Secure boot for UK electric car chargers isn't mandatory until 2023 – but why the delay? Electric car chargers will have to include secure boot and automatic network disconnection if unsigned software runs on the smart devices – but only from 2023, the British government has said. New security requirements for smart chargers won't be enforced until the last day of this year, according to government papers reviewed …
Tesla, and every other EV makers will just have to make sure they comply with regulations. And can't be bricked by a skiddie who's fooled the owner into running an unsigned app.
Has some fun potential for modernising war-driving though.
"The article is about car chargers not EVs themselves."
True but the charger is a possible vector to the vehicle. If the charger is ill, the vehicle can be infected. Maybe. Unless they, too, are heavily protected.
Does anyone know [or care] whether they are?
Is this going to require that you get your phone out of your pocket and answer a text (2FA) every time you charge the car battery?
Plugging a charger in always used to be completely secure (I remember my dad charging his car back in the 1950's) but all the security issues appeared when everyone starting collecting and selling our data or adding AI to the devices - making all our devices "smarter" has made them vulnerable.
>Is this going to require that you get your phone out of your pocket and answer a text (2FA) every time you charge the car battery?
Depending on exactly whose chargers you are using, this is already exactly how things work. Someone's got to pay for the juice, and that usually means you signing up to someone's app and logging in.
"Depending on exactly whose chargers you are using, this is already exactly how things work. Someone's got to pay for the juice, and that usually means you signing up to someone's app and logging in."
Or more typically you swiping a card (or phone) as you would any other card transaction.
If you've been in the EV game for a couple of years, you'll know that (for some reason) it was exceedingly rare to find charging points with card readers. They're very much a relatively new feature... For some reason....
I'm not sure why a load of companies all thought "I know, let's roll out membership schemes and people have to sign up to be a member" for the chargers.
Yes - it was a complete mess, but the number of chargers without a contactless payment point has plummeted to pretty close to zero in the last 12 months or so.
Gridserve have really helped there.
Some of the low power pod point chargers still use a website or an app (and have well named chargers so it's easy to type in the unique code for your charger)... can't recall any others I've been at which don't support contactless in a long while.
Good. I am between EVs at the moment, but still have a stack of proprietary cards and apps, some of which actually worked.
The best one was (I think) Pod Point in Oxford. Redbridge park and ride - the GIS thought the unit was in someone's front garden a kilometre away. So I plugged in and started the app. "You must be within half a mile of the charger to start a session". "But I'm LEANING ON IT!!". Reported this. Twice. Two years later there was no change. Of all the other ones they had in Oxford, only one was both in existence, accessible, and working - and that was sited to make it highly likely that access was blocked.
Five years back I was discussing with an ex-colleague who went to work for the biggest charger network in the US. The whole reason for the plethora of closed payment systems was that the companies were captured by Marketing types who were determined to gather as much usage information as possible. And had not considered that making things harder to use would dissuade people from using them. And of course, being marketers were not in the least bit interested in the product actually working reliably. B-Ark candidates, the lot of them,
Now that the UK govt has mandated that new ones all use bank cards, and the likes of BP and Shell (let's face it, they are fossil fuel companies, but they DO know how to run fuel stations!) are involved. I think things will improve a lot. When the new car arrives I will find out!
It's because everything is 'smart' now, and thus open to more, or different exploits.
So we're all going to be driving EVs soon. These will need lots of charging points, and lots of charging time. They'll also be largely unsupervised. So there'll be scope for abuse. That could be simple theft and figuring out how to get free charging. Or there could be DoS to prevent people charging. Or possibly something more malicious, like tampering with charging circuitry to damage vehicles. I guess in an extreme case, car needs to identify to the charger so you could target specific vehicles. Or locations, which could be fun for a budding techno-arsonist, anarchist or criminal that might want to shut down a few streets.
OK, so there are supposed to be thermal or fuze protections, but EVs still catch fire while charging.
Then there's some other fun ahead. So new domestic installs will need a separate supply and 'smart' meter for demand management. So charging may only be available at 'off-peak' times, unavailable due to high demand. Or just on a 'flexible' tariff, separate to usual domestic supply. Which will also allow things like removing VAT from domestic, but keeping it on EV. And of course a mechanism to add subsidies and 'fuel' duty to the EV bill.
All of which will provide incentives for people to abuse the system.
Then there's some other fun ahead. So new domestic installs will need a separate supply and 'smart' meter for demand management. So charging may only be available at 'off-peak' times, unavailable due to high demand. Or just on a 'flexible' tariff, separate to usual domestic supply. Which will also allow things like removing VAT from domestic, but keeping it on EV. And of course a mechanism to add subsidies and 'fuel' duty to the EV bill.
Except if that happens Iyou have the option of by-passing that by reverting to the old 3-pin plug socket. Ok is a lot slower but that doesn't matter too much when you have a whole night to charge. Otherwise subsidised residential EV 7Kv chargers are a convenience, not a necessity.
Nope, smart meter EV chargers are really about controlling off peak low carbon charging rewarded with lower tariffs hopefully passed on by the lower costs from the generators to your supplier. Mine does that now. Oh and it has a boost charge that operates if you need a daytime charge.
Depends. So it'd be trivial to mandate a handshake between EV and charger so that insecure connections don't work. With an option to notify the attempt via the EV's telemetry. Market that as a safety feature to stop consumers doing some dodgy DIY and burning down homes. I think Germany's already imposed restrictions on EV charging in underground parking.
But hooking into a cooker spur would give faster charging, and probably also be accompanied by smoke.
Until very recently diesel used for moving a narrowboat, say, was red-diesel rated for VAT and duty (~12p on each litre), but the diesel used for heating and cooking attracted the usual white-diesel VAT & duty (~60p on a litre). The difference could be paid via the fuel pump operator that pumped only red-diesel and was based on an estimate of how much cruising one was doing. So you could legally use red-diesel for heating, provided you kept the receipt (though many people "over-estimated" the amount they used for propulsion!)
A lot of this confusion and complexity and the recent change was down to an EU ruling about water-borne vessels crossing borders and bringing the fuel with them, commercial fishing fleets etc.
Brexit and taking back control etc etc and from this year it's full rate on all uses for "pleasure" craft (including liveaboard) and marked rate for commercial operations. So a LOT more out of the pocket of your water-gypsies.
They often have a diesel drip heater such as the Webasto Thermo Top Pro 150 for when the engine isn't running. Taking a feed from the cooling loop for a circulating hot water system and tank heater is great, but an engine is not brilliantly efficient. The engine also runs to charge the batteries.
There are also diesel ovens, though I prefer LPG. And a multi-fuel stove is lovely on a cold evening. You can also get some electricity from those too.
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Nope they want to entirely discourage us poorpers from owning cars in the first place, force us to walk everywhere and cram ourselves into horribly inconvenient public transport, so they and their rich mates get the roads to themselves.
Only wish I were trolling.
For example, this from August 2019: UK Science and Technology Commitee says ban personal car ownership
There was also similar bollocks from an MP in the news the recently.
"Time will be that charging from a 13 amp socket will be as illegal as using Red diesel."
Or simply made impossible by way of "HDMI" for E.V.'s
Which innovation may even make way for the wonderful marketing ploy of restricting charging to juice from "approved" dealers and partners.
Hmm, one could even use this scheme for other IoT gadgets such as fridges, lighting and heating.
Apple fridges only powerable by Apple-supplied electricity. Coming soon to a world near you ...
Of course, buying off-brand electrons and jail-breaking your cooker will become a violation of patent, copyright and other DRM, DCMA, and Computer Misuse laws.
Fun times.
So there'll be scope for abuse
Of course there will! Even now I can see whole neighbourhoods with pavements covered with snaking cables vanishing into houses where some enterprising crim gang will have sold you the means to power at least part of your house from the nearest charge point. Urban hemp cannabis farmers will be rubbing their hands with glee.
At the same time, some poor sod will be waking up to find an enormous credit card bill for all the EV charging "they've" used.
Fun times ahead, and I'm sure it won't be like Smart Meters. At all.
If you're using a "pay-at-the-pump" charger you need your bumps felt anyway.
The greatest ripoff going right now. In terms of what you get for your pound, energy-wise, it's cheaper to buy petrol FFS.
The way the industry gets away with this is by pointing out that nobody needs to pay that price, as they'll sell you a monthly consumption subscription for less (assuming you know how much you use each month and always use it).
Those who think this looks exactly like the mobile phone networks' charging model, back in the bad old days of analogue phones sold by cowboys, are right on the money.
It's about time that OFGEM pointed out that the Kwh price cap applies to all electricity providers and anyone who doesn't want to run the system on those terms can fuck off and find the next scam bandwagon to jump on.
1 litre of petrol provides 34.2 MJ (9.5kWh) for a cost of approximately £1.43, With current electricity prices that same (9.5kWh) amount of energy costs over £2 even charging at home and well over £3 charging at ASDA.
Given the losses in an ICE engine (efficiency around 30%) the cost per mile in good weather is better for EVs - however in winter where heating and headlights are needed (taking power from the battery) the cost per mile of an EV rises considerably and the range is severely reduced. (For an ICE powered vehicle heating is effectively free as the cabin is heated by waste heat.)
Given that the UK electricity system does NOT have the generating (or transmission) capacity to handle the extra power consumption caused by millions of EVs, anyone buying an EV may well find themselves with an expensive unusable vehicle.
(Before someone says "use renewable energy", ask how much power the UK can get from renewables on a calm winter night (hint solar zero wind zero)).
Icon for governments that mandate EVs without the required generating capacity ====>
Carrie says it'll be fine. Kids won't remember what snow is. Unlike EV drivers caught in Washington's recent snowstorm. Or other bits of the US. At least with ICEs, jerry cans can keep drivers warm and alive.
(And people are strange. Saw reports of people panicking because snow & ice had cut power and their freezers were off. Temps outside were well below 0. Wonder what an energy efficient solution might be?)
'Einstein' wants us to cut our energy consumption by switching off
'Non-Einstein' wants us to switch to EVs, each gobbling up far more juice than switching off a few LED bulbs for a year
(Boris/Einstein... same crazy hair but strangely never seen together in the same room)
The issue isn't energy consumption, it's net carbon emissions
EVs are a lower net emission overall. Refining petrol uses almost as much energy as the energy content of the fuel and the actual extractable energy per litre of an Otto engine isn't 30% (that's ideal conditions) but more like 3-9% under real world conditions (Diesel is better but not much better)
EVs are ~30% fuel to wheel from the power station including transmission system losses in most cases
Electrical generation only accounted for ~1/3 of carbon emissions prior to widespread adoption of renwables and renewables can only just outproduce carbon-emitting electrical generation. There's a big gap to fill
Yes I know you can theoretically fill the world's energy needs by paving a desert or three. There are practical reasons why this won't work, starting with transmission distance limitations, never mind that such a transmission system into Europe would be the largest single engineering project ever attempted in human history (even the South-North China canal being tiny by comparsion)
if we're going to keep using fuels like diesel or kerosene in applications where high density/portability is absolutely needed (long haul aircraft) then you need high temperature nuclear heat to drive a Sabatier process to produce it. LWR/BWR techology isn't hot enough
I'm having some difficulty reconciling your projection to my actual use. On a mid range EV I get 4 miles/Kw. That's 4p/mile on my standard daytime tariff. Our old Micra would do 40mpg on a good day around town. Currently that's about 17.5p/mile.
A huge difference. No £50 fill-ups - a full charge would be only £6.40 even if it doesn't take you as far.
Highway fast 50-100Kv chargers cost double to treble that of a home charge. However, I believe they have to pay 20% vat not 5% plus the chargers are hefty expensive cutting edge pieces of kit that require high maintenance (or in reality need even HIGHER maintenance). Plus the forecourt has to linked to a special 3-phase link to the local grid if available. Plus all the other costs involved in retailing.
The upside is you get in 40 minutes what would take 4 hours. The real rip-off are the suburban 7Kv slow chargers who charge similar rates but don't require the expensive infrastructure.
Petrol is around £5.50 a gallon, so 13.5p/mile
UK average electricity cost is arond 18p/kWh
Currently around 60% of the price of petrol is tax (fuel duty 57.5p/l) +20% VAT because taxing tax is good for inflation. Electricity is also inflated by loading the costs of 'renewables' onto electricity users. Then adding 5% VAT because one has to force energy users to subsidise the 'renewables' lobby, and the government wants to skim 5% as well.
Of course this is all inflationary, increases energy poverty and reduces the UK's competitiveness. But it allows Boris & Carrie to signal their virtue using other people's money, so it's all good.
Or not, because it's going to get a lot worse. So Net Zero means decarbonising the UK. So shifting heating, cooking, transportation etc to electricity. Obviously that massively increases demand, and 'renewables' can't deliver affordable, reliable power. And building sane power generation takes time, but the government has only a few years to save the planet.
And it's going to be losing fuel duty, and has already loaded a lot of costs onto electricity. And there's already been a lot of press around our current energy crisis. Hence why the government can't afford to have people cheating, and depriving the Treasury. Separate EV supplies and metering are just part of that, so fuel duty & EV policy costs can be applied to those tariffs. So EV running costs will rise. The EU's black box for all new vehicles will also allow for road charging, and 'fraud' detection. If the black box logs you've driven 1000 miles, but there's no record of you using an EV charger, well you must be using red diesel. I mean electrons. No matter, have a large fine for tax evasion.
Still, it could be worse, just ask Kazakhstan. Government increased energy costs, and now they have a coup on their hands. And not the first country to have that problem. See also France and their yellow jackets. UK tends to be a bit more restrained, so hopefully Energy Taxes won't be like the Poll Tax. Even though the Poll Tax added less to household costs than energy policies have & will cost.
"UK average electricity cost is arond 18p/kWh"
Erm, and that has what to do with the price of fish?
There are two important rates for an EV driver:
- Your overnight rate (usually <10p)
- The service station rate (26p/kWh at PodPoint, 30p/kWh for Gridserve, up to 45p for InstaVolt). I'm ignoring ionity and tesla since they are mostly closed networks, or at least designed to be)
Those expensive rates convert to 6.5p/mile, 7.5p/mile, 11.25p/mile.
It is vanishingly rare that you would use any other rate.
And when you do use a service station charger, you are only doing so on the "second leg" and onwards of a long journey. I have a journey which is two complete charges of the battery in my car in the middle of winter, so two stops make it nice and easy (and coordinates rather well with loo breaks etc).
Start full, arrive empty - so we needed 1 full battery at service station rates. Recharge at destination, might that will take a couple of nights if you're limited to a three pin socket, then do the same on the way home.
That's then a "long journey" cost of <20p/kWh or 5p/mile.
Petrol at 50mpg will get you 13.2 miles for £1.45 (https://www.confused.com/petrol-prices) for 11p/mile (i.e. about the same as the rather expensive, but conveniently located, instavolt facilities).
If you get the cheapest in the country then you can save a penny... 9.8p/mile, up to a service station at 15p/mile.
Hmm, my car is about 85mpg. I wonder how much that would change things?
(translated using Google as I work in litres and kilometres)
The main problem I have with EVs is their limited range (which will only get worse as the battery ages). As opposed to dumping some fuel into the tank, instant recharge, and ready to go.
"I'm having some difficulty reconciling your projection to my actual use"
There's a standard fallacy of assuming automotive engines are 30% efficient (45-50% on diesels)
This only applies under ideal conditions - max load/wide open throttle- and it's _rare_ on a car
It's more like 3-9% in real world conditions for (sub)urban engines (rising to maybe 15% in highway cars but this is offset by vastly higher air frictional losses). Diesels are only slightly higher
EVs sit at about 95% efficiency socket to wheel
Rapids are increasingly having to be backed by battery buffering. This significantly reduces the power cost to the operator but it's a higher upfront cost
EVs sit at about 95% efficiency socket to wheel
That's an interesting assertion: you appear to have improved charging and discharging efficiency by at least a good quarter, completely eliminated transmission losses and battery drain while stationary and the use of passive alarms etc which all drain power while the vehicle is stationary.
In fact, your obtaining perpetual peak efficiency from the electric motor as well, since that's between 70% & 95% efficient.
"That's an interesting assertion: you appear to have improved charging and discharging efficiency by at least a good quarter, completely eliminated transmission losses and battery drain while stationary and the use of passive alarms etc which all drain power while the vehicle is stationary."
A common approach, many commentators quote low ICE efficiencies due to "real world conditions" but fail to apply the same constraints when they quote EV statistics.
95% is probably ambitious, although depending on your area and driving style you might get quite a boost from regenerative braking (not seen a petrol car refill it's tank when slowing down or going downhill).
From above...
"1 litre of petrol provides 34.2 MJ (9.5kWh)"
9.5kWh is enough to provide ~38 miles of typical EV driving, that's equivalent to 144 mpg (call that three times a typical vehicle):
And the cost of that travel is:
~£4.35 for petrol (average cost £1.45, but you only go 1/3rd the distance)
~£4.25 for the rather expensive InstaVolt chargers
~£2.85 for GridServe charging
~£0.90 for a fairly typical home charger
~£0.47 for Octopus Go users (5p overnight rate)
ICE engines in cars are so inefficient that burning the oil in a power station (~40%) and transmitting it across the grid is still more efficient than burning petrol directly at point of use (and that ignores the cost of refining, transporting, and pumping the petrol).
"typically multiple kW - the original Tesla 3 heater takes over 4kW"
Yes and when motorway cruising the motors consume 40kW (ish) so it's an additional 10% load. Hardly much to write home about. Tesla are also switching to using Stirling engines for their heating/cooling so that load will be reduced to 1kW
4kW sounds alot, but it's peanuts compared with driving, and they won't be running at full power for very long or you'd overheat (and the car would already be at temperature when you arrive at a traffic jam). Even at full power then in an hour you'd reduce your range by a nominal 16 miles.
First google hit suggests up to half a gallon an hour for an idling ICE, which feels absurd...
200cl looks more reasonable (2004 paper using 1.6l ford engine, reported by Engineering Explained YT channel) - that's ~1/6th of a gallon, so you use 8 miles of range an hour in a nominal 50mpg ICE vehicle.
And heat pumps exist... most cars nowadays have them (AC is just a heat pump) - they just need configuring to use in either direction (don't know why all EVs don't do this) - that significantly reduces the heating load required, from an already fairly low standpoint.
>"First google hit suggests up to half a gallon an hour for an idling ICE, which feels absurd..."
> "200cl looks more reasonable"
You realise that 200cl = 2 litres, which is about half a gallon?
"Basic html" is supported my ass. How tf does on quote
We can actually get 3GW of green/renewable energy on a calm winter night. It's timber chopped down in USA forests & south American rainforests, shipped to the USA to be pulped into timber pellets and then shipped back across the Atlantic, and then trucked to the former coal biomass plant to be burned.
For general awareness; wood emits 50% more CO2 per megawatt hour than coal does, before taking transatlantic transport and chopping down bloody forests(!) into account which would otherwise be sucking up CO2 or storing it in the form of timber building material so the greens have actually managed yet another own goal; they eliminated coal plants by using them to burn trees; actually increasing CO2 emissions and paying green subsidiaries to the people doing it, therefore driving up electricity bills.
it's not trucked to DRAX that's inefficient, the ships come into Port of Tyne and Teesport and they get 16 trainloads a day of "Bio-mass"
6 of the 8 coal-fired generating units have switched to Bio-mass and DRAX generates up to 25% of UK electricity
They argue that the CO2 is off-set by planting more trees, but there is no way this works, meanwhile, DRAX are making £400m a year profit based on government "green energy" subsidy of £800m a year
No it’s not six out of eight it’s four out of six, all three of the 1970’s build and one of the 1980’s build.
A total of 6 x 660/645MW, and three distillate fuelled 35MW gas turbines with a hard limit of total transmission entry capacity of 4GW, even running everything continuously it amounts to 35TWh per annum and not by any stretch of the imagination ‘25% of UK generation’ (circa 300TWh)
The long term solution is (and always has been) nuclear, preferably _NOT_ LWR as it's not safe enough.
China's got the revived ORNL MSRE project up and running on thorium at Wuwei
Hopefully the 100MWe planet will be only a couple of years behind it and beyond that, the design should be a drop-in replacement for coal boiler heat sources (unlike LWR, which isn't nearly hot enough)
But of course the "Quality British Solution" (Rolls Royce) will be installed, because politics even though it costs 10 times as much
That's until Tokamak comes online and we're Fusion all the way.
The RR SMR is cheaper as they are microreactors, and all the same unlike current generation fission plants, where each new plant has a significantly different reactor, the idea is this allows them to churn them out assembly-line style
Puh-lease. Tokamaks will never be generating useful fusion power, and before you stutter "but.. but.. ITER...!" that's nothing more than a massive plasma physics experiment.
Helion Energy and Focus Fusion have far more chance of producing useful power. Hell even that Rossi twat with his magic ecat cold fusion nonsense has more chance of producing useful fusion energy than Tokamaks or ITER.
I had a tour of the Oxford site, and it was fascinating. First get sustained fusion, then figure out how to convert plasma into electricity. Plus fuel issues. Tritium is cleaner, but horribly expensive both in energy to create it, and in cash terms. Deuterium is a lot cheaper, but you have to manage fast neutrons. Theres a few research teams looking at how to become neutron wranglers.
Meanwhile, SMRs are looking promising to provide reliable energy. And as a bonus, can produce the isotopes needed for medicine & industry. That's kinda vital, and something the Green Blob can't deliver, even though they may need isotopes to save their lives.
No argument over SMRs, which are by far the best and most realistic, reliable, viable, achievable, base load and load following generators we can currently make.
Wind and solar maybe have a part to play, but only if they're appropriately situated and aren't 100% relied on for all power. This a time and a place for wind and solar, but the UK is neither for most of the year.
RR is certainly not the only group with skin in the SMR game, and many are much. much closer to fruition.
> Given the losses in an ICE engine (efficiency around 30%) the cost per mile in good weather is better for EVs - however in winter where heating and headlights are needed (taking power from the battery) the cost per mile of an EV rises considerably and the range is severely reduced. (For an ICE powered vehicle heating is effectively free as the cabin is heated by waste heat.)
I see this factoid trotted out frequently, as if ICE mileage doesn't go down in cold weather as well. My vehicle can do 35+MPG in summer, yet will only manage 30 in the winter, lower if it's really cold.
In winter most drivers allow the car to idle after ignition and before the trip, to give the vehicle time to warm up. But you are absolutely correct. Whether it's due to idling or other reasons, ICE vehicles have lower effective MPG in winter. My numbers are similar to yours, 31 summer/27 winter (32/28 if I drive perfectly).
Secure boot seems a bit excessive in many cases.
Simple chargers can easily run with a PIC or Arduino. They are probably adequate for reading and transmitting RFID tags too.
Card readers are more of an issue but in many cases this is a standalone subsystem which does all the security internally.
I guess that we have to be more careful with a DC charger but the car should protect the battery from abuse and disconnect it if there are issues.
I don't think a full blown OS is appropriate in many cases. A small embedded system would be more reliable.
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What do you think runs on a PIC or Arduino? Code. That hardware still needs to be protected from someone dumping arbitrary firmware on it. It's not the 80's any more, the line between "dumb hardware" and "complex OS" has moved on, and shouting into the coming wind is not going to protect you. Security is not just a case of smugly mocking MS any more.
I've got a SmartEVSE[0] charger installed. Uses a PIC 18F26K22.
[0] Its smarts are limited to sensing the mains current on the incoming feed and keeping that below the current rating for the primary fuses, so that they don't blow if the cooker hobs and the oven and the electrical boiler and the kettle and a few Magicoals are running, and then you get home plugging in the EV.
I would suggest reading the regs before getting too het up about them or indeed unduly praising them. They're not too long or incomprehensible and the article does a poor job of summarising them.
Public charge points are out of scope of the regs, whether you insert your card, use an online app or whatever. The regs seem more concerned with private domestic and workplace chargers, although I can see others (e.g. communal chargers for flats) being caught up.
Similarly chargers not connected to a communications network are exempt. The purpose of such a connection isn't relevant to whether the unit is in scope but reading the wider regulation it is clear the principal motivation is load shedding at peak demand on the grid.
There are also mandatory AAA provisions which appear to be to account for and enforce off peak tariffs you may be able to negotiate with you electricity supplier. Since no-one is doing this just yet, nor have mechanisms to do so been put it place, the 12 month grace period seems of limited practical impact. These regs simply create the groundwork. The chief concern seems to be ensuring large numbers of devices can't be activated simultaneously at peak hours taking out the grid.
As for the regs themselves, they are much better than previous legislative efforts but not beyond reproach. I have some reservations about the investigation and enforcement provisions but from a technical standpoint they seem to suffer from tunnel vision as to how devices should be built.
There is a requirement for secure boot and a tamper proof perimeter, but no provision for a secure enclave with a larger unit. To give an example, look at the Pi based unit given as an example in the linked article.
The Pi lacks secure boot so it is asserted the device must be insecure as a whole with no reference to the wider architecture. This is a non sequitur, and the author of that really needs to go away until they know what they are talking about. Devices such as the Pi are widely used as high speed daughterboards for interfacing purposes. If the secure stuff is done separately there is no real requirement for the Pi as intermediary to be particularly hardened. If you doubt this ask why the Pi specifically needs to be secured and not every switch and router along the flow of traffic?
There is an open source platform for EV chargers.
It would be a shame if these were banned in favour of a; steal all your data/you need a Facebook account model for "security reasons"
Here chargers need to be network enabled to get a government grant to install them. When we looked at the range of supported networked models it was much cheaper to buy a regular one and pay for it ourselves.
The ones that qualified for the grant had to have a Sim. It wasn't clear what they needed to connect to or who was in charge of the service
At this point it's more a case of; government may need to control charging in future for load management or (more likely) tax. And since chargers are expensive and last years they want to make sure the installed base is prepared
Yes indeed, how dare people want to charge at a time convenient for them, rather than a time deemed appropriate by electricity and/or grid companies.
Heaven forbid the government take rational, effective and reliable steps to ensuring our energy security, sufficient generating capacity, and adequate power delivery capability for the peons to have a normal life, rather only changing and journeying when we're allowed to.
It's not like all these impending, and current, problems haven't been known years in advance. But no, let's just carry on taking 25% of everyone's energy bills to put up more unreliable wind farms and inappropriate solar panels, while taking absolutely no steps whatsoever to beef up our energy grids.
Hell, the government should be investing wholesale in a massive grid upgrade, doing whatever they can to ensure everyone can get the power they need, when they need it. Failure to do so is building in a massive uncompetitive disadvantage to UK business, consumers and the public at large.
What's the economic cost of not being able to go to work or deliver goods? Of not being able to take family trips and days out when we want to, because we can't charge the car until 11pm.
Wait, we already know this, because it's pretty similar to having everyone stuck at home for the past 2 years, combined with the massive shortage of delivery drivers we're now seeing. So just more of the same, but forever.
"... the government should be investing wholesale in a massive grid upgrade..."
National Grid is a publically traded company on the London Stock Exchange. Power transmission, like power generation, was privatised in the 1990s. "Government investing in a massive grid upgrade" would actually translate to "Government giving National Grid a whole load of taxpayers money to do its job."
"The chief concern seems to be ensuring large numbers of devices can't be activated simultaneously at peak hours taking out the grid."
Thus pointing out the very obvious failing of the entire "all vehicles have to be electric" concept ... it quite simply doesn't scale. At all.
All public chargers[1] are supposed to accept contactless (and therefore contractless) and that is where the hackers will be targeting their efforts.
The sooner that the charging networks implement ISO 15118 the better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_15118
Then the car talks to the network back end which connects the car to an account and the back end does the charging. The scope for a MIM attack is minimised.
FastNed in Holland has had this in operation for a couple of years.
[1] That currently EXCLUDES All Tesla Superchargers in the UK. They are running a trial in NL that allows non-Tesla's to use Supercharging.
The industry is creating an entirely new market for skiddies to brick charge points unless you pay $$$ in funny money to unencrypt them.
I am so happy that this new ecological market is taking into account those poor malware writers. Truly we are in the 3rd Millennium.
Instead of just bonking a credit card or a phone on a contactless pad to pay a given amount and have everything local without needing Da IntarWebs to authorize everything. You want a blood sample with that ?
Honestly, I'm looking forward to my retirement, but the way things are going, I'm going to start looking forward to leaving this world for good.
I mean after all those are devices where actual security is more important than any kind of security snakeoil. Just build them in a sturdy and locked case and have decent hardware interlocks to prevent bad things from happening.
If bad things can happen from errors in the software, secure boot will not help you much, as in order to change the boot process, you already need very high privileges. On the other hand, the charge process, which can cause harm if interfered with, has to have interfaces so the outside world.
Method 1: Until 31 December 2022, just rewrite the boot sector and install a rootkit.
Method 2: After 01 January 2023, first steal the crypto private keys to sign the boot, then just rewrite the boot sector and install a rootkit. Just like RSA and their SecurID token.
I want an option to be completely disconnected from networks. Of course this will not be allowed - how else will governments be able to enforce charging (as in money) policies and disable cars that don't pay - or if they try to enter the areas restricted to special government VIPs.
No wonder govts are so keen on electric cars.
There will never be any privacy ever again, from governments, or crooks.
There will be a black market for non-electric, or non-connected cars very soon.
Who is going to supply me with a firewall for an electric car?
Where are the protesters about this serious infringement of privacy?
Still the extinction mob will love it. Perhaps they will recruit some hackers to disable the cars as well?
Domestic chargers don't have a whole lot of stuff in them, they're just sophisticated mains sockets. Public ones tend to be a bit more complicated because they need some kind of user verification / charging capability and they often incorporate large screens that display adverts. Neither sort require frequent booting - the domestic sort hasn't got anything to boot and the commercial sort is at best a credit card reader.
I put it down to a visible sort of crumbling of UK infrastructure. Government knows how to make rules but doesn't seem to know how things work so life goes on around the government. Its the same situation as you found in many colonies after they got independence -- a facimile of British administration was bequeathed to the new countries without any sense of whether functions were needed or relevant. The result was the well known dysfunction that took years to deal with, a dysfunction where an overwhelming bureaucracy stifled life and so became something to work around.
From the article it does sound like I can install a charge point, but it'll be locked down so I can't improve it if I choose to, must be networked, and most of all be capable of installing updates changing its functionality (which we can assume won't be or our benefit) at the whim of the manufacturer.
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