Forget the model years for a second. The number that actually matters in America’s ban on Chinese connected-car technology isn’t 2027 or 2030. It’s 1,000. Garage Deals: Nowell Leather’s Hand-Stitched EDC Gear Belongs in Every Gearhead’s Glovebox That’s how many employees a small Ohio electronics maker called Eagle Wireless expects to have within three years, up from 140 today. Eagle builds the circuit boards that let a modern car talk to the outside world: the modem that reports a crash, the antenna that pulls in traffic data, the module a dealer uses to push a software update overnight. None of that sounds like national security. The federal government has decided it is. This Was Never Just a Parts Ban In January 2025, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security finalized a rule restricting what it calls the Vehicle Connectivity System, essentially anything in a car that communicates off-board above 450 megahertz, when that hardware or software is designed, built, or supplied by companies tied to China or Russia. Software is banned first, starting with model year 2027. Hardware follows in model year 2030. The Auto Wire has covered the fallout from that rule in detail, including Polestar’s exit from the US market and a newer bill in Congress that would go considerably further. The deadlines sound distant. They aren’t. Vehicle programs get locked in years before a car reaches a dealer lot, which means the real deadline for lining up a compliant supplier already passed for a lot of purchasing departments, whether they’ve noticed yet or not. Polestar found this out the hard way, and not for the reason most people assume. The rule doesn’t only ban Chinese-made parts. It separately bars any manufacturer that is itself owned or controlled by China or Russia from selling connected vehicles in