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Yesterday, Polestar announced that it would be leaving the United States. The company was unable to obtain an exemption from the Department of Commerce’s Connected Vehicle Rule and, therefore, is not authorized to sell its vehicles in the United States due to both the software and hardware connections to China.
Reactions to the news vary wildly. Some people were confused, while others flipped out. On the surface, it looks like the United States government is taking an established automaker and forcing it to essentially go out of business to protect domestic competition.
While there is certainly reason to think that our current administration is both punitive and corrupt, the Polestar case doesn’t pass the sniff test. At least to me.
Polestar is part of the Geely empire, and so is another automaker that sells in the United States. As many of you know, Volvo is also part of Geely, and, not surprisingly, it obtained the required exemption to continue selling in the United States.
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This is why I’m not convinced it’s the government picking and choosing. Do I think some politicians in government don’t know what a Polestar is? Absolutely. Do I think most elected members of Congress even know how to tie their own shoes? No. But what is surprising here is that Geely was able to acquire one exemption but not two.
It should know the process, since the Volvo exemption came first. It should know which gears to grease, which people to pay (if that’s a thing), and so on. Geely has the resources, certainly, so why didn’t it get it done?
I do have a few tin foil conspiracy theories on why that might be the case, but at the end of the day, I view this situation as much as Geely not worrying about a Polestar exemption as much as it cares about a Volvo exemption, as a government decision to let one automaker live, and one automaker die.
💡Do you have information about Polestar? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me on Signal at chadkirchner.1701, or with another secure communication method.
There are a few other things worth noting about the government rule. It was issued on January 14, 2025. That was 6 days before Trump took office for his second term. Just like how Trump doesn’t know who was president in 2020, it’s important to keep in mind that this rule came before his return.
Secondly, there’s pushback against this rule because many people view it as protectionism that lets U.S. automakers avoid actually being competitive. This is especially true when U.S.-based companies constantly collect our personal data — and sometimes lose it in a hack — and our own government uses that data in ways that aren’t much different than how China does.
Is it actually protectionism? It certainly looks like that’s part of it. But like most large-scale sticky wickets, it’s more complicated than that. What I can say is that the government and automakers are both messaging it poorly, and that there is little room for nuance on the internet.
As for Polestar itself, I appreciate what the brand was trying to do. I’m still not sure I would’ve split it off into a separate company, though I understand why it happened. I did like the cars I drove, especially the Polestar 3, and even though there were ongoing software issues that plagued Polestar and Volvo, it’s still sad that consumers will have fewer choices going forward.