For years, fleet operators across Europe lived a paradox: their vehicles produced enormous amounts of operational data — actual mileage, fuel consumption, engine status, position, driver behaviour — but the owner of the vehicle couldn’t access it. The data sat behind a manufacturer’s proprietary app, an imposed telematics service contract, or simply a closed digital drawer.
Since 12 September 2025, that has changed. And in 2026, as fleet managers across the EU start to confront the new regulatory framework, understanding what actually happened is the first step to stop paying the price of OEM lock-in.
Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 — better known as the EU Data Act — gives connected-vehicle owners the legal right to access the data their vehicles produce, and to nominate a third-party data recipient to receive and analyse it on their behalf. Without going through the manufacturer. Without signing imposed telematics contracts.
If you operate a fleet — even a small one — this article explains what changed, what your rights are, and how to start exercising them.
What Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 actually says
The Data Act is an EU regulation that entered into force on 11 January 2024 and became applicable on 12 September 2025. Its scope is broad: it covers all connected products that generate data — from IoT devices to industrial machinery — but for the automotive sector its impact is particularly tangible.
Three principles are directly relevant to fleet operators.
First: data follows the user, not the manufacturer. If you own (or hold under operating lease or long-term rental) a connected vehicle, you have the right to access the data the vehicle produces. Not as a manufacturer’s concession — as a right guaranteed by EU law.
Second: you can nominate a third-party data recipient. You have the right to ask the manufacturer to transmit the data directly to a service provider you choose — a telematics partner, a fleet management platform, a predictive maintenance system. No manual export, no detour through the OEM’s app.
Third: terms must be FRAND. The manufacturer cannot impose punitive prices or restrictive contractual terms designed to lock out competitors. Access conditions must be fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory — which means, in practice, that an OEM cannot charge a third-party provider a thousand times more than it charges its own integrated service.
On top of these, the European Commission published Vehicle Data Guidance in late 2024 that clarifies several automotive-specific points — including the explicit confirmation that operational vehicle data (mileage, consumption, diagnostic codes, battery state) falls fully within the Data Act’s scope.
Your rights as a fleet owner
Translating the regulation into practice means listing what, since September 2025, you can do that you couldn’t do before.
You can request access to the data of your connected vehicles. Even if the vehicle is leased — provided the lease agreement recognises you as the “user” of the product, which is standard for operating leases.
You can nominate Optivo (or any other qualified third-party provider) as the data recipient. This is the heart of the change. Before the Data Act, if you wanted to use a fleet management platform other than the manufacturer’s, you had to install aftermarket hardware — an OBD device, a CAN bus integration, a dongle. Now you can simply consent for the manufacturer to transmit the data to your chosen provider.
You can switch providers without losing your historical data. One of the most important clauses in the Data Act is the right to portability. If you decide to change telematics provider tomorrow, you have the right to take the collected data with you. No more platform hostage situations.
You can refuse the manufacturer’s right to use your data for further purposes. The regulation distinguishes between data access (which is your right) and the manufacturer’s use of the data (which requires your consent). If the OEM wants to resell your fleet data to an insurance partner, they must ask. You can say no.
What the Data Act does not give you is worth saying too: it doesn’t grant access to data protected by the manufacturer’s trade secrets (e.g. proprietary ECU calibration parameters), nor data of other users if the vehicle is shared. But for a corporate fleet operator, these are largely theoretical limits — the operational data you actually need is in scope.
What changes in practice: three concrete scenarios
Rules are abstract; real situations aren’t. Here are three typical scenarios for an EU fleet manager in 2026.
Scenario 1: a leased fleet across one manufacturer group
You’re a mid-sized distribution company with 25 light commercial vehicles from VW Commercial Vehicles on a 60-month operating lease. The lease includes a basic telematics package from the OEM — enough for GPS tracking, but nothing more.
Before the Data Act: if you wanted accurate consumption data, driver scoring, integration with your TMS, you had to pay an upgrade to the telematics package (at imposed prices) or install aftermarket hardware on all 25 vehicles — with installation costs, double-source-of-truth issues, and an aftermarket device that doesn’t talk to the onboard system.
After the Data Act: you give consent to VW (or to the leasing operator, depending on the contractual chain) to transmit operational data to Optivo directly via API. Zero hardware. Data arrives already normalised. Activate a new vehicle by adding the VIN. End a lease and revoke access. Clean.
Scenario 2: a mixed fleet across multiple OEMs
You manage a fleet of 40 vehicles: 15 heavy-duty Iveco trucks, 10 VW Crafter vans, 8 Renault cars for sales reps, 7 Tesla Model 3 for management. Four manufacturers, four proprietary apps, four different telematics packages.
Before the Data Act: four separate dashboards, four subscription contracts, no way to compare vehicles on a homogeneous basis. To get a unified view, you had to install aftermarket hardware across the entire fleet — and at that point you’d ignore the onboard systems anyway.
After the Data Act: you collect access consent for each of the four groups (VW Group, Renault Group, Tesla, plus Iveco for the units that support it) and route all data into the same fleet management platform. One dashboard. A consolidated view. For older vehicles that aren’t natively connected (some of the Ivecos, perhaps), you can keep an OBD device; for the rest, you go direct. If you want to think through how to manage a mixed fleet coherently, this deep-dive on diesel-electric transition goes into detail.
Scenario 3: transition to an electric fleet
You have 20 diesel vans coming to end-of-life and you’re evaluating the switch to electric. Sustainability is a contractual requirement from a major customer, and you need to prove the avoided emissions — estimates aren’t enough, certified data is.
Before the Data Act: if you bought 20 EVs, the quality of telematics data depended on the manufacturer and the package you signed up for. Some gave real-time access to Battery State of Health, others only periodic exports, others only via the owner’s app. Building a homogeneous ESG report was hard.
After the Data Act: you have the right to request operational vehicle data — including real mileage, energy consumption per route, battery state — and to integrate it into a single system. ESG reporting becomes a natural by-product of operations, not a separate exercise. If you’re planning the transition, we covered the parameters worth tracking in this piece on next-generation EV telematics.
How to start exercising your rights
Right, so you have rights. Now what?
Step 1: audit your fleet’s connectivity. How many of your vehicles are natively connected? Most post-2018 models are (with some exceptions among older heavy commercials). For each connected vehicle, identify the manufacturer and VIN.
Step 2: verify the consent chain. Are you the owner of the vehicle, or are you a lessee? If you’re leasing, check the contract: in nearly all operating leases, the user (you) is recognised as the “user” for Data Act purposes — but it’s worth confirming. If there’s ambiguity, talk to the leasing company.
Step 3: choose a qualified third-party provider. Not every fleet management system is set up to receive data via the Data Act framework. Look for a provider with native integrations to your manufacturer (or the OEMs in your fleet) that can document FRAND-compliance. Optivo, for instance, currently supports 30+ brands across 12 automotive groups via hardware-free OEM Cloud, with new integrations added month after month.
Step 4: initiate the formal request. The Data Act prescribes how and when data must be transmitted to the third-party recipient. In practice, the request goes through the manufacturer’s portal (for the major groups) or via the service provider you’ve chosen, who handles the paperwork for you. Once the data flow is activated, the data shows up in the dashboard within hours or a few days — no physical installation involved.
Step 5: keep an eye on how it evolves. The Data Act is a young regulation: in early 2026 there are still grey areas — particularly around exactly which data each manufacturer makes available, and at what FRAND prices. The European Commission is publishing sector-specific guidelines, and practical cases are clarifying the standards. Working with a partner who monitors the regulatory landscape is far easier than doing it in-house.
A change in perspective, not just a rule
The EU Data Act isn’t another piece of red tape to manage. It’s the recognition — finally formalised — that the data produced by a corporate vehicle belongs to the company that operates it, not to the manufacturer that sold it.
For fleet operators, this is a chance to free information that until 2025 sat in proprietary silos, to choose the software that fits the way they work, and to stop paying twice (with aftermarket hardware and with imposed telematics packages).
In 2026, the question to ask manufacturers and providers is no longer “which of your products do I need to buy to see my own data?”. It’s “how do you transmit the data my vehicles already produce?”.
That’s a very different conversation. And it’s one you can genuinely have today.
Read more: Three ways to connect your fleet — OBD plug & play, CAN bus advanced telemetry, or hardware-free OEM Cloud. The Data Act unlocks the third option: zero hardware, VIN-based activation, first-quality data straight from the manufacturer.