WE’VE FELT LIKE A VOICE in the wilderness, but for years seniordriver has been warning that the influx of Chinese vehicles poses a significant risk. Last week, a former adviser to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and now chief strategy officer at security company CyberCX, echoed our concerns when he made a presentation to a cyber summit in Sydney. He argues that literally millions of Chinese-made internet-connected devices, and that includes electric vehicles, effectively are ticking time bombs that could be remotely disabled or even made to explode (remember that event in 2024 where pagers and walkie talkies were simultaneously exploded by Israel in two separate events in Lebanon and Syria, killing multiple Hezbollah fighters?)

According to a report by Reuters in May, “kill switches” were discovered in equipment at US solar farms that could give China the ability to shut down power grids and cause blackouts. Reuters also reported another incident in November last year when numerous solar inverters in the US were remotely disabled from China. Chinese-installed spyware, including cellular radios, has been found in Chinese-supplied power inverters and batteries used to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids, throughout the US but also around the world. This spyware could be activated remotely to freeze power grids, causing untold chaos. That means that China has built in a way to physically destroy the power grid.

Chinese cars could conceivably be used for surveillance and even made to deliberately crash.

And what we don’t know about China is vast. Chinese companies, even privately owned, are required by Chinese law to cooperate with the country’s intelligence agencies. It goes without saying the state-owned companies are even more willing to cooperate.

At the Sydney summit, public officials were urged not to even ride in Chinese-made EVs because of the risk. Millions of connected devices, even those not made in China but controlled by China, are rampant in our systems. Chinese cars, electric or otherwise, are listening and surveillance devices. Imagine if China decided to remove the safety features of household batteries to allow them to overcharge. Imagine if they decided to turn off EV safety features so those vehicles simply explode.

BYD, Great Wall Motors, MG and Chery are now in Australia’s top ten

There are now more than 265,000 Chinese-made EVs and hybrids registered in Australia, and four Chinese brands have entered the list of top ten sellers.

Opposition home affairs spokesman, James Paterson, has called for action. “It’s hard to see how it is in our national interest for companies headquartered in an authoritarian state to become the dominant supplier of vehicles in Australia and retain access to the enormous amount of data they collect.”

The proliferation of “smart” technology, from mobile phones to smart TVs all the way to the ever-increasing number of Chinese-manufactured cars, may prove, at our cost, to be a Trojan horse.

Feature image by Freepik