Tesla is demanding that its suppliers exclude components made in China from cars it produces in the United States, in a dramatic escalation of the technological and commercial “cold war” between the world’s two largest economies.
The news, released this Friday by Reuters and the Wall Street Journalcites sources familiar with the situation who indicate that the objective of the manufacturer led by Elon Musk is to replace all components of Chinese origin “in the next year or two”.
This decision comes at a time of growing alarm in the West about technological dependence on China, a fear that has been compounded by a critical security discovery in Scandinavia.
Security concerns in Europe
Earlier this month, Norway’s public transport authority (Ruter) revealed that it had discovered that its fleet of electric buses produced by Chinese manufacturer Yutong contained technology that allowed remote access to them — and their potential deactivation (“kill switch”) — from China.
Safety tests confirmed that the buses were equipped with SIM cards that transmitted vehicle data and theoretically allowed the fleet to be immobilized. Norway mitigated the risk by removing the cards, but this made it impossible to update the card’s software, including the installation of pathes of security.
The revelation prompted Denmark, which also operates hundreds of Yutong buses, to launch an urgent investigation to assess the same vulnerability. The discovery raises serious national security concerns about the potential to cripple critical public transportation infrastructure.
In the USA, GM had already taken the first step
As for the light car market, although Tesla’s directive is the most recent, it follows an even more aggressive move by General Motors (GM). Last week, GM formally instructed its thousands of suppliers to eliminate all Chinese components of their supply chains to North America, setting an absolute deadline of 2027.
Industry sources indicate that executives have been in “screening mode” for months. The ongoing uncertainty of customs duties, compounded by the new Section 232 tariffs (invoking national security) that came into effect on November 1, has made cost and logistics planning unsustainable.
But more than tariff “war,” manufacturers are looking for “supply chain resilience” to protect themselves against abrupt disruptions, whether due to geopolitical tensions (such as China’s export controls on critical minerals) or security vulnerabilities, such as those now discovered in Norway and Denmark.