Zeren, owner of Tesla, told the AP, "then there is no way to live in this country."