China anxiety looms large as Congress discusses AV regulations

Self-driving cars are a common sight on the streets of San Francisco, and a hot-button topic in local discourse around public safety and surveillance. But public officials in the Bay Area are far from the only stakeholders grappling with how to regulate the emerging autonomous vehicle industry without stymieing growth.

On the opposite coast, lawmakers in the House Energy and Commerce Committee are dusting the cobwebs off the Self Drive Act, a piece of proposed legislation that was first introduced in 2017, when it was passed by the House but stalled in a Senate committee.

Though its author, Ohio Republican Bob Latta, reintroduced it in 2021, the bill never made it to committee. Now, a discussion draft of the legislation is back on the table in the House, alongside a draft proposal to amend Title 49 (the collection of laws governing the transportation industry) to require new safety standards for autonomous vehicles.

Committee members this week heard from witnesses on the need for federal regulation and the potential impact of a fully developed self-driving industry, including testimony from National Federation of the Blind president Mark Riccobono, who noted the independence that AVs can offer “blind and disabled Americans.”

But in opening statements, testimony, and questioning, one common concern emerged: China.

Florida Representative Gus Bilirakis described a “race against the clock with China,” and pointed to regulation as a means of winning that race. “While the United States has failed to advance a national framework that expands testing and deployment, China has unveiled a national strategy to boost testing and deployment throughout their country,” Bilirakis said. “Any more inaction from Congress will result in the Chinese defining and owning the technology and its supply chain.”

The discussion draft of the Self Drive Act includes language authorizing the secretary of transportation to block AV sales by manufacturers who “share information with the PRC or the Chinese Communist Party,” and would require manufacturers to provide cybersecurity plans, among other things.

John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said that in spite of a decade of federal inaction on self-driving rules, the industry has continued to innovate and grow.

“But there’s a ceiling to that growth,” he said. And in the absence of “a regulatory framework that delivers some certainty in the near future,” Bozzella predicts a less-than-rosy fate for the US industry, as the tech and its supporting supply chains head to countries like China.

Bozzella, who described an experience with “careful and competent” self-driving cars on the streets of San Francisco, urged forward federal movement.

“If the technology works now and will continue to improve exponentially over time, there’s only one remaining question: Do we want this safety technology to exist and the vehicles to be built and to operate here in the US instead of China?”