The Commerce Department plans to issue proposed rules on Chinese-made internet-connected vehicles in August, and some car software will face restrictions from the regulations, according to a senior official.
“A modern car has a lot of software in it. It’s taking lots of pictures. It has a drive system. It’s connected to your phone. It knows who you call. It knows where you go. It knows a lot about you,” he said.
Connected cars have onboard integrated network hardware that allows internet access and data sharing with devices both inside and outside the vehicle.
“It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think of how [a] foreign government with access to connected vehicles could pose a serious risk to both our national security and the personal privacy of U.S. citizens,” Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said at the time.
“We need to understand the extent of the technology in these cars that can capture wide swaths of data or remotely disable or manipulate connected vehicles.”
The investigation followed direction from President Joe Biden in February, when he criticized the Chinese communist regime’s trade practice of flooding the U.S. market with its vehicles, posing a national security risk to the United States.
Ms. Raimondo said connected vehicles “have thousands of sensors, thousands of chips—they’re controlled by software, which is coming from Beijing in the case of Chinese-made cars. They know where the driver goes, what the driving patterns are, [and] what you’re saying in your car. It’s a lot of data around U.S. persons that goes right back to Beijing.”
During the hearing, she said her department was tracking public reports that Chinese automakers planned to assemble vehicles in Mexico, and she wanted to ensure they couldn’t avoid new U.S. tariffs.
“The introduction of cheap Chinese autos–which are so inexpensive because they are backed with the power and funding of the Chinese government–to the American market could end up being an extinction-level event for the U.S. auto sector, whose centrality in the national economy is unimpeachable,” the report reads.
The group recommended that Washington implement trade measures to prevent an influx of subsidized Chinese EVs from Mexico with lower tariffs, as Beijing could exploit free trade agreements between Washington and its neighboring trading partner.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of the Senate’s most vocal critics of the Chinese regime, has proposed multiple measures to counter subsidized Chinese-made cars in the U.S. market and help the American auto industry.