Norway: Chinese-made electric buses have major security flaw, can be remotely stopped and disabled by their manufacturer in China, Oslo operator says
The public transport operator in Norway’s capital said Tuesday that some electric buses from China have a serious flaw – software that could allow the manufacturer, or nefarious actors, to take control of the vehicle.
Oslo’s transport operator Ruter said they had tested two electric buses this summer – one built by China’s Yutong and the other by Dutch firm VDL.
The Chinese model featured a SIM card that allowed the manufacturer to remotely install software updates that made it vulnerable, whereas the Dutch model did not.
“We’ve found that everything that is connected poses a risk – and that includes buses,” Ruter director Bernt Reitan Jenssen told public broadcaster NRK.
“There is a risk that for example suppliers could take control, but also that other players could break into this value chain and influence the buses.”
Ruter said it was now developing a digital firewall to guard against the issue.
According to other reports, the Chinese manufacturer has access to each bus’s software updates, diagnostics, and battery control systems. “In theory, the bus could therefore be stopped or rendered unusable by the manufacturer,” the company said.
Ruter has reported its findings to Norway’s Ministry of Transport and Communications.
Arild Tjomsland, a special advisor at the University of South-Eastern Norway who helped conduct the tests, said: “The Chinese bus can be stopped, turned off, or receive updates that can destroy the technology that the bus needs to operate normally.”
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There’s an even bigger issue with these busses.
They were never made for the cold of Norway, and the electric heating couldn’t keep them warm even in the relative mild winters that Oslo has. To fix this they installed auxiliary diesel heaters. These diesel heaters use more diesel(see edit) to keep the busses warm than the previous generation of diesel hybrid busses used to both fuel the engine, and keep the busses warm.
So the new EV busses that were supposed to lower local pollution ended up costing more and polluting more.
Edit: these heaters haven’t actually been tested in a winter scenario, and the “diesel consumption exceeds the previous busses” claim is based on just looking at the spec sheet for the diesel heaters to be fitted. And it’s compared to the previous plug-in hybrid busses which obviously had a lot of their fuel consumption covered by being plug-in
why? to be dicks?
No, to get the enough heat in the winter so that people aren’t freezing on the bus?
why not use any other form of heating possible?
<citation needed>
Here’s an article that mentions the fitting of the diesel heaters: https://www.nrk.no/stor-oslo/slik-skal-ruter-og-unibuss-unnga-nytt-busskaos-i-vinter-1.17036833
Now technically they could heat them to a comfortable temperature with only the resistive heating, but they would not have the battery capacity to get through the minimum required range to serve their routes.
The stuff about the diesel heaters exceeding the consumption of the previous busses seems to be based on preliminary data from the specs of the heaters, and not actual real life data as they didn’t have time to fit the heaters before the previous winter hit. And the only stuff I can find about it is pay walled. I will add an edit to my original comment for this.
Even “if” this is true. This will only be needed during the coldest of winter months. So for the rest of the year they will be far more efficient.
This sounds like FUD.
Plus a bus should not use resistive heating but instead have a heat pump. If it doesnt have a heat pump then that is a bad purchase.
The busses they replaced were plug-in hybrid busses that mostly ran on battery power already, they were already super efficient.
They did indeed fuck up and not buy them with heat pumps. They were going to retrofit heatpumps but it turned out to be too expensive so they went with diesel heaters.
They literally did not include any sort of minimum requirements for heating in the bidding process. It was a huge fuck up that has been covered lots in the media here.
It’s buses, not busses.
It’s a habit since is buss in Norwegian. I will keep doing it and blame the English language for being incorrect.
Edit: I googled it and technically busses isn’t incorrect, but buses is preferred. Merriam-webster used to list busses as the preferred form up until 1961 actually.
The English language is so often incorrect
More often than not, one might argue.