"No, an EMP attack would not disable all vehicles. According to a study conducted by the United States EMP Commission, only about 1 out of 50 vehicles are likely to be rendered inoperable. The effects of an EMP on hybrid and electric vehicles, however, have yet to be studied and is currently unknown."
I'll note that as an old study where model-years ranged from 1987 to 2002. I suspect that newer cars are pretty resilient, but cars are also a lot more electronic now compared to the 1990s.
ReplyDeleteSome of the bizarre effects noted in the key points of the U.S. EMP Commission Test Results are reminiscent of symptoms that multiple dealers and independent mechanics failed to troubleshoot on a 2005 Ford that I owned -- the list of trouble codes on the OBD port was dozens of pages long, but none of them pointed to the actual problem, a bad ground-connection on the circuit board behind the speedo for the "console-area network".
I'm SUPER happy that internet car forums existed to point me to that as the cause - the fix was easy and permanent. So for those of a mind to stockpile spare sensors and modules in a faraday enclosure, keeping service-manual information might also be a good addition.