A small Ohio electronics firm is racing to build the connectivity modules American automakers need to comply with a federal ban on Chinese-made vehicle hardware, a supply-chain shift that could reshape how every new car in the country gets built.
Eagle Wireless, formed in late 2025 and headquartered in Solon, Ohio, just south of Cleveland, has become one of the first domestic manufacturers to produce the wireless connectivity modules that link modern vehicles to cellular networks, GPS systems, and cloud-based services. The company exists for one reason: a federal rule, adopted in January 2025 under President Biden and kept in place by the Trump administration, that bars Chinese-made connected-vehicle software starting with the 2027 model year and Chinese hardware starting with model-year 2030.
The rule targets any connected hardware "designed, developed, manufactured or supplied by China," and it has forced an industry that spent years relying on cheap Chinese components to find alternatives, fast. Chinese vendors account for nearly half of all global automotive cellular IoT module shipments, Newsmax reported, citing data from the market intelligence firm Counterpoint Research.
TJ Dembinski, Eagle Wireless's president, said the company grew directly out of the need to counter China's grip on the module market.
"There's a massive opportunity for us."
The numbers back him up. Eagle started with roughly 140 employees. Dembinski said the company aims to grow to 1,000 workers within three years. Revenue expectations for the current year nearly doubled, climbing to almost $100 million. By the end of the third quarter, Eagle expects to hit an annual production run rate of approximately two million modules.
Dembinski described the pace of growth in blunt terms: "It's been insane."
Inside the Solon plant, the process looks like advanced-manufacturing 101. Machines sort capacitors, diodes, and other tiny components onto circuit boards. Those boards ride a conveyor belt through a 500-degree oven. Finished modules get laser-engraved with serial numbers, inspected, and packaged by robotic arms. Joel Young, Eagle's tech chief, called the parts-sorting machine a "fancy vending machine."
Eagle already has a second, larger facility planned nearby. Young said the engineering challenge ahead is substantial.
"I have to add a lot of engineers."
He added: "We'll embrace all the tools that we can possibly have."
Eagle's current modules are built on a design licensed from Quectel Wireless Solutions, the Chinese company that dominates the global automotive cellular IoT module market. That arrangement lets Eagle produce domestically now, but it carries a built-in expiration date. By model-year 2030, when the hardware ban takes full effect, Eagle must replace the Quectel-licensed design with its own proprietary technology.
Ilaria Mazzocco, deputy director and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, flagged the tension in that arrangement. On one hand, she warned, licensing Chinese designs could deepen the dependency it is supposed to cure.
"You could end up with a situation where you end up becoming more dependent on China through these partnerships."
But she acknowledged the other possibility, that the same partnerships could serve as a bridge to genuine independence.
"You could end up in a situation where, through these partnerships, you end up becoming a lot less dependent."
Which outcome prevails depends on whether companies like Eagle can develop their own designs before the 2030 deadline. The federal government has signaled it may also address advanced driver-assistance system components separately in future rulemaking, which could widen the scope of what needs replacing.
The connected-vehicle rule is already producing real consequences across the industry. Polestar, the electric-vehicle brand majority-owned by China's Geely Holding, was banned from new-vehicle sales in the United States last month. Ford Motor asked for authorization to continue importing some China-produced models. Volvo Cars, also owned by Geely, became one of the first automakers to receive an authorization under the rule.
Hilary Cain, senior vice president of policy at the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the industry group representing most major automakers, said the rule "requires a deep examination of supply chains and aggressive compliance timelines." That is a diplomatic way of describing a problem that touches nearly every vehicle platform sold in America.
Not every automaker faces the same level of disruption. Rivian's software chief, Wassym Bensaid, told Reuters he has been careful in selecting suppliers and often builds in backups in case of geopolitical disruptions. Newer companies without legacy supply chains tied to Chinese vendors may have an easier time complying.
For established automakers, the cost picture is grimmer. One former Detroit auto executive, comparing the price of a non-China automated-driving system against one built with Chinese technology including LiDAR, put it plainly:
"My jaw dropped when I looked at the price increase."
Eagle Wireless itself acknowledged a 5-to-15 percent cost gap between its modules and Chinese competitors' products. That gap will eventually land on the sticker price of new vehicles, and on the consumers who buy them.
China's foreign ministry has previously urged the United States "to respect the laws of the market economy and principles of fair competition," arguing that Chinese cars are popular worldwide because of technological innovation. The statement went unheeded. The Biden administration adopted the rule on national security grounds tied to data privacy, and the Trump administration left it in place.
That bipartisan consensus is worth noting. Washington does not agree on much, but both administrations concluded that letting a foreign adversary build the hardware connecting American vehicles to cellular networks and cloud infrastructure was a risk the country could not afford to take. Every connected car on the road is a rolling data collector, location, speed, voice commands, route history. The question was never whether China's tech was cheap. It was whether cheap was worth the exposure.
Eagle Wireless competes in North America against Rolling Wireless and LG, among other producers. Matt Wyckhouse, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Finite State and an adviser to Eagle, has described the connectivity modules as among the components most directly affected by the hardware rule. Ford's decision to license battery technology from China's CATL for domestic battery production shows that disentangling from Chinese supply chains will be selective, not absolute, and every carve-out will face scrutiny.
The federal government built the rule. Now the market has to build the supply chain to match it. If companies like Eagle Wireless can deliver American-made modules at scale and at a competitive price, the policy works. If they cannot, automakers face a choice between higher costs, production delays, and a regulatory wall that neither party in Washington seems inclined to tear down.
When both parties agree that a national security risk is real, the smart bet is on the companies that stop complaining about the rules and start building what the country actually needs.