The Surprising Truth About Hackers and EV Safety

Is It Possible for Hackers to Control your EV and Trigger Battery Fires? Here's the truth. If you are watching the news, you heard about thousands pagers and walkie-talkies held by members of Hezbollah exploded. My first thought was holy cow, could this happen to electric cars or any cars. It appears that over heating a battery can cause an EV fire or even explosion.

While the devices appear to have been physically modified, the incident highlights a security concern for electric vehicles and connected cars. Vehicles have a number of safety systems to prevent the battery from catching fire, and overheating. The battery packs in electric vehicles are much larger than any hand-held device. All car manufacturers have fire walls and protections, but nothing is 100% secure. Those safety systems run on software that can be hacked, especially since they are already years old by the time they vehicles are built and sold. When large lithium-ion battery packs catch fire, the result can be anywhere from a smoldering fire to a large chemical chain reaction to even something explosive.

Before you flip out and say gas cars can catch fire - yes - I’m aware of that fact. However, any connected car could be hacked. Hybrids, Plug-Ins, 48V cars, and EVs all have a larger battery pack. If a vehicle with a battery pack is hacked, we have a huge issue. This is not click-bait. It’s possible, let me explain.

“You have hundreds of millions of lines of code inside a vehicle. If you were talking about autonomous vehicles, it's even more. But the number of lines of codes in a vehicle is continuously growing.”

He said that in addition to the lines of code in the vehicle’s software there are also wireless connections to the internet for software updates, connections to charging infrastructure. And there are connections to the electricity grid for vehicle to grid technology, which allows EV owners to sell their energy storage capacity to grid operators.

“The more communication protocols you have, the more lines of code you have, the more you are susceptible to controlling something that will trigger events that are … let's call it malicious,” Fridman said.

A recent report stated that there is software to remotely disable cars that already exists inside American-made vehicles, and the report argues such a tactic could be used maliciously by a foreign adversary. In addition, cybersecurity experts are looking closely at the possibility that EVs could be hacked to cause all kinds of problems. This includes stealing personal information, such as credit card and banking information during charging station transactions, or possibly making the battery catch fire. We have covered this before here. (point up with left hand)

Fridman also stated that the complexity of the vehicle and supporting infrastructure, as well as all the communications involved, creates a lot of opportunities to influence what’s happening inside the vehicle. He also stated: “I believe, in my personal opinion, there is a constellation in which you can create a battery overload and disable some of the protective mechanisms.”

Lithium-ion batteries catch fire when they enter an uncontrolled, self-heating event called thermal runaway. Most often, it occurs due to damage or a defect in the battery. This battery protection is controlled partially by a computer, and these EVs are always on, even when the “ignition” is off. If that battery coolant control is tampered with, a fire would quickly start. An overheated battery gives off toxic and flammable gasses, which can cause an explosion. At the very least, they produce a smoldering, smoky fire that’s a huge risk to firefighters due to the difficulty in extinguishing it.

There are a few companies that are working with car manufacturers to protect access from outside access.

Accessed the vehicles’ battery management systems (BMS), which monitor, protect and optimize the EVs battery, including maintaining safe temperatures is certainly possible. We even heard about a Jeep many years ago being taken over remotely. This is a story we will continue to track moving forward.

Link for a deeper dive: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/experts-say-its-possible-hackers-take-control-ev-features-and-even-trigger#dig-deeper

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