[keiferski]

Personally, the idea that police / the government/ someone somewhere can control my electric car entirely rules out buying one. Completely unacceptable.

The idea that “it will only be used against criminals” has been shown repeatedly to be a fallacious argument. Ditto for any other “product” that isn’t consumer entertainment like Netflix.

[theandrewbailey]

By "electric car", you mean "self-driving car", right? (The original article switches the terms, too.)

[logfromblammo]

A modern electric car is electronically regulated, which means there is controller software involved somewhere. Even if someone else cannot direct where your car can go, they can certainly insert code that prevents it from moving or charging if certain conditionals are met.

Unless you write your own firmware, your electric car is vulnerable to control by non-owners.

But this condition already exists on internal combustion cars, so there isn't really any reason to prefer them over electric cars, except that you can buy and own ones that are so old there are no complex control systems.

[keiferski]

Yeah, but they seem to be coalescing into the same thing.