I have my own pet theory for why Volvo was approved as an automaker in the United States and Polestar, which is owned by the same company and makes some nearly identical cars, was banned. The whole situation is strange and a newly revealed letter makes it all the more curious. The Morning Dump today shall venture into the unknown. Why was Polestar banned? Why is Porsche selling its IT consultancy to Tata’s tech consultancy and then buying back AI services? Why is Ford swapping from Google to Apple for its new vehicles? Volkswagen Group is nothing but a series of question marks masquerading as a company, and one wonders how CEO Oliver Blume is going to get everyone to agree on an answer. Polestar Seems To Think It Was Going To Be Approved While there are some differences between Polestar and Volvo, they’re both Swedish brands that eventually were gobbled up by the Chinese holding company colloquially referred to as Geely. As with most car companies under the same umbrella, there’s a lot of platform and parts sharing going on between them (also, Volvo Cars has owned large parts of Polestar, variously, throughout the years). In terms of corporate structure, you can think of Volvo and Polestar less like GMC and Buick under GM, and more like Audi and Porsche under Volkswagen Group. This June, the American government decided to use a rule put in place under the Biden Administration focused on Chinese connected cars to ban Polestar from selling vehicles in the United States, including SUVs it builds in the United States. This was strange. The Volvo EX90 and Polestar 3 are essentially the same, share a similar software stack, and have a shared corporate parent, and yet one is banned and the other is not. Dealers have