Anyone with a working knowledge of cars could disable them.
“Anyone with a working knowledge of cars could disable them.”
What if it is software based?
Maybe, maybe not.
A lot of modern electronics are involving encrypted and authenticated communicated between devices. If the engine controller requires a handshake with a kill switch device before starting you may not be easily able to disable the ‘feature’. It would not be easy to spoof or decrypt the messaging.
It raises some interesting Constitutional questions imo. Freedom of movement without government control, so 4A implications? Can a car be considered a weapon? If so, does this infringe on 2A? If authorities can disable our car at their discretion, can we do the same to theirs? (they have guns so we have guns.) This is quite clearly a question of freedom - which the car has always represented.
Probably every EV and most hybrids already have that capability embedded in the controllers. And waiting several years to enforce is just window dressing. It might take that long to figure out how to redesign the ignition systems of Internal Combustion engines to add the capability -- which will have the intended effect of hastening the extinction of ICE engines cause Detroit isn't going to incur that cost when they've already decided that ICE going to be dead in a decade or less.
Not if it is software in the engine controller.