Future Fords Could Repossess Themselves, Drive Away If You Miss Payments - Slash...
source link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/02/27/2224200/future-fords-could-repossess-themselves-drive-away-if-you-miss-payments
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Future Fords Could Repossess Themselves, Drive Away If You Miss Payments
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It explicitly says the system, which could be installed on any future vehicle in the automaker's lineup with a data connection would be capable of "[disabling] a functionality of one or more components of the vehicle." Everything from the engine to the air conditioning. For vehicles with autonomous or semi-autonomous driving capability, the system could "move the vehicle from a first spot to a second spot that is more convenient for a tow truck to tow the vehicle... move the vehicle from the premises of the owner to a location such as, for example, the premises of the repossession agency," or, if the lending institution considers the "financial viability of executing a repossession procedure" to be unjustifiable, the vehicle could drive itself to the junkyard.
No other automakers have recently attempted to patent a similar system, and indeed the Ford patent doesn't reference any other legal document for the sake of clarifying its idea. All of this being said, patent documents, especially applications like this one, do not necessarily represent an automaker's intent to introduce the described feature, process, or technology to its vehicles. Ford might just be attempting to protect this idea for the sake of doing so. The document does go into a lot of detail as to how such a system might work, though.
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Guess I'll be parking my car in a Faraday cage.
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Or on jack stands.
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Anyway, I predicted exactly this just a short while ago:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] -
Or on some bricks with the tires removed.
Oh look, the neighbors already took care of that.
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Yeah I hate this kind of tech. You just know it's going to make a mistake thinking someone missed their payment and drive off with their baby in the back seat while they ran in the house for a minute.
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Or they freeze to death because they stepped out of their car in -40 to take a quick piss and their car drives off without them and their coat
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Or more likely, the system will be hacked and car thieves will make a killing as Fords obligingly help themselves be stolen.
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Well, you can make a killing dismantling them and selling the spare parts. People who actually want to drive one of these things have a constant need for them.
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Yeah I hate this kind of tech. You just know it's going to make a mistake thinking someone missed their payment and drive off with their baby in the back seat while they ran in the house for a minute.
The technology already exists and is used today. I would forsee that Ford would be using it on those kinds of vehicles.
These are for the places where you can get a car even if you have absolutely terrible credit. What they do is install a disable device so if you miss enough payments, the disable device kicks in. The disable device disables the starter, so it won't be if they engage it and suddenly you go from traveling at 80mph down the interstate and come to a sudden halt right in the middle of traffic. Instead you drive it normally until you shut down the engine and there your car stays parked permanently.
Of course it comes with a GPS tracker so the repo guys simply pick it up.
And yes, those devices do fail regularly. There are reports of people buying cars and suddenly having those devices activate - usually without their knowledge because it was purchased and sold a few times over. And of course, there's always the problem of parking in a dangerous area and not being able to start your car.
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Don't worry, they'll put a whole bunch of new sensors inside the car to detect occupancy, so no baby need suffer.
But if any one of those thousand sensors goes bad, the car will go into limp mode as a safety precaution. The dealer will be happy to fix the sensor and "unlock" from limp mode for a mere $1999.99. Remember, if financing is an issue, we have payment plans available!
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So to avoid my Ford to get repo'ed, junior will live out his infant days in my car, gotcha.
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Insert dead baby joke here. Remember those? Too risque for the Internet nowadays.
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Suddenly a bunch of Fords will be driving around missing their shark fin antenna...
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by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Monday February 27, 2023 @07:45PM (#63328749)
Guess I'll be parking my car in a Faraday cage.
As fun as the rhetoric over on/r/antiwork might sound (paging rsilvergun), falling behind on your car note sucks for more reasons than getting to star in your own personal reboot of "Dude, where's my car?"
First and foremost, repo men can take your car quickly. You run in to Walmart for a few things, come back out and just like that South Park meme, and it's gone! Unless you just want it as a rather large decoration for your garage, once the repo men have their eyes on it, your car is now useless as a means of transport.
Then there's the damage to your credit, which means for at least 7 years you'll only be able to get approved for interest rates that will make you want to vomit (assuming you aren't flat out denied the loan completely). You'll probably have to pay cash for your next set of wheels, or purchase from a buy-here-pay-here car dealer where you'll overpay by a significant margin for a barely-running jalopy.
If all of this wasn't enough fun, the lender of your repossessed vehicle can also sue you for a deficiency judgment if the vehicle didn't sell for enough money to cover the remaining balance of your loan, after they auction the vehicle off.
Be sure to join me in the next episode of "Powercntrl's Guide to a Bad Economy", where we'll discuss defaulting on credit card debts and short selling your home. It's fun for the whole family!
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Okay, I remember seeing a show featuring "repo men". Don't remember if it was a single episode where they cover a different topic, or specifically on repossessions.
When Powercntrl says "can take your car quickly", I think that it's a British Understatement.
It isn't just going in and buying a few things at walmart and finding your car gone. They can literally have it out before you reach the doors on the way in.
You see, they don't run with standard tow trucks most of the time. They actually have a system
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Or a Garage.
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the bank has deep pockets to pay up when that autonomous car kills someone
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I'm pretty sure Tesla could do that now if they wanted to. I have to wonder what potential legal issue could arise from doing that.
I have also wondered why it hasn't been discussed very widely that Tesla could completely brick every car they ever made that is connected to the network. It was always possible that they could have done it accidentally, so what if they claimed the right to do it on purpose?
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OnStar has an ignition block feature [onstar.com]. There's no technical reason it couldn't also be used to immobilize a vehicle if the owner falls behind on the payments.
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We've literally been doing this [npr.org] for easily over ten years now and really I'd say the first were some fifteen years ago. People need to read the agreement they sign with the bank better. Like at first there was a lot of litigation over "mistakes" but banks have gotten a lot better at preventing "oopsie" at this point. So the whole thing you and the parent are discussing as "what would happen if..." Yeah, we already did all of it.
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"if they wanted to" isn't prior art nor is a system capable of doing so.
"I have also wondered why it hasn't been discussed very widely that Tesla could completely brick every car they ever made that is connected to the network. It was always possible that they could have done it accidentally, so what if they claimed the right to do it on purpose?"
Who says it hasn't been "discussed very widely"? More interesting is that others can brick Teslas too, and actually have.Ex-Tesla are an interesting resource on t
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The 5G network? Suddenly I'm feeling a whole lot better. 4/5G connectivity is a joke out here.
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Telsa has already done this [engadget.com]... except it wasn't intentional.
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How about focusing on quality and reliability of your vehicles, rather than on fantasies based on cyberpunk-level automation that isn’t going to come for decades. Hell, even if that idea was viable, the effect on your bottom line would probably be microscopic.
Try employing fewer futurist-CS-majors and more mechanical, electrical, manufacturing and reliability engineers.-
If the car was functional enough to drive itself back to the dealer, the owner wouldn't have stopped making payments in the first place.
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Worse, the inventor's other contributions to intellectual property at Ford involve cabin lighting. "CS major" is giving too much credit.
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I hear you, but from my understanding modern car companies in the United States are actually finance companies (they assess risk and make loans). In other words, they don't typically get a one-time big check from a bank who in turn collects the note payments and deals with default, the car company itself depends on the income stream for it's survival.
Therefore, the effect on their bottom line might be bigger than you think.-
Kind of. The car building arms and finance arms got separated in the 2008 crash. Before then they absolutely were just finance companies. But any car company that took government assistance to restructure had their finance arm stripped off. Hence why GMAC is now Ally Financial
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C'mon, we all know this technology is doomed to fail anyway. Imagine calling "your" Ford to return to base but it doesn't start.
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My Ford just breaks down if I skip payments.
Then again, I think it also breaks down when I pay.
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The greater good and by good I mean shareholder profits.
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I love to see how humanity continues to utilize the wonders of technology to create a more just, more compassionate, more bearable, happier world with eyes towards the far future, and towards the quality of life for their far future descendants.
Just kidding. I'm fucking kidding.
Granddaughter: "Grandpa, what did you invent again?"
Grandpa: "I invented a new, innovative way to fuck over poor people and profit off their suffering. Lots of people thought of it, but I was the asshole who was morally depra -
Maybe Ford filed the patent to prevent automated repossessions - i.e. they'll never license this tech.
Someone in this discussion put it quite well: this tech can leave a driver stranded in bad weather on the side of the road as their car drives away with their coat inside. Maybe Ford want to prevent this happening.
BUT 30-50 kids die each year from car hot deaths. -- just in the US. And many more pets.
Surely, given all the hoohaah and greed about autonomous driving, it's trivial today to build sensors (camera, ultrasonic, radar) that detect a living being locked in a car and partially roll down the windows while sounding the alarm. And it's also trivial to sell kits to retrofit this function onto previous model vehicles.
From elsewhere:
"Ford is expected to have Rear Occupant Alert as a standard feature on all of their vehicles by 2025."Why is Ford not focussing on preventing deaths by implementing this as a standard feature in 2023, instead of focussing on repossession tech?
Or maybe there's a grand plan. First comes the Rear Occupant Alert by 2025. This helps avoid the 'baby in backseat' effect (like when a car is hijacked). Then comes the repossession tech.
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From elsewhere:
"Ford is expected to have Rear Occupant Alert as a standard feature on all of their vehicles by 2025."Why is Ford not focussing on preventing deaths by implementing this as a standard feature in 2023, instead of focussing on repossession tech?
You say "focusing on", but there's no indication that Ford engineers are actually working on implementing this right now. It's just a document written by a lawyer, describing an idea.
I doubt the legal department has any significant role in moving Rear
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A specific generation of vehicle typically has a 5-7 year lifespan in mass production. During that time the OEM may do one significant refresh to the car to keep buyers interested. However those changes are typically cosmetic.
A full model change is the best bet to implement newer technology (wiring harnesses are a p.i.t.a.). It could have taken Ford that long to fully refresh their lineup to include the technology. -
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And since fortunately neither human nor computer errors ever happen, you cannot have this happen to you without ever having done anything wrong.
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Ah, corporations... patenting every idea imaginable for the greater good!
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Because vehicle dealers don't care about your kids, only about your money.
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To be fair they probably aren't "focusing" on this tech. Someone had an idea, and they paid someone else to write up a patent based on it. Companies do it all the time because a patent portfolio is a valuable asset. Even if Ford doesn't use it, maybe in future someone else will want to licence it, or perhaps they can offer it in exchange for some tech they do want. It might also slow down competitors and their self driving efforts by closing off a source of revenue.
In this case I'd say it's probably better
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Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion. Only a small number of people will have any real power, and even these probably will have only very limited freedom, because their behavior too will be regulated; just as today our politicians and corporation executives can retain their positions of power only as long as their behavior remains within certain fairly narrow limits.
... Here he messes up, you will not have control of your car:
On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite
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Having power is like riding a rabid bull. Sure, everyone's afraid of you and gives you the right of way, but when you have a moment to think about it while trying desperately to stay on the bull, you'll notice that it's the bull, not you, who decides where the ride goes.
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A Ford that doesnt need to be towed? Wow that really is a breakthrough.
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Funny how driving a stick shift prevents so many problems, such as this one. They are also great theft deterrents
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No one really wants a stick shift anymore except purists. Great to know you have something no one wants though.
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That's because people are lazy. Like so many other things, they'd rather have someone else decide for them, then act like a whining toddler when something goes wrong because they don't know what they're doing.
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Big talk from someone who uses an electric starter.
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I drive a stick and like it. And my daughter is probably one of the few Gen-Zs who can drive a stick (she had no choice but to learn if she wanted to borrow the car.)
But pretty soon, stick shifts just won't be available any more. It's soon the end of an era.
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When my manual transmission car of 13 years was totalled, I bought a brand new car with automatic transmission. It was fine, but It bothered me that it seemed to accelerate poorly, and generally just be in the wrong gear all the time. The AT was always trying to save fuel, which is noble, but the loss of acceleration control was just too much. Does that make me a "Purist"? I don't think it's too much to ask to have the car obey your commands instead of the other way around. I'm sure you wouldn't call a Tesl
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According to a Consumer Report test manual transmission cars are usually somewhat more efficient than AT cars: https://www.consumerreports.or... [consumerreports.org]... that begin said, my favourite benefit of being a manual transmission car driver is getting to laugh at AT drivers trying to drive a manual transmission car.
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You better never come to Europe. Automatic transmissions are a rare sight around here.
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By the time Ford actually implements this technology, it's likely the only stick shifts left will be glorified joysticks telling the computer which gear you want the CVT to fake. And that's only on the ICE side of things. Shifting gears is absent from BEVs and it's not coming back because there's no need for a multi-speed transmission with electric motors.
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Ignition locks work pretty well on stick shifts.
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Picking a car you can afford and paying cash money up front also does that. Well, unless it's a Telsa in which case it could get bricked by poor engineering at Tesla https://www.vice.com/en/articl... [vice.com]... I suppose that still beats your Ford running away because the accounting department at Ford managed to mistakenly marked you down as being on a payment plan when you actually paid for your Failure Of Research & Development up front.
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So... Subscription air-conditioning.
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You want heat? That's an add-on. We can start you at the low low price of $100/mo.
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>"Ford applied for a patent to make the repossession process go smoother."
Oh wow, remote-controlling a device or remotely-disabling parts of a device. As if this is some unique idea or technology work patenting. This isn't an invention or even interesting. Hopefully the patent office isn't granting patents for this level of nonsense.
I have an idea- I want to patent disabling a credit card when the holder doesn't pay his/her bill...
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It's too bad that, increasingly, we're paying full price to 'own' things in name only. We pay, and we have title - but we don't have control. Or, we rent, with no option to buy.
The people who dismissed the WEF prediction "You will own nothing, and you will be happy" seem to have missed the part where this transition is already in progress and fairly far advanced. We're at the point where, as William Gibson said, "The future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed".
Imagine a time 20 years from now
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Well, as long as pitchforks and torches will still work, we're gonna be fine.
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in the back seat? And it drives off with your baby.
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Oh, I mean I suppose that it *COULD* just try and drive through the garage door, but that would be messy, would damage the car, and cause property damage that is liable to be greater than the cost of the vehicle.
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.. period of time without the proper key in the ignition or fob nearby is troubling, because it suggests to me that this facility could probably also be hacked by a malicious party who might then use it to steal vehicles.
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Like, say, why the heck I would want to buy a car that can steal itself.
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I'm a fucking Ford stockholder and this company is proposing *this*??? I find it shocking that anyone company ever deign to propose to install a system into a car that would allow it to automatically drive to a location uncommanded by its registered owner, whether he s behind in his payments or not. It would not surprise me if that sociopathic asshole Elon Musk would propose that for his Tesla but not an allegedly reputable, responsible, and stable carmaker such as Ford. I also find it galling that Ford
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Put the thing in a garage. Or more maliciously, hammer a few nails through a plank and lay it front of the vehicle. Or chain the vehicle to a concrete filled drum and watch it wreck destruction. After all it's not your fault the car drove off without your command.
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