U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated on Thursday his company has nationwide safety issues about Chinese language autonomous car firms within the American market after some lawmakers known as for restrictions on their operations.
“Whether or not we’re speaking about {hardware} or software program, in the identical approach there are issues round telecom or TikTok, there are issues round transportation applied sciences,” Buttigieg stated in an interview with Reuters.
Buttigieg stated the US wants to raised perceive “the true possession of the completely different enterprises which are supplying completely different components of our transportation methods.”
In a July 17 letter to Buttigieg and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, a bipartisan group of 4 lawmakers requested for an investigation into the prevalence of Chinese language AV expertise in the US and the way it may be restricted.
“Expertise utilized by AVs, LiDAR, RADAR, cameras, AI and different superior sensors and semiconductors can all be used to gather knowledge on the American folks and infrastructure that could possibly be shared again to China and finally to the Chinese language Communist Social gathering (CCP),” the lawmakers wrote.
The lawmakers have been significantly involved about AV car and gear testing in the US.
Their letter cites knowledge from California regulators exhibiting seven Chinese language companies, together with Baidu’s Apollo and robotaxi startup Pony.ai, examined autonomous automobiles within the most-populous U.S. state final 12 months.
The autonomous car business within the U.S. has been late delivering on guarantees of commercializing automobiles that drive themselves.
Many AV firms have minimize prices and jobs with some resembling Ford and Volkswagen -backed Argo AI shutting store. Main gamers nonetheless pursuing growth embody Common Motors’ Cruise unit, Alphabet’s Waymo and Amazon’s Zoox.
