Some of the capabilities unique to software-defined-vehicles (SDVs) might negatively impact the individual and national security. Thanks to a grant support of The Korea Foundation, analytical team at the Adapt Institute and partnered Facta pro Futura platform spent 2025 researching on SDVs including such potential impacts.
The global automotive industry is undergoing major transformations. First, there is the “green” transition to electric vehicles (EVs). However, there is another transformation, often overshadowed in analyses and reports by the “green” one: a “digital” one. It has profound and complex effects and implications for the industry and the car itself.
When it comes to vehicles, this transformation – even thought of as an outright revolution – is driven by the emergence of SDVs. The very nature of the car changes as it is increasingly defined by integrated software architectures enabling the use of artificial intelligence (AI) or over-the-air (OTA) connectivity and updates. These, in turn, enable or enhance new capabilities such as advanced autonomous functions or personalized entertainment. This shift is reshaping supply and value chains, competitive dynamics as well as whole business models. Of course, as in every major shift, there are plenty of opportunities. But this article focuses on some uncertainties and potential risks introduced by the SDV transition.
Cybersecurity and data protection
These are the two key risks that emerge with many interfaces, connectivity (such as vehicle-to-everything, or V2X) and data collection, processing, and transmission capabilities brought by the SDVs.
Sensitive data can be breached. Moreover, with technologies such as drive-by-wire, steer-by-wire or break-by-wire – where little to no physical, mechanical connections exist between safety-critical car components – attackers could remotely take over certain vehicle functions, including the most essential ones such as breaking or steering.
The rising number of cyberattacks on vehicles highlights these vulnerabilities with potentially major implications not only for consumer trust, but also for individuals’ physical safety, freedom of movement or right for privacy, critical infrastructure (gaining access to grids), and, indeed, national security. Imagine a car owner being locked in her own car with hackers demanding ransom. Or a high-ranking politician or army official finding himself in a speeding car remotely taken over by unknown attackers with a disabled brake pedal and a locked steering wheel.
SDV security, privacy, and overall resilience are thus becoming core dimensions of not only automotive quality and competitiveness, but of individual and national security.
SDV revolution bringing persistent risks
Based on identified assumptions, uncertainties and key variables (drivers of change) mentioned in Adapt Institute’s report (to be published by the end of January 2026), four plausible scenarios for the period up to 2040were developed“in-house” by the analytical team usingstrategic foresightmethods and tools:
- “Traditional automotive market” with a stalled transition and a return to traditional cars (non-SDVs).
- “Niche SDV market” with adoption limited by factors like cost or regulation.
- “SDV evolution” characterized by incremental adoption and strong regulatory guardrails.
- “SVD revolution” enabled by aligned innovation, infrastructure, and regulation.
In the “revolutionary” scenario, SDVs are ubiquitous. The enabling conditions are all at place: rapid innovation and advances (perhaps specifically in AI), dense data centers network supplied by enough electric energy, near-universal 6G connectivity, high-capacity charging infrastructure, supportive regulatory environment and mature cybersecurity frameworks.
Customers overwhelmingly valuing software-enabled or enhanced capabilities and are willing to trade-off some “traditional” values like in-vehicle privacy or control of the vehicle for new, convenient and appealing features like autonomous driving or personalized experience. New era of mobility is here: it is now a complex ecosystem of interconnected services with the car itself understood as a commodity.
However, despite economic progress, substantial technological advances and even expert and independent verification and certification frameworks providing rigorous oversight standards that have minimized risks for consumers, vulnerabilities brought by the SDVs can never be fully eradicated. There is still a potential for misuse, exploitation, (remote) control, surveillance, and even espionage by national security agencies, hostile states, skilled hacker groups, terrorists, or even private military companies – especially through remote-control exploits during crises, conflicts or outright wars. Moreover, with rapidly growing number SDVs on roads in this scenario, the overall vulnerabilities and risks to individual freedoms, rights, and national security have intensified. In sum, in this variation (or rather an outcome, whether intentional or not) of the SDV revolution scenario, although economic indicators such as supply-demand balance and innovation trajectories look strong, new risks posed by SDVs for individual freedoms and rights as well as national security might have actually increased, whether consumers acknowledge it or not.
While multiple works have focused on the topic of SDVs, they tend to explore this emerging new technology from a technical, technological or economic perspective. The Adapt Institute’s report made possible thanks to Korea Foundation grant is a multidisciplinary report examining SDVs through a strategic foresight lens. It will also offer recommendations regarding the future of SDVs (such as need to invest into key enablers (AI, advanced hardware, cloud services, or data and test centres), adopting a multidisciplinary approach to these new vehicles and adjusting education and trainings, or creating a system of independent and credible (expert) third-party verification mechanisms when it comes to vehicle cybersecurity and complex SDV-specific safety especially in disruptive environment) and will present four aforementioned plausible scenarios of the future(with particular relevance for Slovakia and the EU). It should serve not as a specific prediction, but rather as a tool to support strategic thinking and planning under uncertainty.
Project made possible by The Korea Foundation grant.
