China ‘will use electric cars to spy on Britain’
By Paul Homewood
Chinese electric cars imported to the UK to help hit net zero targets will enable Beijing to spy on British citizens, ministers have warned.
With car companies facing quotas for zero emissions sales from next year ahead of a ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles in 2030, China is predicted to dominate the UK market because of its prowess in providing cheap electric cars.
However, sources at the heart of government have raised concerns that technology embedded in the vehicles could be used to harvest huge amounts of information, including location data, audio recordings and video footage, while also being vulnerable to remote interference and even being disabled.
Meanwhile, a cross-party group of MPs warned the Government that Britain is poised to cede control of the “critical infrastructure” of its car market to Beijing “with all the attendant security risks”.
It comes as net zero has emerged as a key battleground between the Conservatives and Labour, with some Tory MPs urging Rishi Sunak to take a more cautious approach to achieving the overall 2050 target.
With China emerging as a global force in battery electric vehicles, the prospect of a deluge of cars from the country entering the UK has now raised fears about security implications.
A senior government source told The Telegraph: “If it is manufactured in a country like China, how certain can you be that it won’t be a vehicle for collecting intel and data? If you have electric vehicles manufactured by countries who are already using technology to spy, why would they not do the same here?
“They are high-risk products. We know that China always thinks in very long terms. So if they were providing a product that could do more than just deliver the consumer’s desire to go from A to B, why would they not be doing it?”
The source added: “It will be used with all of the data that they collect, and that’s how it becomes incredibly valuable and quite dangerous.”
One minister said that they shared the concerns about remote surveillance and interference. “That is the world we’re going into,” they said.
In 2020, the Government banned the Chinese firm Huawei from the UK’s 5G networks, with a deadline to strip out all the company’s existing kit by the end of 2027.
Dame Priti Patel, the former home secretary, said Chinese surveillance in cars was a similar threat. “These are realistic risks,” she said. “All we have to do is look at how government tied themselves up with things such as 5G.”
The concerns have been exacerbated by the rapid penetration of Chinese cars into the UK market.
Speaking to MPs last month, Chris Stark the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, an independent advisory body, said that while Germany was currently the biggest supplier of cars to the UK, “China is rapidly moving into second place and shows every sign of taking the top spot”.
The Telegraph can also reveal that UK-based car manufacturers could end up effectively having to subsidise cheaper Chinese imports if they fail to meet targets for phasing out petrol engine sales.
Under proposals being consulted on for a zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate, 22 per cent of companies’ new car sales in 2024 will have to be zero emission models, with the proportion rising to 80 per cent by 2030.
If manufacturers fail to hit the target, they will have to either pay fines or buy “credits” from companies that exceed the target, with Chinese electric car companies and Chinese-sourced Teslas expected to benefit in particular.
Concerns about the security threat arising from a potential Chinese domination of the UK car market are likely to strengthen calls for the ZEV mandate to be watered down. Kemi Badenoch, the Business Secretary, is understood to have raised concerns with Cabinet colleagues about the policy’s wider impact.
UK members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an international cross-party alliance, have warned that without urgent action the British car industry risks being “undercut to the point of extinction” by China.
In a statement signed by Conservative MPs Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Craig Mackinlay, Tim Loughton and Bob Seely, and by Labour’s Sarah Champion and the SNP’s Stewart McDonald, the group said the UK was “sleep-walking” into being “catastrophically undercut”.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
How big is the Chinese 5th column in the UK?. How many of the so called elites are getting money, in kind gifts, or who are compromised and blackmailed. Which institutions or industries have been penetrated by the CCP. EV may be the least of the problems, but, they should be banned.
Try Stanley Johnson for a start.
The crazy ZEV mandate will destroy the existing car manufacturing in Europe and USA. The job losses will be in the millions when you add in second and third tier suppliers as well as local jig and fixture companies.
Look at what happened in the electrical and electronic industries. I spent 6 years working in China (2000 to 2006) transferring manufacturing of electrical goods from UK and Germany to China. UK used to make colour TVs and Hi Fi equipment 40 years ago, all gone. The upside is that the products are now much better and cheaper (relatively).
As I pointed out on my Facebook page, it was, ‘divinely stupid’ to hand over all consumer manufacturing to a dictatorship with an enslaved population. If China is now a world power, we made it so. Britain pulled the same trick in the 19th century and established a massive colonial empire. The belief that we can ‘manage’ with an economy based on service industries and continually rising real estate values was totally dependent on the ever increasing productivity of the Chinese manufacturing population. In Britain in the 19th century, the reduction of manufacturing costs and the decreased cost of world transportation due to the surface condenser and the triple expansion steam engine kept our economy and our empire afloat. That, and the largest arms industry in the world, continually innovating the power of our sea fleet.
I know that now, but at the time the cost savings were huge. Their were all sorts of tax breaks, labour was a tenth of the costs in USA and UK. We shipped our special purpose machinery across, trained up the workforce, giving all our technology and experience away.
Chinese are very clever people read Sun Tzu Art of War, here is one quote…
To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/sun-tzu-quotes
Who was that Scotsman who selected 7 Japanese young men to study manufacturing in Scotland near the end of the 19th C. resulting after a few years with a Japanese navy which beat Russia’s?
How to cause instant chaos – just turn a few battery cars off since you can’t push them out of the way. You would have to be incredibly stupid not to have seen this coming, but then our politicians lead the way on that score.
Yes, this happened recently in a UK town High St. It took ‘only’ 1 1/2 hours for someone to come and reset the computer.
It didn’t say if the car immediately came to a stop but if so could it happen on a motorway at 70mph?
Will someone with any kind of influence in the HoC please let our stupid, stupid MPs (especially any having anything to do with the CCC(P)) that Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World were not meant to be instruction manuals!
If we continue down this path we shall, indeed, be World leaders – in how to turn a First-World country into a Third-World country. That being the case, I suggest that all the boats the Albanians etc have been using to get to the UK should be warehoused for the future benefit of Brits who will need to flee this, then, God-forsaken country.
At mid-2023, what percent of autos on the UK roads were made locally?
Prior (and current) elected people agreed to the regulations. They can chuck those and do others. Or vote them out.
There is the little matter of an election actually happening. And of course candidates in such elections who are NOT obsessed with “climate”, “green” and “decarbonisation” or just hiding those things in the small print and claiming that people voted for them because they were “in the manifesto”
>>vote them out
“One minister said that they shared the concerns about remote surveillance and interference. “That is the world we’re going into,” they said.”
That is the world they are leading us into, without debate and without option.
All recently manufactured EU vehicles have GPS recording and a connection to the mobile telephone network. Ostensibly to provide location information for the emergency services via the ‘SOS’ call system, buyers have the option to have data continuously uploaded in exchange for apps that allow the owner to see where the vehicle is/has been.
Vehicle manufacturers store this information and claim that only the registered (with them) owner can access it.
Pull the other one! Next you’ll be telling me my electoral registration data is safely stored by the electoral commission.
Strange no such concerns from any UK politicians or parties or even the MSM about the cameras on every street corner in the UK.
>>concerns about remote surveillance and interference
Also strange that self service checkouts at supermarkets have video recording and displays yet no one appears to complain too much. I have a Groucho Marx ‘mask’ (spectacles, eyebrows and moustache) that I put on before using them. I don’t think it will be long before I am banned from the stores!
I am reminded of a very good film with Gene Hackman: Enemy of the State – and the lengths he went to to stop the state watching him. Recommended.
“All recently manufactured EU vehicles have GPS recording and a connection to the mobile telephone network“
So why is (apparently?) no one looking into the location of the mobile SIM card & network interface on various types of car? There are regular reports of the security horrors that “Ethical Hackers” find on modern vehicles: these people must have the know how to monitor any transmissions emanating from the subject, so why haven’t they disabled or removed the SIM card and then observed how the car responds? Come to think of it, establish what mobile network is being used, and ship the car to an area without the appropriate coverage. Check back weekly to see what happens…
If I was going to worry about my car, phone , hamster or whatever spying on me it wouldn’t be the bloody Chinese I’d be worried about!
The Chinese will soon be capable of spying on you in your house and bathroom from the moon so watch out!
What could be more boring than spying on the British?
(Asking for a friend.)
GeoffB – I do not need to re-read Sun Tzu – I lived in Singapore for 2.5 years… There is someone who would benefit from reading the Sun Master – that is Putin!
Whilst this may seem trivial, has anyone stopped to consider who manufactures grid-tie inverters for solar panel systems? Why? Well a few years back a Dutch student figured that controlling grid tie inverters could easily collapse the entire European Grid! At the time there were effectively only three models and guess where they were made.
https://horusscenario.com
The above report precis may seem simplistic (the full thesis is very detailed) but such simple defects are often the case.
Just one example of the many vulnerabilities currently being built in to our systems.
Lol, don’t worry, very few people will buy one
How many Chinese EVs will get incinerated on burning ships on their way to the UK, due to battery explosions?
I hope the American CIA is listening in.
Spy vs spy.
I assume the Chinese have a detonation switch in their export EVs, and James Bond is working feverishly to get the code.
Spy vs Spy
Yes thanks the Mad Magazine that my dad brought home from the Americans in RAF Wildenrath in Germany in 1961
While taking a humorous look at this mad world we live in.
It showed there was different ways to understand things than those we would hear on the BBC radio overseas service.
I have always been able to question things since.
The Chinese don’t need to spy on us although they probably will.
They know we are daft enough to buy there EV’s
We can not even build a high speed rail while they can build thousands of miles.
Chinese remote espionage is incredibly active and prevalent. From PC’s, Cell Phones, TVs, and many other electronic gadgets, China is using built in microphones, cameras and software to spy on people and collect massive amounts of data, not just limited to passwords and credit card numbers. Be wary of any device from China that uses wireless/blue tooth connections as it is a easy way for your device to pass on data to China collection servers and even in some cases allow remote access and control.