Posted on 03/03/2023 1:18:10 PM PST by BenLurkin
Imagine it's the near future, and you've bought a new car with a self-driving mode. But hard times hit and you fall behind on loan payments – then, one day you find your car has driven itself away to the repossession lot.
That's the vision of a new Ford patent published last month that describes a variety of futuristic ways that Ford vehicle systems could be controlled by a financial institution in order to aid in the repossession of a car.
The company told NPR that the company has no intention of implementing the ideas in the patent, which is one among hundreds of pending Ford patents published this year by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
"We don't have any plans to deploy this," said Wes Sherwood, a Ford spokesperson. "We submit patents on new inventions as a normal course of business but they aren't necessarily an indication of new business or product plans."
As repossession tactics have changed over time with the advent of social media and GPS technology, Ford's patent shows how lenders might wield smart car features to repossess vehicles from delinquent borrowers.
Of the innovations described in the patent, titled "Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle," perhaps the most striking is about self-driving cars.
A financial institution or repossession agency could "cooperate with the vehicle computer to autonomously move the vehicle from the premises of the owner to a location such as, for example, the premises of the repossession agency" or "the premises of the lending institution," the patent states. The process could be entirely automated.
The car could also call the police, the patent suggests – or, if the lender determines the car is not worth the cost of repossession, the self-driving car could drive itself to a junkyard.
Semi-autonomous vehicles that aren't up to the challenge of driving long distances could instead move themselves a short ways – from private property ("a garage or a driveway, for example," the patent suggests) to a nearby spot "that is more convenient for a tow truck."
Among the various ideas described in the patent is a gradual disabling of a smart car's features. Lenders could start by switching off "optional" features of the car – like cruise control or the media player – in an effort to cause "a certain level of discomfort" to the car's driver.
If the owner remains behind on payments, the lender could progress to disabling the air conditioner, or use the audio system to play "an incessant and unpleasant sound every time the owner is present in the vehicle."
As a last resort, a lender could disable "the engine, the brake, the accelerator, the steering wheel, the doors, and the lights of the vehicle," the patent suggests, or simply lock the doors.
Like many large corporations, Ford proactively applies for patents in large volumes. The repossession patent was one of 13 Ford patents published on Feb. 23 alone, and one of more than 350 published this year to date, according to a review of U.S. patent records.
Last year, the company was granted 1,342 patents "spanning a wide range of ideas," Sherwood said.
The company's other recent patents cover a wide range of applications: powertrain operations, speech recognition, autonomous parking, redesigns of tailgate attachments and fuel inlets.
Personally, I don’t see the problem with this. Unless the Government decides to de-car you.
My ex-wife better learn how to make car payments.
That would be a fun SF story. An AI car that whose owner is behind on payments so it drives away but refuses to go to the junk yard.
I don’t know. Thieves may no longer need to come to your house to steal your car. They’ll just hack it and drive it to themselves. Or carjackings may take on new meaning, as they pull up next to you, hack your car, and remotely drive off with it.
>>Personally, I don’t see the problem with this. Unless the Government decides to de-car you.<<
I hear that is an On*Star option now. If your car gets stolen they can slow it down remotely.
That opens the question: what if it was you and the car was not stolen but you were wanted for “questioning” by something like pedo joe’s injustice department?
That's how I look at every technological advancement these days. How can it be used by my enemies to do me harm?
I forget the movie but this guy who was like a whistleblower of something, they hacked his car, stopped it on the train tracks and locked his doors. SMASH!
Companies problem gone.
kinda takes the fun out of the hunting part of the game...
I will never own a car that can be remotely controlled.
I had to check to see if this was the Babylon Bee.
Alas, no.
If your in the car at the time.. Wouldn’t that be kidnapping? ?
Should work great in Philly… 😂
Henry Ford donated $40,000 to the Nazi Party to reprint anti-Jewish pamphlets into German, and an additional $300,000 was sent to Hitler through a grandson of the ex-Kaiser. Ford received the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle in 1938 on his 75th birthday. This decoration was only the fourth ever given out by the Nazi Party. Mussolini got one as well.
If you chained it to your fence, or your house, and it broke loose and drove back to them, would they be liable for the damage to your fence/gate/house?
Or just for registering to vote as a Republican?
Nope.
WHAT could possibly go wrong with this idea?
What we desperately need is technology to automatically jerk lying, criminal politicians out of office and deposit them into a prison where they belong.
Maybe the Bee has some competition now. 🤗
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