Safety tests by a public transport operator in Oslo, Norway, conducted have raised grave concerns over Chinese electric buses.
The operator known as Ruter conducted secret trials a few months ago on an electric bus from a European manufacturer and one from China’s Yutong to determine if there were cybersecurity threats, MENAFN reported Wednesday.
The European bus remained secure but the Chinese-made one had the ability to be manipulated by its manufacturer.
The manufacturer has access to buses’ software, diagnostics, and battery control systems, therefore the manufacturer could stop or render the vehicle unusable, Ruter explained.
The article continued:
Arild Tjomsland, a special advisor at the University of South-Eastern Norway who assisted with the tests, emphasized the risks: “The Chinese bus can be stopped, turned off, or receive updates that can destroy the technology that the bus needs to operate normally.”
He noted that while hackers and suppliers cannot steer the buses, the ability to stop them could disrupt operations or serve as leverage during a crisis.
During former President Joe Biden’s (D) push for green energy, Chinese automakers were looking to flood the United States market with cheap electric vehicles (EVs), Breitbart News reported in 2023. The following year, Chinese companies were testing their autonomous vehicles on American roads, raising concerns about the data they were collecting as they mapped the nation.
In addition, Breitbart News reported in September 2024, “The British government’s open-doors approach to electric vehicles from Communist China threatens to undercut domestic manufacturing and expose the country to national security risks, with a think tank warning that EVs could be ‘weaponized’ by Beijing.”
In regard to the issue in Oslo, Ruter Director Bernt Reitan Jenssen said, “We’ve found that everything that is connected poses a risk — and that includes buses. 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,” the Economic Times reported Tuesday.
The MENAFN article said the test results were forwarded to officials at the Ministry of Transport and Communications in Norway.
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