The Biden Administration’s War on Chinese Cars Just Got Bigger

It’s not just electric vehicles and it’s not just China.

On Monday the Biden administration announced it’s introducing a ban on both hardware and software for “connected vehicles” from China and, incidentally, Russia. The White House said it’s introducing the ban, which is to be enacted by the Department of Commerce, as a matter of national security, saying that malicious actors could use our fancy internet-connected cars for “surveillance and sabotage.”

Driven Out

With this newest ban, the Biden administration is adding a new facet to its trade war with the Chinese auto industry. China-made EVs are completely absent from the US market due to the tariffs the US government has placed on them, and the new ban on software and hardware that makes up vehicles’ “connectivity” is effectively a way to box out every other kind of Chinese car as well, given that pretty much every vehicle rolling off the modern assembly line has some kind of internet connection baked in.

While there aren’t a ton of Chinese car brands on US roads today, there are a surprising number of China-made cars:

• In 2023, US consumers bought a total of 104,000 China-made cars from major brands including Buick and Volvo. 
• The Biden administration said in a press statement that the embargo would block “the import or sale of certain connected vehicle systems designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by entities with a sufficient nexus to the PRC or Russia,” and listed fairly standard systems such as Bluetooth, cellular, and satellite systems.

The ban on software, if adopted, would take effect in the 2027 model year; the hardware ban would start in 2029, or the 2030 model year.

Téslà Vu: US concerns about cars’ cybersecurity measures mirror worries that China itself has voiced in the past. Tesla came under heated scrutiny in China in 2021, and the government banned military personnel from driving Tesla vehicles, citing security concerns. Tesla managed to flip the script, however, and get on an official government purchase list in July 2024. Oh how the Teslas have turned.