I know people lament that letter writing is dead, but I’m happy to say I don’t think that’s true. I say this because just yesterday the Alliance for Automotive Innovation – a trade group made up of a large number of automakers, including GM, Ford, Ferrari, BMW, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Mazda, McLaren, Toyota, Subaru, hell, even VinFast, among many others – sent a heartfelt, personal letter to congressional leaders asking about enacting a “permanent ban” on Chinese-made “connected” cars in America.
Their argument in the letter is essentially that they believe Chinese carmakers don’t play fair, and are determined to surveil Americans and, when able, steal intellectual property. Here’s what they say in the letter:
“Alliance for Automotive Innovation urges Congress to enact a permanent ban on the sale, import and manufacture of Chinese connected vehicles, hardware and software before the conclusion of the 119th Congress.
Multiple committees in the House and Senate have devoted time and attention this session to the Chinese government’s industrial and manufacturing policy that’s rooted in a well-documented pattern of unfair trade, subsidies, intellectual property theft and surveillance.
This behavior is a feature of the Chinese approach and especially acute when it comes to China’s strategy to dominate global automotive manufacturing and critical supply chains.
Right now, Chinese automakers are dumping subsidized vehicles with connected software and hardware around the world. China is capturing market share in Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, Mexico and South America with vehicles capable of collecting, processing and transmitting sensitive vehicle and consumer data to the Chinese Communist Party.
This hasn’t happened inside the U.S. yet, but given the scale and urgency of this threat, we urge you to enact a Chinese vehicle, software and hardware ban before adjourning this year and make this policy the law of the land.”
Now, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about all of this; are these genuine concerns, or is this an industry just trying to protect themselves from a lot of significant competition? We’ve seen some impressive new cars coming out of China lately, in pretty much the full spectrum of the market, from the extreme low end to ultra-premium luxury barges, laden with technology. It makes sense that they’d be a bit scared. They should be a bit scared.
Then again, it’s not like the claims made by the Alliance for Automotive Innovation are all made up; China absolutely has a history of being pretty, let’s say “relaxed” when it comes to intellectual property. That car above there sure looks like another extremely famous car, but did that stop China’s Ora from pretty shamelessly cribbing the design? Not a bit.
And, yes, there is rampant data-gathering and privacy violations with many Chinese cars and how they gather data. Then again, it’s not like other global companies aren’t guilty of this as well, because they absolutely are. I wish this was a China-specific problem. But are Chinese companies sending all that data right to the Communist Party? Maybe? I have no idea. Is it any worse than companies taking data for their own use and using it to track us and sell us even more things and find new ways to monetize our every action? Again, maybe? Maybe no one is an innocent here.
The letter urges that bills like the Connected Vehicle Security Act of 2026 (S. 4429) in the Senate and similar bills in the house be passed before the end of the year. These bills would ban automakers from selling in America if they have over a 15% Chinese ownership stake. This limit would effectively ban the sale of Mercedes-Benz cars in America, for example, as they have a 20% ownership stake from Chinese investors.
So, what do we, as painfully obsessive car geeks, make of all of this? Should the US ban Chinese cars to protect an industry that’s important to America economically and psychologically, or is this just protectionism for American and other global brands that will only end up harming consumers? Are there genuine security concerns? Concerns that are qualitatively different from what other, non-Chinese companies are doing? Is protecting domestic automakers a good idea? Is that protectionism? If so, will we get exciting things, like how Brazil’s protection of their local industry gave us so many weird Volkswagens? Or will we just end up with uncompetitive, boring cars?
I’m not ready to absolutely give an opinion on all this just yet, which is why I’m curious about what all of you – the brightest, best-informed, wittiest, and best-smelling automotive community on the inter-net – has to say about it all.
Let’s figure this out.
Man taps furiously on his Chinese made phone: “They want our precious bodily data!”
Im split on this. On one side, I can see, if they let them in, they are going to put a hurt on some of our auto industry. Remember, they dont make anything to compete with our largest market segment, full size trucks and SUVs. Im old enough to remember when the Japanese were first dominating here. This situation isnt all that different. The same thing happened. Our domestic brands went whining to the government (remember, free market capitalism) to protect them. So then our government got the Japanese to agree to self imposed export quotas. This ultimately led to the birth of Acura, Lexus and Infiniti.
Here’s another thing to remember, the Chinese Communist Party let’s our brands sell in their market. Right now. Theyve been selling there for years. So the same brands, GM, for example, that are enjoying access to the world’s largest car market, are also lobbying their own government to not allow cars from that country to be sold in their own market. Ostensibly because they know that they can’t compete. Remember, free market capitalism.
To be fair it’s not free market on all sides here. Companies working in China had to partner with a Chinese company that the CCP has direct control over. Whereas if they came here the US Gov would not have direct oversight of them.
The we can go into how the CCP subsidizes their industry to dump on foreign markets and manipulates their currency and promotes if not outright steals intellectual property. No this is not free market, far from it.
I actually knew the part about making foreign brands partner with their brands. I didnt go into it to avoid my comment becoming a novella. Our domestic brands were so horned up to get into that sweet sweet Chinese market that they sold their souls and taught the competition how to make cars. That’s a result of the American way of short sighted, fast profits. Always looking to have a good quarter for the shareholders, despite the monster it might create in the future. And here we are.
I think locking out the Chinese is a good way of admitting that we simply can’t compete. I think making our market insular and protectionist will likely have bad results like stagnating ingenuity. Competition breeds innovation. We could allow them in with some rules, like they do in their market. How about import caps, like we did with the Japanese? Or insist they’re made here or at least a percent are made here? Or they have a certain percent of domestic content? Or some combination of the above? I think it could be handled in such a way that it could keep innovation and competition thriving in such a way that it would be good for the market. But also, the Chinese are doing something that the domestics are not and that is to make compelling cars, including EVs, for the entry level of the market. That could serve a lot of people in this country well.
I can’t even blame American brands for being tempted by the Honey Pot that was the Chinese market, everyone did it. The German brands arguably went even further in on China. Other brands based in Aisa also set up shop there. It was a lose lose situation, either you lost a ton of potential profit or you lost your IP/processes decades later. The only winner was China
The era of free trade with China is over and that’s a good thing. we have seen what happens when you outsource entire industries over the last 50 years. There is still competition from Japanese, Korean, and German brands. We don’t have to let Chinese brands in.
I think Chinese cars should be banned. They don’t play fair, and neither should we. Just because we made the mistake of free trade with China in the past doesn’t mean we need to do so again. Manufacturing in this country is worth something, and heavy industry even more so, with the dangerous state of the world lately. There is also IMO nothing compelling enough in the Chinese auto industry, with its inflated and unproven claims, to genuinely change the game here. People thinking a $10K Chinese EV would pass US regulations and be sold for that price are naive in the extreme.
But I also have next to zero sympathy for domestic automakers who gleefully outsourced production to China and then attempted to get those cars back over here. Or, as many have pointed out, who are all too eager to get their hands on our data themselves.
These are convincing arguments.
You NEED the ban. We too, but it’s too late for us.
We simply can’t compete anymore, and neither you, guys.
Product-wise, is positive to have better and cheaper goods, but it will come at the expense of the whole industry. This doesn’t involve only carmakers, but the whole supply chains and related industries. It’s too big a part of your economy and you simply cannot replace it with another thing fast enough to prevent a major downfall.
Then, intellectual property theft is a real concern, as is the gathering of data. It’s already bad that you (and we all) have lots of surveillance under occidental companies, buy at least these can be reached by legislation, national and supranational, in order to prevent individual rights to be completely obliterated. I mean, occidental companies are, to some extent, subjected by the limits of liberal democracy, human rights and the inviolability of the individual. Those elements just don’t exist in the Chinese imperial culture, whether communist or not.
Yeah I’m in favor of it because they don’t play fair and I don’t really respect the idea of further hollowing out our manufacturing base in the name of “free trade.” Let’s say we have to go to war, a real war not a proxy war at the behest of Israel. Are we going to build tanks, ships, and drones with repurposed data centers and Raisin’ Cane franchises?
Even a economic war would strangle us if we had no industry. Imagine China decides they are going to attack Taiwan and South Korea, and if the US intervenes they will cut off our medicine, steel, and battery supplies. We would be crippled politically and economically.
The rest of the world seems fine with Chinese cars. It’s effectively just us that cannot have them. Lame security excuses seem incredibly weak considering our own government spies on us, American companies datamine us. But we should worry about the Chinese? Right.
Excellent observation. It’s OK if we do it, not them.
there are two different issues being conflated here.
one is the security of personally-identifiable-information being uploaded by ANY car.
the second issue is what type of protectionist policies might be appropriate to protect the US automotive manufacturing sector.
the AII is using the first to disguise the second, their true interest.
Yeah, lobbyists and shills will just keep trying different messages until something sticks.
Save Detroit! (voters: sure, ok, I guess)
Stop Spyware (voters: yeahhhhhhh)
Ok let’s go with the spyware message
Or in other words: “Are we prepared to accept defeat?”
The ‘defeat’ was self-imposed by those who made out big financially, screwing the rest of us. That’s the last 45 years.
It’s not too late to turn it around, 50 years of destroying American industries and the middle class will be hard to reverse but giving up will suck worse.
The datamining argument is valid, but they’re hardly mentioning it for altruistic reasons. US companies are already collecting immense amounts of your personal information, and would rather not share.
It’s not a “Let’s stop cars from collecting personal data” argument, but a “we want driver’s personal data for ourselves instead” argument.
I’m conflicted. It’s true Chinese industries don’t play fair with labor practices and IP, but I also see them rapidly moving past the old “knockoff” days to now creating their own truly great innovations and the Western world should absolutely be put on notice.
I’ve never seen fair competition be a bad thing, but the entire automotive industry has never played fair (i.e. GM government bailouts, VW dieselgate, hostile takeovers, Takata airbags, etc), and I don’t see that changing with Chinese cars in the US or not.
Seems like maybe we could wait and see what happens in other countries that embrace Chinese cars. See if Toyota and BMW get fucked by it.
Banning Chinese cars is the same as an infinity percent tariff, and we have already learned that tariffs are complete bullshit.
Ssssss I dunno.
Tariffs can have benefits, slowly and long term. changing them around all willy nilly and getting them reversed and implemented again is bad for buisness.
GIVE US THE SU7 ULTRA!!!!!!
We’re still in our 250th, but it feels much more like a constitutional crisis, than a cause for celebration! One of the main things our founding fathers envisioned for our government to provide to its people (of,for, and by) is Safety and Happiness. Currently, consumer protections have been dismantled, and moneyed technocrats have run unchecked. It’s not just China pushing insidious “godseye” type crap.
For Love of country, please VOTE !
Who do we vote for that cares about privacy? Liberitarians? Big Gov spying on Americans and being in the pocket of corporations has been bipartisan for decades.
“Let’s figure this out.”
Sure.
Step 1) US brands block competition from Chinese manufacturers citing unfair competition and poor labor practices.
Step 2) China over produces while American production of cheap, good quality cars stagnate in favor of ever more unaffordable vehicles.
Step 3) Peak unaffordability. American buyers have reached their limit. Even the unaffordable vehicle inventory builds. The used car market evaporates.
Meanwhile China is drowning in cheap, good quality cars. American brands shed workers like a dog with a worms dragging its itchy butt.
Step 4) A seismic shift in attitudes towards public transportation. Suddenly it looks like a good idea to a lot of people who would otherwise have to walk or pedal.
Oh no! Can’t have THAT!
Step 5) American manufacturers do a swift about turn and fully embrace Chinese made cars but only as lightly badge engineered products under their own name. The legal definition of “domestic production” has been quietly rewritten to qualify even the swap of the “r” of Chery with the “v” of Chevy as “100% Made in America” as long as it happens on US soil by a US robot. Chinese manufacturers, drowning in inventory sell their surplus to American companies at below cost just to get rid of the damn things.
Those cars are then brought to the US and offered to desperate Americans as Chevys, Dodges and Fords at what used to be considered unaffordable prices but now thanks to the *innovation* of generational debt and a revocation of child labor laws a family can scrape together the interest only payments needed to drive the car off the lot. Don’t miss a single payment though because debtor’s prison is now (again) a consequense as is a creative reinterpretation of the 13th amendment.
Step 6) Thanks to the absolutely massive explosion in automaker stock prices the money flow continues upward. Flush with even more money the rich buy the previously unaffordable US made vehicles as disposable demolition derby toys.
Problem solved!
This is sadly so on point it’s not even funny. We’re already at step 3.
Well, real Americans should obviously donate their data to patriotic authoritarian weirdos, like Musk and Thiel. Or, join the Revolution, and drive obscure shitboxes of course.
I am absolutely in favor of this.
US carmakers already have plenty of competition from Europe and Japan, so it’s not like it’s a closed market.
The Western world has created an absolute monster. After stealing IP for decades, now they plan on crushing the last major manufacturing know how and jobs?
Is that why the only market segment the US manufacturers are particularly good at happens to be the one they’ve had extreme protectionist tariffs and selectively enforced regulations on since the 1960s?
The US absolutely dominates the market in classic van shaped vans. The Chevy Express will bury them, your children and grandchildren will have contractors work out of a Chevy Express.
Chinese slave labor in Xinjiang province obviously undercuts western production. VW has been accused of Xinjiang sourced parts.
China is bound and determined to accumulate data on everyone in the USA. Them knowing everything we say and do in our cars is a bit unnerving.
Also consider car electronics now run everything, which could be remote controlled in the event of a Taiwan conflict.
The whole “They’re stealing our data” thing just makes me chuckle: this was the excuse that forced Tiktok to sell its US business to a US company… Chinese Tiktok allowed you to choose whether to give access to your approximate location (suburb, district, county etc) so you could see what’s going on around you. US-owned Tiktok automatically gets access to your exact location. Chinese Tiktok let you opt in to giving access to your contact list and photo album, so you could share stuff and see what your mates were up to if you wanted to. US-owned Tiktok automatically gets access to both (not an option).
“Yeah but at least they don’t have my data!” Right… and what are they going to do with it? Much better to have it kept all on US soil, where it’s easily accessed by Homeland Security, the FBI, the police, the Tax office, and whatever gov’t department wants it. It can also easily be sold to your car and health insurance companies if they need an excuse not to pay out.
Can you imagine?
“Hey China, this is the FBI. Can you please give us all the Tiktok feeds etc from a guy called Torch? He owns a 2CV and we think he might be a French sympathiser”
China: “You want what now?” *Giggles hysterically*
I’d give the digital surveillance stuff at least a bit of consideration if it wasn’t for US automakers being worse. What, are we stealing jobs from hardworking American creeps? I mean, “automotive innovators”.
Honestly, I’m not comfortable with the idea of Chinese automakers in the US market, for both rational and irrational reasons.
That being said, I’m pretty sure the “Alliance for Automotive Innovation” was the one running ads against 2020 Massachusetts Question 1 saying Right to Repair would literally empower predators and terrorist assassins. I think that was under the name of “responsible data coalition” or something. Auto lobbyists are cynical liars without boundaries.
Well, quite. Although one could caveat that to ‘all lobbyists’.
reading articles like this remind me to research ‘location of telemetry module fuse’ on any replacement car model I am shopping for. Might just drill a big hole in the dashboard for one of those toggle switches with the red, flip-up, cover labelled ‘ARM’ so I can conveniently close/open the fuse.
Would that throw a CEL though?
The Honda telemetry module in my car has been relegated to the dust bin.
The established automakers of the world have been resting on their laurels for years and lost the desire to make anything mainstream truly innovative or special. The imports brought America out of the malaise era. I say bring on the Chinese and the automakers who deserve and hunger to succeed will.
If only they made a variety of cars small and large with more colorful paints, what is the current cheapest small car in the US market? i don’t know and i’m guessing it’s not from Ford or GM.
From experience the Chinese cars are cheap and good enough, but spare parts are expansive, so i still prefer Toyota even if i think they are the boring choice.
Toyota was one of the companies asking for this.
Chinese cars are rapidly dominating sections of the Australian market, now supplying 40% of new cars. There are 5 Chinese brands in the top 10 for sales. So even though I am not in the US, I would support this bill if you want to protect your domestic industry. The relaying of data is probably happening as well.
I’d be more amicable to the US automotive market’s concerns here if they hadn’t spent the past decade and especially the past 5 years running itself into the ground through profit squeezing a smaller audience but then expecting the US government to protect their market share from themselves anyway.
And, not for nothing, I’m more than a bit sick of how flagrantly companies in general (but American ones in particular, it seems) have been pissing on our neck and telling us it’s rain since COVID, especially with the lovely people currently occupying the federal government constantly cosigning it for the past 18 months. Are the sensitive vehicle and consumer data being in the hands of the CCP worse than being in the hands of General Motors selling it to your insurance company and credit rating agencies, or BMW selling it to their advertising partners to beam shit onto your HVAC display? Are the Chinese strategies to dominate global automotive manufacturing and critical supply chains only acceptable when Ford or GM are using them to build cars they sell in America?
I don’t have a simple opinion on Chinese cars, but insted/beyond attacking them, automakers (and governments) should take note of what they are doing right. China isn’t where it is (just) on IP theft and cheap labour. They are kicking EVERYONE’s assets in industry/manufacturing, and tariffs won’t solve that.
And, as a Brazilian, I can speak by experience. For as much as I love our weird fauna of cars from the 60’s to 90’s, I can say, without a shadow of doubt, that they were crap. Closing the market without a plan to catch up will only create weird insular relics and make the gap go even wider.
Sure, if they had free and fair elections.
Until then, also sure, but tack on a 100% tariff, so whatever profits the communist state gets are also made in (to?) the US. And they need to pass the software sniff test, or be sold sans transceivers.
so whatever profits the communist-in-name-only state gets
FIFY.
China has indeed beaten the US at capitalism, simply by being less corrupt and more fair about its practices. And the Chinese government is still very corrupt and very unfair.
Being less corrupt and more fair about its practices is what taints them as communist.
A good indicator that a world of honest people would allow either capitalism or communism to thrive for everyone. But we don’t live in that world.
The Scandinavian countries come pretty close.
They’re a racially homogenous society with a generous(by US standards) social safety net. Not everywhere can be like that, and by default they have a lot going for them to foster a high trust among their population.
Japan and Libya under Muammar Ghaddafi would be other examples of such societies, even if they may take different forms.
Not so racially homogenous anymore.