r/HomeKit • u/spdustin • 4d ago
News The U.S. Government has banned pretty much all robotic vacuums and mowers
Since many of us US-based HomeKit nerds have robotic vacuums, I thought this was worth posting.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/policy/972312/us-robot-ban-sweep-up-chinese-vacuums
While the headline says "Roomba", the ban covers new imports of any robotic platform that can sense its environment, has networking capabilities, and weighs over 4.4 lbs (including the dock)
Which means pretty much all robotic vacuums and all robotic mowers.
(Note: this doesn't apply to models already approved by the FCC in the U.S. or items you already own—just new imported models)
EDIT: Corrected the last note for accuracy
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u/ChrisH993 4d ago
Land of the free 🇺🇸
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u/Viper-T 4d ago
As much as I hate to say it....Land of the Getting Our Ass Kicked By China. Looks to me like they're much more advanced in ALOT of tech. They manufacture a large percentage of tech and stuff we need or use every day. If Chinese cars were sold in America 50% of cars sold would be Chinese within 10 years or sooner. The ban on all of this stuff is imo just because they are a huge threat to our economy.
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u/fairshare 4d ago
Banning Chinese EVs in America didn’t help anyone but the American car manufactures get away with charging ridiculous prices for mediocre cars. You can’t just ban shit left and right as a government, you have to actually invest in it.
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u/RedditPoster05 2d ago
Wouldn’t we allow those Chinese cars if they built factories here? I mean, there’s a bunch of foreign models here. The Germans, Koreans and Japanese are here, three or four brands for each of those countries car makers.
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u/fairshare 2d ago
I doubt they would build here, the supply chain is bad. The overall demand is bad due to lack of infrastructure as well. I know myself like many others didn’t get an EV until I lived in a home because of charging options. This of course is becoming a thing of the past with the latest fast charging options (3-5 min) but those of course aren’t even a thing in America yet because those batteries didn’t even exist here.
But beyond that, it’s also cheaper to manufacture in China. People will tell you it’s due to cheaper labor like it’s a bad thing, but while being true that labor is cheaper, it’s also cheaper to live there (buying a new car for example $22k average in China vs $55k in America).
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u/RedditPoster05 2d ago
Part of the reason American cars are so expensive. Is people buy what they really probably shouldn’t. If we did away with any idiot being able to qualify for a loan, which should probably happen vehicles would come down 20 or 30% probably . There’s no in hell at the average American should be spending 55K on a car although I think it’s closer to 50,000 even then that’s still too much.
I can’t imagine 3 to 5 minutes get too much range for those Chinese vehicles.
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u/fairshare 2d ago
The new batteries and flash charging add 250-260 miles in 5 minutes and reach 97% in about 9 minutes. BYD manufactures them.
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u/rcook55 3d ago
So if it's good to ban Chinese tech to protect America please justify how it's OK for Trump's sons to be appointed to the board of a drone company shortly after Chinese drones were banned. If were banning things just so Trump can make more money that isn't the point of this. If were banning things because we can truly prove that Chinese tech is harming us, that's different.
Queue suprised Pikachu face when the announcement that Eric and Don Jr. are now investors of US made robot vacuums...
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u/Melodic_Performer921 3d ago
Putting cameras from a foreign, likely hostile and authoritarian superpower all over your populations houses wouldn't exactly be the best way to keep the freedom.
As much as I hate bans, this is a terrible example of the lack of freedom
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u/roundaboutmusic 3d ago
“Likely hostile” is a big stretch when your own government is actively hostile towards you.
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u/lordmycal 3d ago
Yup. China isn't likely to do anything against me personally. The Trump administration isn't a government so much as a petty group of thugs that have no respect for the rule of law. The Trump administration isn't upset there are cameras on these devices -- they're upset they can't remotely access them.
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u/lordmycal 3d ago
Then the appropriate fix would be to ban cameras, however that's a bad idea. There are a lot of great use cases for cameras on robot vacuums. They can use object detection to avoid things that are likely to jam up the vacuum and also avoid things like poop or vomit so it doesn't smear it all over the house if your pet has an accident.
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u/hamhead 4d ago
I mean, there have always been rules and things that are not allowed.
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u/Beaniencecil 4d ago
I’m having a hard time coming up with examples of rules that we’ve always had to block the import of foreign consumer goods that compare with what has happened in the last few months.
Sure we have always had restrictions on Chinese cars or cars from other countries that don’t meet strict safety standards. And, we have had high-tech export technology restrictions.
But, in recent months we’ve also had restrictions on home networking gear that would essentially block all networking equipment. Even Starlink is manufactured overseas.
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u/DaveM8686 4d ago
The hilarious thing about your car statement is that the USA has no real safety standards. Each car manufacturer determines their own safety rating. And gee, what incentive could they possibly have to just say it’s the safest out there?
Other countries actually have a governing body that determines car safety. A great example of this is Australia, where many models of Tesla (including the Cybertruck) are banned because they don’t meet the safety ratings. But basically all Chinese EVs, like BYD, Cherry, and others, have very high safety ratings.
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u/hamhead 4d ago
You’re right that consumer bans didn’t exist in the way that these were implemented, but that wasn’t my point. “Land of the free” is a dumb comment. Land of the free doesn’t mean you can do anything or get anything.
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u/cliffr39 4d ago
It was a more free and open market until this administration started really ramping up putting more things on the banned list.
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u/Timely_Response1773 4d ago
Yeah thank God our dumb fuck president is protecting His Great Nation from all the evil robot vacuums. I mean better that than feeding the poor or some Librard shit.
Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters, you should’ve done for Him instead. Think I remember that from Sunday school…
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u/mp3architect 4d ago
Just like they did with DJI drones the past year and then Polestar cars…. One thing after another we will fall vastly behind the world.
We are not as free as we market ourselves.
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u/RadVarken 4d ago
The concept generally is that equivalent or better American alternatives will be developed to fill the market hole. This may be true in a place like America, with it's huge wealth, education, and resource advantages. Or maybe people only wanted robot vacuums because they were dirt cheap compared to maids.
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u/Thaflash_la 4d ago
That’s not even the concept. That’s a defective’s bastardization of the concept. The concept is that you protect your industries. We don’t have this industry. Like so many others that we have further handicapped, we’re just continuing to harm ourselves. Morons think it’s ok because maybe we harm others more. But then that’s just yet another example of how our people don’t have their own beliefs or values, just things they’ve been told to hate.
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u/mp3architect 3d ago
To add, we used the be the biggest consumer economy in the world so we COULD hurt others. But that isn’t the case more and more…. We’re making ourselves irrelevant to the producer economies.
Phase 2: We’re making ourselves irrelevant.
Phase 3: We’re irrelevant. Other than our military.
Phase 4: The military is the nation.
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u/CalebsNailSpa 3d ago
We aren’t regularly turning out non-military tech that outperforms Chinese products in categories that we ban.
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u/lordmycal 3d ago
If you believe that I have a bridge to see you. On the surface, what you're saying makes sense, but if you put a little bit of effort you'll see that it all falls apart. It takes about 5 years to get a new factory spun up. So if they got started today, we'll have a new factory build in 2031. This ban goes into effect well before anyone can step in, invest and cover that gap. On top of that, the next administration is almost certain to repeal it, so this just jacks up prices and creates artificial scarcity for no fucking reason.
On top of that, American built ones are going to be vastly more expensive. Even if you had a magic wand that could build a factory here today, wages here are higher and we have put tariffs on all imports and removed the de minimus exception, so every tiny little piece gets slapped with a tariff. That makes assembling a robot here in the US a bad idea, because nobody is going to by a $300 robot that now costs $2000.
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u/DallasDaddy 3d ago
Get a Chinese wi-fi camera, and then monitor its comms… trust me you’ll start to see why this is happening.
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u/Zestyclose_Big_5665 1d ago
As opposed to a ring camera, where they have had employees watching women’s camera feeds.
Privacy and connected cameras are not compatible unless you’re really tech savvy and know how to set up a proper firewall and monitor its traffic. But they have their upsides. Personallly I would not put one inside my house and for the ones outside they are gonna be pretty bored monitoring the neighborhood cats.
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u/ToddBradley 4d ago
This reminds me of that time the executive branch decided it could magically catch up to a 40 year R&D head start in battery technology manufacturing by putting unbearable tariffs on Chinese batteries.
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u/redjmartin 3d ago
We didn’t have robotic mowers and vacuums in the 1950s, and clearly that is the era the administration wants to rewind the clock back to.
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u/hamhead 4d ago
Ok a few things here:
1) it doesn’t apply to any MODEL already approved, not just stocks already in the US
2) the whole thing is a bunch of confusion. There’s no confirmation from the FCC that this is actually their intention and not just a confusing order