Sources: Trump admin quietly set aside Obama-proposed mandate requiring new cars to have wireless vehicle-to-vehicle communications technology
https://apnews.com/9a605019eeba4ad29347 41091105de42 — Link copied! — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has quietly set aside plans …
Context & Ripple Effects
In December 2016, the outgoing Obama administration's DOT proposed requiring vehicle-to-vehicle communication tech in all new cars, opening a 90-day comment window before NHTSA review. A year into the Trump presidency, that mandate has been quietly shelved rather than formally withdrawn.
The shelving fits a consistent arc in this coverage: the same admin later terminated the Obama-era DOT committee drafting self-driving policy without telling some members, then issued autonomous-vehicle guidance built on voluntary standards over specific rules despite safety-advocate objections. In parallel, Washington's car-policy energy has rotated from mandating connectivity to policing it — Commerce plans to bar Chinese software and some Chinese wireless hardware in US cars, and the admin is debating a ban on Chinese cellular modules as the FCC moves on Beijing-linked security threats.
First-order effects
- Automakers are freed from any compliance deadline to equip new cars with V2V radios, and NHTSA's 2016 proposal effectively stalls without a formal withdrawal or replacement rule.
Second-order effects
- With no mandated V2V backbone, connected-car deployment shifts to voluntary and commercial paths, while regulators redirect attention from mandating wireless capability to restricting its suppliers — the planned Commerce bar on Chinese automotive software and wireless hardware.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across administrations' worth of coverage — the shelved V2V rule, the terminated DOT committee, the voluntary AV guidelines, and the transition team's push to remove the crash-reporting rule opposed by Tesla and other automakers — US vehicle-tech regulation structurally favors deregulation and supply-chain security screening over prescriptive safety mandates.
The trend: US vehicle technology policy is trading Obama-era prescriptive mandates for voluntary standards, with regulatory energy shifting from making every car communicate to controlling whose hardware may.