Maybe Volvo still does and it's a mystery why they can still sell here. Maybe Volvo doesn't and there is no story here.
But if the car talks to China and gets updates from China, the US doesn't care if it's built here.
The onus is on the commentator to substantiate his claims of there being a rationale.
It is from the Biden era too, nothing to do with "this administration". Just common sense governing.
If we have problems with consumer-hostile behaviour like tracking users, remotely disabling vehicles, or other things like that we should outlaw those behaviours in products used in the US.
We will never do that because Western auto manufacturers want to be able to behave badly in the same way Chinese manufacturers might and they have a firm grasp on the American governments leash.
'Its from China' is a dumb reason not to allow a product into the market. If there are specific features, standards, etc that should be followed, enforce those.
"its from China" is a good reason for many countries. A lot of countries are currently worried about their dependence on the US. They would have a lot more to worry about if they were dependent on China. Is it a good idea for European countries to put themselves in a position where China could disable half the vehicles in their country? The same for every Asian country that might have a dispute with China. Just borrowing money from China has proved to be a disaster for some Asian countries even without a dispute.
Why is it that when we deal with China it's acceptable not to trust the vendor but when we buy from literally anyone else we have to accept the enormous number of backdoors and implicit spying that comes with it?
China isn't the problem. The perverse incentives created when we don't own our own gear is.
Yes, dream on. How are you going to politically push through something very few people even understand? I covered this is in the first line of my comment.
> Why is it that when we deal with China it's acceptable not to trust the vendor but when we buy from literally anyone else we have to accept the enormous number of backdoors and implicit spying that comes with it?
You have to accept it from someone. You seem to have missed my point that for many people (and countries) trusting Chinese vendors is worse than trusting the alternatives.
A junior engineer on the x-500 future fighter jet drives a polestar and seems to be visiting the house of a single woman (which they know from tiktok days) while his family would probably think he would be at work. Will this guy throw away his family or start handing over USB keys?
Any even mildly intelligent politician is going to try and block this ability.
How many domestic automotive manufacturers does America have, and how many times has the current administration threatened annexation of their Northern "ally"?
This is, at best, hypocrisy; and being on the recieving end of the annexation threats, I'm disinclined to use the most generous interpretation of America's "Rules for me but not for thee" attitude
Countries have been spying on each other (and their citizens) for centuries. Its not hypocrisy so much as run of the mill geopolitics.
Also, this rule is from the Biden administration, not Trump.
Don't double the problem before you try to fix it.
Like it or not, China is the world's factory now. The west has decided it doesn't want to dirty it's hands making things anymore, so it is what it is. Make reasonable, standard daylight firmware a required feature of all these devices and you simultaneously solve about a thousand problems.
But yeah this thing is likely more protectionism.
I would so rip out the 5G module after buying a car.
In fact I'm currently having these annoying spam calls from my ISP because I replaced their shitty fibre modem with my own ONT and Unifi router. But now they're constantly calling me to make a maintenance visit because they think it's down. I tried telling them once but apparently this is not an option in their stupid scripts. I just blocked their number in my phone in the end.
Software these days is distributed and globalized in virtually every sense. Polestar is headquartered in Sweden and much of their software development is in the UK.
The devs, in the UK or not, will do what it tells them to do.
The question isn't "why ban Polestar", it is "why ban Polestar without banning Volvo". They are both headquartered in Sweden, they are both owned by the same conglomerate, and they are often even both manufactured in the same factories. So what makes them different enough to warrant banning only one of them?
It appears to be a general ban on "connected vehicles" controlled from certain countries even if built in the US[1], so I would guess that Volvo does not meet the criteria for that.
1. https://www.topgear.com/car-news/usa/polestar-has-been-banne...