[MikeW]

How would they know the car was driven in loops for 10 miles in Lincoln unless the device was recording {the GPS coords, engine state, battery state}.

This sounds like spyware. I'd love to know if that data was being periodically fed back to Nissan wirelessly or read at the time the car was returned.

I'd love to know if this tracking is fitted in all their cars of this model, or just ones they hand out for review.

Such fine-grained tracking doesn't sound like a good thing at all.

[raganwald]

Good question. Many cars used in specialty markets are outfitted with incredibly detailed diagnostics. For example, when exotic cars are rented for TV and movie shoots, the fine print includes hefty surcharges if the cars are driven faster than the speed limit and so forth. The data is downloaded and checked when the car is returned.

A test vehicle supplied to journalists might have similar diagnostic capabilities turned on. Then again, perhaps every Leaf has this, it's hard to imagine building a modern electric car without including sophisticated computing, and logging data is part of what computers do.

I doubt it's malicious, but as cars get more sophisticated, the possibility of leaking privacy through your onboard diagnostics does become an issue.

Thanks for raising the question.

[brudgers]

Nothing nefarious in telemetry when a car is being road tested by journalists...for reasons which this story illustrates.

<snark>Maybe Nissan just left their iPhone inside it.</snark>

[beej71]

There's no way I'd give an electric car to Top Gear to test unless I loaded it up with stuff like that first. :-)

[maushu]

Trying to track every car they sell would be ludicrous. I'm guessing they put this on the review/test cars. Which makes sense.

[jodrellblank]

Why would it be ludicrous? At the cost of $11 for an 8Gb flash drive, they could easily build in compressed coordinate logging for a whole lot of journeys for that money, and have them copied off with the diagnostic logs at every service, and fed back to HQ.

All they have to do is say it's for to offer a better product, for roadside rescue and aggregated into a non-personal store after 30 days, and it would probably be fine.

[vilda]

"Nissan VP Andy Palmer accused Top Gear of deceiving its viewers, pointing out that the telemetrics in the Leaf had wirelessly updated the car company on the production crew’s actions."

http://www.slashgear.com/nissan-blasts-top-gear-for-misleadi...

[kinofcain]

More likely the Nissan engineers were on hand, as are representatives from companies of most of the cars they test including the Tesla, to handle any problems and ensure that the filming can go ahead.