Slotkin raises national security threat from commercial Chinese electric vehicles in the U.S.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is questioning whether a flood of commercial Chinese electric vehicles into the U.S. may pose a national security risk.

“What I would pose is that we are about to have a big moment of inflection here with the possibility of the saturation of Chinese electric vehicles being sold in the United States, Slotkin said yesterday at a House Armed Services Committee hearing examining the Army’s fiscal year 2025 budget.

“The first Chinese electric vehicle sold in Europe was in 2021. They now have up to 25 percent of market share. That means every vehicle collecting information, collecting mapping data, collecting all kinds of information about our cities, our infrastructure locations, our military bases and everything else.”

Speaking to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, Slotkin said she will submit several amendments to the FY-25 defense authorization bill that, from a military perspective, no Chinese-made electronic parts will be used in Army vehicles.

“But I'm also going to be asking that the experts on ground vehicles provide some assessment of what that kind of Chinese technology would do in the United States of America, again, commercially, and what kind of national security risk that would pose?”

Noting the U.S. military would never allow the use of Chinese component parts on military vehicles, Slotkin added, “Why would we open the door with a red carpet to allow those same Chinese commercial vehicles, that same technology rolling around every single American city, every single American town?”