Connected cars generate huge volumes of sensor, telemetry and operational data. The global connected vehicle fleet is projected to reach 2.1 billion vehicles by 2035, according to forecasts from Transforma Insights.

For safety, navigation and fleet management, that data often needs near‑real‑time processing, yet jurisdictions around the world place differing requirements on where certain data may be stored, processed or transferred. Using a traditional approach, sending everything back to a distant home-routed gateway, creates regulatory risk, increases latency and undermines reliability. The old approach is not suitable for this growing vertical.

Between the EU Data Act and the U.S. Connected Vehicle Security Act, automotive OEMs and fleet managers are facing a legal minefield. If your vehicle data crosses a border, it shouldn’t. You aren’t just looking at a latency issue; you’re looking at a costly compliance failure.

The following countries have implemented specific mandates that fundamentally change how vehicle telemetry, location data, and “important data” must be handled.

The EU Data Act (fully applicable as of late 2025/early 2026) mandates that users have a right to access data generated by their connected products. As a result, OEMs can no longer lock data in proprietary silos. Furthermore, the GDPR continues to restrict the transfer of personal driving behaviour (telemetry) outside the EEA unless “adequate” protections are in place. For connected vehicles, this means data must often be processed at the “nearest” point to the driver to ensure user access rights are met in real-time.

The Department of Commerce has finalised rules (effective 2026) that ban or strictly limit “connected vehicle software” with a connection to “foreign adversaries”.

As a result, any data routing that touches infrastructure owned or controlled by restricted foreign entities creates an immediate barrier to U.S. market entry. Fleet operators must ensure their data routing is logically isolated from restricted networks, keeping critical vehicle systems—from OTA updates to drivetrain telemetry—within trusted US-aligned infrastructure.

China’s management of data security in the automotive sector requires “important data” (including V2X, mapping, and high-definition traffic data) to be stored within mainland China.

This means cross-border transfer of vehicle data now requires a rigorous security assessment by the CAC (Cyberspace Administration of China). For global OEMs, this effectively necessitates a “logical wall”, where vehicle data remains localised and only anonymised, high-level insights are exported to global headquarters.

The Act on the Protection and Use of Location Information (LIA) and the 2026 amendments to the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA).

South Korea treats location data with extreme sensitivity. Under the LIA, any entity collecting location data from a “mobile object” (a car) must obtain specific prior consent and, in many cases, store that data on domestic servers. Penalties for non-compliance can now reach up to 10% of total revenue.

As of May 2026, India has begun enforcing strict “Data Fiduciary” responsibilities. While the government can notify certain “trusted” countries for data transfer, the default stance for automotive telemetry, often categorised as personal data, is that it must be processed according to Indian privacy standards, with a heavy preference for domestic processing to ensure the “Right to Erasure” and “Right to Correction” can be enforced locally.

The Law: Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD).

Similar to the GDPR, the Brazilian LGPD requires that data collected in Brazil must follow the user. If vehicle data is transferred to a country with “lower” protection standards, the OEM is liable. Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) has stepped up audits on automotive IoT platforms, focusing on where telemetry is “terminated” and who has access to it.

Stacuity’s Edge‑as‑a‑Service (EaaS) addresses these problems by providing a global network of packet gateways (P‑GWs) that enable regional breakout, data isolation and secure local processing

Compliance shouldn’t slow down innovation. Whether you are managing a fleet of long-haul trucks across the EU or launching a new EV in North America, the network is your first line of defence.

By shifting control from a centralized core to the Programmable Edge, Stacuity enables you to keep sensitive vehicle data exactly where regulators require it, all while delivering the low-latency, resilient processing essential for modern automotive safety and operations.