EV

Geopolitics Pulls the Plug on Polestar, and the Industry Is Watching

Polestar's forced exit from the US market is the clearest sign yet that the connected vehicle rule has teeth, and that those teeth bite indiscriminately. The Commerce Department denied Polestar authorization under the rule, effectively ending new-car sales in the US starting with model year 2027, despite one of its models being assembled in South Carolina. The brand is Swedish-designed and Geely-owned, and that Chinese parentage proved decisive. That outcome has spooked the broader industry: any automaker with significant Chinese ownership, supply-chain ties, or software dependencies now has reason to scrutinize its own exposure. The precedent is dangerous not because the security concern is illegitimate, but because the rule's application appears to care little about where the car is actually built or how American its workforce is. Meanwhile, BYD is quietly filing clusters of US battery patents covering electrode plates, self-heating systems, and pack structures, building an IP wall even as the regulatory door narrows for Chinese-affiliated brands. NIO filed a US design patent this week as well, suggesting it hasn't given up on American ambitions despite the climate. The Polestar case may be remembered as the moment the US EV market stopped being a technical competition and became a geopolitical one.