“I was able to see a large amount of data. Including where the Tesla has been, where it charged, current location, where it usually parks, when it drove, the speed of the trips, the navigation requests, the history of software updates, even a history of the weather. around the Tesla and just so much more, ”Colombo wrote in a medium post published in January detailing his exploits.
While the specific vulnerabilities Colombo exploited have been fixed, his hack demonstrates a huge flaw in the core of these smart vehicles: Data sharing is not a flaw; it is a function.
The amount of data that Tesla collects and uses is only the tip of the iceberg. We have not yet seen fully autonomous vehicles or the highly acclaimed “smart cities” that could see 5G-enabled roads and traffic lights.
In the near future, cars will not only collect information about their driver and passengers, but about the vehicles, pedestrians and the city around them. Some of this data will be necessary for the car to function properly – to reduce collisions, plan routes better and improve the vehicles themselves.
“The United States and Europe have been asleep at the wheel,” said Tu Le, CEO of Sino Auto Insights. The United States, Canada and Europe may continue to be world leaders in the production of traditional vehicles, but that lead will not last long. Whether it’s cobalt mining, lithium battery innovation, 5G-enabled technology or big data analytics, Le says China has been several steps ahead of its Western competitors.
“All the seemingly unrelated things converge in this smart EV,” says Le.
Of course, not all of Beijing’s success came honestly. Chinese nationals have been accused of theft intellectual property from US companies to strengthen China’s growing industry. Le says that kind of espionage certainly helps, but that is not the main reason for Beijing’s exploding growth in the automotive sector.
China’s ability to handle conspicuous amounts of data, for example, is well documented. Beijing’s face recognition programs rely on a ubiquitous network of surveillance cameras, its proprietary GPS system enables real-time tracking of the Muslim minority in Xinjiang, its expansive online surveillance system delivers into its dystopian social credit score. “A country is used to managing terabytes of data on a daily basis,” says Le – and at least when it comes to the automotive industry, it’s not the United States.
And these data are not just Chinese. Massive investment from Beijing brings its brand of “smart city” to BishkekKyrgyzstan; Venezuela; and countries across Africa. Chinese pilot projects for autonomous vehicles like Pony.ai are even on the way in California.
China has learned that diverse data that take into account a large difference in weather, people, and technology improve the algorithms. If China gets better at exploiting this data, it may need less of it. So even anonymized, general data passed on from a fleet of Chinese-made cars in North America could reveal individual patterns and habits, but also paint a complex picture of an entire neighborhood or city – be it the daily routine of an urban military base or schedule of a powerful minister. By banning Teslas from certain areas, China is apparently already controlling for this threat in the domestic market.