With the average cost of a new vehicle in the United States nearing $50,000, it’s understandable some Americans are dreaming of a cheaper Chinese alternative.

The allure of paying half the price of a reputable American, Korean or Japanese vehicle has sparked a new push to persuade the federal government to relax the rules and make America a Chinese-car-buying market like Mexico and Europe.

Popular YouTube reviewer Marques Brownlee recently assessed the Xiaomi SU7 Max, praising the electric vehicle’s quality and outstanding price point.

“This feels nothing like a $42,000 car,” Brownlee said. “This is a $42,000 car that feels like a $75,000 car if it were made here in the US.”

“There’s basically no question in my mind that if a car like this were available in the US for $42,000 that it would crush, of course,” he concluded.

But chasing the cheapest goods China provides the West has blinded us to the Chinese Communist Party’s long-term nefarious trap of market domination by manipulation.

And China isn’t just interested in taking over the automotive market — it wants to lead the world in metadata collection, including vehicle metadata.

With a technology background and a strong interest in vehicles my entire adult life, I’m extremely concerned about the direction of the automobile industry.

Cars are being commissioned to collect obscene amounts of information on American drivers, and now the modern car has scraped human inputs for a computerized driving experience.

You may not realize this, but your typical new car is a supercomputer on wheels constantly connected to the internet, prepared to give you real-time traffic information and update your vehicle’s computer systems like your Windows PC.

Everything you do in your vehicle is capable of being recorded as metadata that can either be stored temporarily or transmitted to a third party without you ever knowing.

Beyond data collection, your vehicle can be controlled remotely, disabling special features and basic functionalities.

OnStar, a service offered on General Motors vehicles, can disable a vehicle if stolen, lock or unlock your car doors and perform other functions remotely, for example.

Decades ago, your brake system had a mechanical connection to your brake pedal, as with your accelerator pedal, physically pulling a wire connected to the throttle body to allow air to enter your engine.

But today your pedals are designed to send electrical signals to the computer to indicate you want to brake or accelerate.

Technology has literally severed the connection of control that drivers had to their cars by outsourcing all operations to highly sophisticated onboard computers.

While some technologists proclaim this evolution has several upsides, the downsides are massive and potentially deadly in the wrong hands.

The bad news about computers is that every computer can be hacked — it’s just a matter of time........

© New York Post