Avery Ash, CEO of Securing America’s Future Energy, or SAFE, emphasized the rules were established solely for reasons of national security, and are not concerned with national economic competitiveness. SAFE is a nonprofit think tank that advocates and lobbies for policies that reduce the US dependence on oil; it sees connected, autonomous EVs as an important pathway toward that goal. Data storage locations and governance remain concerns, Ash said, so the rules take a very broad look at what constitutes “control” by a Chinese entity. Where the software was designed is irrelevant; it’s about effective control of the company that wrote it and the firms that designed the hardware it runs on.
The rules do not “cover Chinese software developed before the new rules took effect, so long as it was not being maintained by a Chinese firm,” according to the Commerce Department. But, Ash noted, any updates to grandfathered software happening after the effective date would fall under the new rules.
Read the full article: “Can China’s No. 2 automaker make it in America?“
