Once an attacker can remotely hack a single car, they can hack all cars that have an identical configuration, with little additional cost.
What happens then? Even if insurance companies could replace all affected cars simultaneously (very unlikely), they’d have to replace them with a model that isn’t affected.
Anyway, even if it isn’t autonomous, suppose a car has a smartphone app that allows you to turn on the heating before getting in. And then someone exploits that and gains control over the heating. They could then proceed to drain the batteries or the fuel tank by leaving it on over night, let’s say.
Not exactly a threat to national security, but still a major inconvenience.
I did not confuse anything. I only mentioned passive keyless entry in a footnote, as an example of an insecure technology that you can't really avoid anymore. You still have a chance to avoid "connected car" features, but in my estimation the days are numbered for that.
And do what with them? It's decently difficult to fence a single car, it's impossible to make millions of cars disappear.
Btw, the truck attack in the German market would've been a much larger scale if the truck's safety mechanism didn't trigger the emergency break.
Regardless, that Jeep hack sure proved a clusterf*ck of system design, and should be a cautionary tale.
You wouldnt buy a car that is safe- because bad security does not smell.