Electric buses from the Chinese company Yutong could be remotely disabled via remote control capabilities found in the bus software, diagnostics module, and battery and power control systems.
Similar backdoor control capabilities, usually at least officially frowned upon in Western tech companies, weren’t found in buses bought from Dutch company VDL.
You obviously didn’t read the article because the author talks about non-Chinese products as well. They specifically describe a possible future where Trump disables all Danish iPhones. It has nothing to do with China and everything to do with the problem of “smart” devices and how little control we have over our own possessions.
There’s a difference between consensual OTA updates (meaning the bus company would manually need to confirm the update) and non-consensual OTA updates (meaning it is done regardless of the bus company’s wishes).
The Chinese buses are capable of the latter which is a gigantic security vulnerability. You do not want any operating system anywhere to update itself without consent.
Looks like that was discussed in the article.
I looked up the top 5 bus manufacturers in Europe, accounting for a combined 80-90% of new buses.
All of them use OTA updates.
The author picks a very unusual bus without telling the reader to make the reader believe this is a chinese problem and not standard practice in 2025.
You obviously didn’t read the article because the author talks about non-Chinese products as well. They specifically describe a possible future where Trump disables all Danish iPhones. It has nothing to do with China and everything to do with the problem of “smart” devices and how little control we have over our own possessions.
There’s a difference between consensual OTA updates (meaning the bus company would manually need to confirm the update) and non-consensual OTA updates (meaning it is done regardless of the bus company’s wishes).
The Chinese buses are capable of the latter which is a gigantic security vulnerability. You do not want any operating system anywhere to update itself without consent.
Does Iveco(41%) or any other manufacturer with a meaningful market share do that?
https://www.iveco.com/global/Press/PressReleases/2021/IVECO-Over-the-Air-Update-the-smart-timesaving-way-to-update-vehicle-software
The language used here suggests to me that the user initiates the update, but that’s as far as I can guess.
No I think floofloof meant that the article doesn’t point out that Tesla and John Deere products have that same feature.
It specifically mentions Tesla and John Deere in the article.
Common John Deere L