Security concerns of a plug-in vehicle

Electric vehicles, no doubt, will bring in many benefits to the economy and to the stakeholders concerned; however these will come at certain costs. Modern vehicles already have several intelligent electronic components, also known as electronic control units (ECU), which control several functionalities of the car and on top of that, with the introduction of the electric vehicles and in particular plug-in electric vehicles, a vehicle is no longer a vehicle, it is more of a network connected device. This paper therefore looks specifically at some of the security concerns that will emerge from plug-in electric vehicles charging and communicating to the utility and their potential impacts on the power grid as a whole.