Oh, was it? If that was the only justification… yeah. Seems like a straightforward play.

It might have been the only official justification. However I suspect that there’s unofficial ones, like “we are worried it’ll come with spyware that directly reports everything to China” or “if we do this we might becoming mainly dependent on Chinese cars, which then means China can pull them out from under us, maybe disable them remotely, etc”.

Depends on how much they thought this through and how much they trust China now and in the next few decades.

Yeah.... about that

I can't understand why there is no law against that - at least give users a choice. This concern is valid for all cars, not only EVs and not only Chinese.

They export them in droves to Europe, and I'd be very surprised if there's a single thing on a vehicle which isn't regulated stricter in Europe than in North America. Maybe emissions in California? Not much emissions from an EV, though.

They sell them in EU, that have higher standards than us.