Cyber-Physical Review of a Battery Electric Vehicle Power Train: Vulnerabilities and Challenges

Abstract

This paper analyzes and reports the vulnerabilities and threats of an experimental electric vehicle. The proposed approach employs an electric vehicle (EV) and communication instrumentation for collecting CAN bus messages. Data was collected through the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) and the battery management system (BMS) interface. Our focus is on decoding the CAN messages and injecting false messages to exploit EV cyber-physical performance by observing the electrical and mechanical data. We found out that the electric car powertrain can be degraded severely without the fault systems' activation. Due to different communication between the engine and the ECU, the overall efficiency and electrical power performance were compromised.