Cybavo, a Taiwan-based supplier of cryptocurrency solutions, is engaged in an electric vehicle (EV) platform to assess how blockchain technology can be used to improve car owner identifications, as more security risks may emerge with the coming of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), according to company CEO Paul Fan.
According to data from CnEVPost, China’s new energy vehicle sales went up from 4.92 million units in 2020 to 7.84 million units in 2021, driving up demand for near field communications (NFC) chips that enable contactless features of vehicles.
With NFC-enabled phones or keys, users can open car doors without touching them, but the convenient function also triggers discussions about identification security, Fan said.
The company is part of the Security&OTA division of the Mobility in Harmony (MIH) Consortium, an open EV platform established by Foxconn in 2021.
The concept of decentralized identity (DID) has become popular in recent years, Fan said.
DID advocates hope to restrain tech giants such as Meta and Google from monopolizing users’ personal information. Through its decentralization feature, blockchain technology can return user data to individuals and effectively process ID checks, he said.
Blockchain technology has been mainly used to maintain distributed ledgers for recording virtual currency transactions. It is increasingly used to protect personal data, including articles, diplomas, licenses, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), due to the immutability associated with a blockchain network, Fan said.
In a future with the IoV, drivers of smart cars are expected to generate a huge amount of data such as driving routes, energy consumption, and other moves recorded by in-vehicle sensors. Without a decentralized identification system, automakers are likely to take over drivers/users data.
MIH instituting standards of DID applications in cars
The MIH will introduce DID technology to the auto industry based on the protocol of Taiwan Association of Information and Communication Standards, Fan said.
Under the basic standards, automakers and their ecosystems have the leeway to determine the range of data to be applied with a blockchain network. For example, when users open car doors with DID devices, whether computers should apply to blockchains the data they generate, including time stamps, GPS locations, mileages, and carbon footprints, rest on automakers’ business models, he said.
There are few technical barriers to using DID technology in vehicles, but DID suppliers find it difficult to access automakers’ ecosystems that appear complex and enclosed, Fan added.
MIH aims to promote car-grade DID tool as one of the modules available through its EV Kits platform, he said.
Fan admitted that Cybavo had not planned to develop vehicle-related solutions before it started to work with MIH. Automakers and their suppliers were not that enthusiastic about new technology, and they were not very keen on cybersecurity, he said.
A cybersecurity technology will be viewed as a necessity when it is needed by a mature industry, as such an industry is more likely to be attacked by hackers, he added.
The developments of EVs and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) are just in the beginning, so most automakers tend to wait and see how DID technology will evolve, Fan said.
The use of DID technology in cars is at the proof of concept (PoC) stage. Currently, vehicle owners can bind their cars to DID accounts, and the accounts can be shifted to next owners if the cars are sold. However, it may take some time – perhaps 30 months or several years – before the technology becomes commercially usable, Fan said.
There are still various problems to overcome, such as NFC applications in varied vehicle settings, security of NFC chips and Bluetooth communications, and inconsistent connectivity speeds, which are issues on the agenda of the MIH Security&OTA divison, Fan said.
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Cybavo profile |
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Key fact |
Brief |
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Founding year |
2018 |
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Founders |
CEO Paul Fan, CTO Tim Hsu |
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Staff members |
50-60 |
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Industry sector |
Blockchain cybersecurity solutions |
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Main product |
Business cryptocurrency wallet, asset management platform (Cybavo Vault) |
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Target markets |
Taiwan, Middle East, US and others |