In September, thousands pagers and walkie-talkies held by members of Hezbollah exploded. The incident appears to have been the result of explosives hidden within the batteries of the devices by Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, and the Israeli military, then triggered remotely.
While the devices appear to have been physically modified, the incident highlights a security concern for electric vehicles. The vehicles have a number of safety systems to prevent the battery from catching fire, and the battery packs in the vehicles are much larger than any hand-held device.
Those safety systems run on software that can be hacked. When large lithium-ion battery packs catch fire, the result can be anywhere between a smoldering fire lasting months or something more explosive.