Comment by colechristensen

A parking garage full of electric vehicles properly compromised (at least some of them) would be very ... energetic. Burning lithium batteries aren't precisely explosive, but they are still very angry. It is plausible that you could destroy a building with a chain reaction of battery fires. That is one of the safety concerns I think might not yet be fully accounted for (what happens when a bunch of electric cars are in a full closed lot and one of them starts on fire).

hattmall 3 days ago

Any of the smart plugs or other devices plugged directly into the grid could be intentionally compromised to start a house fire. Millions of homes simultaneously catching fire would be catastrophic. Apartment buildings where a fire starts in 10%+ of the units.

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colechristensen 3 days ago

This is a strong statement that probably isn’t true. The power transformers in those devices usually aren’t controlled and the things which are controlled will only sometimes be able to start fires. No doubt that some “smart” devices will have vulnerabilities that could cause fire, but just because there’s an available controller does not mean there’s an avenue to set fire to a device.
In short, unless a device is profoundly poorly designed, there’s no way to blink an LED so incorrectly that it starts a fire. (And many smart devices really aren’t doing much more than that)

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hiatus 3 days ago

Homes have surge protectors though that are out of band of the smart plugs.

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HarryHirsch 2 days ago

The greater concern is lithium batteries catching fire while they are being charged. NYC seems to have a problem with dubious e-bikes already. If a few hundred or thousand battery controllers become compromised and the battery pack is charged with too much current it's like the bat bomb on testosterone.

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