On June 11th, 2024, we discovered a set of vulnerabilities in Kia vehicles that allowed remote control over key functions using only a license plate. These attacks could be executed remotely on any hardware-equipped vehicle in about 30 seconds, regardless of whether it had an active Kia Connect subscription.
Third-party ECUs are already wildly popular items (Holley Sniper and Terminator along with less popular third-party products).
Also, your car being an automatic isn’t the difficult part of the conversion, having to fabricate the parts to adapt the drivetrain and battery are.