I think this is a sign of the times we live in. Innovation today seems to have shifted towards serving the owning class.
Shifted?
When was it different?
Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
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Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
#22If you're behind on payments, just disconnect the negative battery terminal. Or, take out the fuel pump relay.
Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
#23I wish I had a pic of it, but in a building I once worked in, there was a Ford Model T with a brass plaque mounted in a visible location on the firewall that essentially said if you violate the patents or sell the car in an unauthorized way, the title reverts to being owned by FoMoCo.
Doing an image search for "ford model t plaque" yields some examples.
Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
#24Inset joke about loving my 12 year old 4runner that's the most basic car I've ever owned.
But this isn't anything new. Buy here pay here places have been throwing ignition locks on cars for ages and shut off the ignition if you don't make payments. This would take it a step further, integrate it into the car, and add autonomous features to it.
Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
#25Great, now we're going to get country music about how some guy's truck left him.
Take my angry upvote.
"My truck done left me and my cellphone said I'm broke"
Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
#26I think this is a sign of the times we live in. Innovation today seems to have shifted towards serving the owning class.
And by replacing ownership with either de facto or de jure rental of any and all private property.
I have a big enough philosophical objection to the concept where we don't actually own property and may only rent it from the government due to property taxes. Now we "own" phones we can't control, "own" cars that have features dis/en-abled over the air if you pay for them.
Product managers are brimming with innovative features and benefits enabled by stripping ownership away from the public/consumers. It reminds me of the Black Mirror episode where you pay for your toothpaste $0.05 at a time from a dispenser in your home when you want some on your toothbrush.
Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
#27This is why buying as low-mileage a used car you can get from ~2010 or older is wise. Especially one with a keyed ignition vs. push start.
It might be my conspiracy brain acting up but "multi-ton machine without manual override" sends all the red flashing lights and klaxons off in my head. Political assassination via cyber attack/backdoor? ezpz, find a tree, accelerate into it, claim it was the car acting up. Bug in the software? Sorry you're dying today because they wanted to repossess cars easier, your life is less important than protecting capital. W…
Your thoughts are likely not very far fetched, but in this case, to the best of my knowledge, IC and LEOs seem to be more worried about stopping individual 'bad guys'( quotations, because I hate this term ) from causing damage with ICE machines hence solutions like mandated remote off switch and so on.
On the political assassination front, wasn't there a story out about one such attempt or did I dream it?
Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
#28Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
#29I wish I had a pic of it, but in a building I once worked in, there was a Ford Model T with a brass plaque mounted in a visible location on the firewall that essentially said if you violate the patents or sell the car in an unauthorized way, the title reverts to being owned by FoMoCo. Doing an image search for "ford model t plaque" yields some examples.
It didn't immediately yield any for me, so here is one directly for the interested: https://www.ebay.com/itm/364109744022
Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments
#30Uhm, it seems like the auto industry is still letting its imagination run away with self driving cars. I don't see how a patent like this can be granted if we still generally don't have working self-driving cars. Even Tesla is getting forced to admit that "Full Self Driving" isn't really full self driving.
The videos of self driving Tesla are available on Youtube. Those can be quite convincing.
Nikola also had videos of their electric trucks "driving" on YouTube. These were convincing enough for people to invest millions. Not a high standard.