Vi skal vænne os til, at hvis du køber en amerikansk Tesla eller kinesisk BYD, kan den – i hvert fald i teorien – i morgen godt være en ubrugelig klods på omkring et ton bilskrald, der bare holder ude i din indkørsel. Det samme, hvis du køber iPhone eller en mobiltelefon fra Huawei eller for den sags skyld en europæisk telefon.
Translating very loosely because I don’t actually speak Danish:
If you buy an American Tesla or Chinese BYD it can in theory be bricked tomorrow. Same if you buy an iPhone, Hwawei, or even a European phone.
Other countries, brands, and varieties of products are also discussed throughout the article.
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.
Operators of the chinese bus can pull the SIM card and reinsert it as desired as mentioned in the article, I’m not sure there is a meaningful difference if that is how the Iveco works.
There’s no kill switch, the bus uses OTA updates like 95% of new buses, and soon 100% that could conceivably be used as a kill switch.
The article lies by omission.
How is it lying by omission why it describes exactly what you said?
One form of lying by omission is not to discuss whether this is unique or unusual to Chinese vehicles.
Translating very loosely because I don’t actually speak Danish:
Other countries, brands, and varieties of products are also discussed throughout the article.
Looks like that was discussed in the article.
No I think floofloof meant that the article doesn’t point out that Tesla and John Deere products have that same feature.
Common John Deere L
It specifically mentions Tesla and John Deere 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.
Operators of the chinese bus can pull the SIM card and reinsert it as desired as mentioned in the article, I’m not sure there is a meaningful difference if that is how the Iveco works.
You cannot know that, and it’s a big problem.