Regarding Police Procurement of Chinese Made BYD EVs 

Written By Arian Tashakkori

10 August 2026

Regarding Reports of Police Procurement of Chinese Made BYD Shark EVs

Good afternoon,  

PILLAR (Protecting Individual Life Liberty and Rights) is a New Zealand civil liberties advocacy organisation with a mission to protect and promote New Zealand’s heritage as a free, liberal and democratic society. A focus on freedom of speech, conscience, religion, thought and inquiry, right to privacy, right of assembly and association, ground our vision for a free New Zealand. 

We wrote to you earlier this year inquiring about government policies around the procurement of hardware and software systems developed in China, specifically, Chinese made electric vehicles and the corresponding national security risks associated with these products.  

As previously noted, like-minded democracies such as the UK, Canada, the USA, and Australia have recently brought this matter to the highest levels of security consideration. 

Since late 2024, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has warned that “Chinese electric vehicles are a rolling security threat”.  Accordingly, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke had to take ‘precautions’ based on warnings from his own department to protect sensitive information from Burke’s own Chinese-made electric car. 

In the UK, Chinese made EVs have been banned from military sites, and other leased EV’s boldly marked with “MOD devices are NOT to be connected to vehicle.” Surveillance, security, and privacy risks associated with Chinese-made electric vehicles are real. These vehicles are Chinese made ‘computers on wheels’.  

We are therefore concerned by the reporting that notes “NZ Police confirms BYD Shark 6 under evaluation for disaster response”.

New Zealand must apply the same caution to vehicles as we have to telecommunications and critical infrastructure in the past, including the restrictions placed on Huawei telecommunications products following GCSB reviews.

Modern vehicles are no longer for just transport - they are highly connected, data-collecting devices. Although we are apolitical regarding a transition to electric vehicles, we believe that such a transition must not come at the expense of national security.  

If the BYD Shark procurement process is finalised, an increasing share of New Zealand’s critical public-service fleet - including buses, ferries, and now Police disaster-response vehicles - will be Chinese-made. This comes despite numerous reports raising concerns about potential surveillance technology and remote “kill switch” capabilities. 

Given the current and increasing threats of foreign interference from CCP China and increasing geo-political tensions concerning China’s relationship to our international partners, we would like to inquire the following:  

Has the GCSB/NCSC or any other national-security agency conducted a security assessment of the proposed BYD vehicles before Police proceeds with procurement? 

If these vehicles are intended for disaster response, what assurance does the Minister have that they will remain fully operational if communications with the manufacturer's servers are disrupted or deliberately disabled? 

Has the Minister received assurance from the GCSB, NZSIS, or NCSC that Chinese-made connected vehicles being considered for the Police fleet do not pose an unacceptable national-security risk through their cameras, microphones, location data, remote connectivity or software-control capabilities — and if not, will the procurement be allowed to proceed.  

Given the potential implications for national security, we believe that this matter warrants urgent and transparent consideration. We welcome the opportunity to engage further with your office on this issue and to contribute to any future policy discussions.  

We await your response – thank you in advance.    

Yours sincerely,   

Nathan Seiuli  

Executive Director, PILLAR NZ

Arian Tashakkori
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Inquiry into national security threats posed by Chinese-made EVs