US to issue proposed rules on Chinese connected vehicles in August

The US Commerce Department plans to issue proposed rules on connected vehicles next month and expects to impose limits on some software made in China and other countries deemed adversaries, a senior official said Tuesday.

“We’re looking at a few components and some software – not the whole car – but it would be some of the key driver components of the vehicle that manage the software and manage the data around that car that would have to be made in an allied country” said export controls chief Alan Estevez at a forum in Colorado.

In May, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said her department planned to issue proposed rules on Chinese-connected vehicles this autumn and had said the Biden administration could take “extreme action” and ban Chinese-connected vehicles or impose restrictions on them after the Biden administration in February launched a probe into whether Chinese vehicle imports posed national security risks, reports Business Times.

The comments of Estevez, who is the Commerce under secretary for industry and security, are the most definitive to date about the administration’s plans on Chinese vehicles that sparked wide alarm.

Estevez insisted that the threat is serious. “A car is a very scary thing. Your car knows a lot about you. Your car probably gets a software update, whether it’s an electric vehicle or an autonomous combustion engine vehicle,” he said. “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.”

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