Researchers Drove a Chinese EV into an Underground Mine. It Kept Calling China
4 hours ago
- Researchers drove a NIO ES8 into a Norwegian underground mine to sever external connections, but the car still attempted to connect to servers, with about 90% of outbound traffic going to China.
- Project Lion Cage, led by Telenor's Tor Indstøy, monitored the vehicle for 2.5 years; traffic was encrypted, so the content was unknown, but the destination patterns contradicted NIO's claims of European data processing.
- A separate test on Chinese-made Yutong buses found manufacturer remote access to battery and power systems, posing a theoretical risk of fleet disabling, though vulnerabilities were later patched.
- The central unresolved question is China's National Intelligence Law, which obligates organizations under Chinese jurisdiction to cooperate with state intelligence, raising concerns beyond current evidence of misuse.