Couldn't they have just mandated that Polestar cars in the US must not be able to connect to the internet? That would pretty much negate any potential foreign threat related to "connected cars". Just make them... not connected.
I think that these protectionist measures are ultimately going to hurt the competitiveness of the US auto industry. Exports and international sales are a big, but not overwhelming part of the revenue for major manufacturers. It's something like 20% of GM's revenue, and maybe 35% of Ford's. When they can't compete internationally, it's small enough that executives will convince themselves to focus on their core market in the US. That will in turn lead to production volumes (and hence economies of scale) slowly dropping. Vehicles from American brands are going to become even more unaffordable than they already are,
At least we can hope that newer manufacturers like Slate and Rivian will keep things reasonable, and major foreign brands like Kia and Toyota might bring the fruits of their knowledge from competing internationally to their US models/factories. I'm not hopeful for the long term future of big three though, especially Stellantis and GM.
I don't want cars controlled by China's datacenters driving on our roads. Polestar can figure it out if Polestar cares to sell cars here. Not my problem anymore than banning Huawei is my "problem". If the US has trouble selling cars overseas because they're all controlled by Palantir or because the US admin can arbitrarily remotely shut them down for leverage or whatever so be it. It's a design problem.
The US consumers are now becoming more and more like captive preys ... in the names of whatever special interest groups would make up ... so sad and outrageous!
> the US Commerce Department has declined to authorize imports of new Polestars from model year 2027 onward as part of a rule banning connected cars from automakers with Chinese links
Would the cars be allowed if connectivity were cut off? That could be a net win for consumers.
No. The action is rooted in protectionism of corporations that give money to the president. If the pretext was mooted, the two of them would find a new pretext, and pretend the previous one never existed. This pattern has repeated countless times in the last year or so.
I'm not sure how this would even work as most cars have Chinese links in some form.
Under this logic popular car brands that would be removed are Volvo, Polestar, Zeek, Lotus, MG, BYD, Smart, LDV, Chery, GWM, Jaecoo/Omoda, Leapmotor, Xpeng, etc - these are only off the top of my head.
How would it even work with Tesla (America's golden child) - a large amount of their cars are built in China with strong links to the Chinese?
Maybe they'll go by whether the majority ownership is Chinese? In that case Volvo and Polestar (and probably all the others on your list) would be banned (if they're being consistent), but not Tesla.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 31.4 ms ] threadSad because polestar seems genuinely good from the little I’ve seen about them.
At least we can hope that newer manufacturers like Slate and Rivian will keep things reasonable, and major foreign brands like Kia and Toyota might bring the fruits of their knowledge from competing internationally to their US models/factories. I'm not hopeful for the long term future of big three though, especially Stellantis and GM.
It'll be interesting to see how far this protectionism goes.
Would the cars be allowed if connectivity were cut off? That could be a net win for consumers.
Under this logic popular car brands that would be removed are Volvo, Polestar, Zeek, Lotus, MG, BYD, Smart, LDV, Chery, GWM, Jaecoo/Omoda, Leapmotor, Xpeng, etc - these are only off the top of my head.
How would it even work with Tesla (America's golden child) - a large amount of their cars are built in China with strong links to the Chinese?