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Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

thedrive.com

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Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#51

Post by bearmode »

lasermike026 wrote: post #32

Yet another reason to ditch cars. The car is an engineering disaster and it's time has past. I know this will be a shock to some people.

Lol, absolutely not. I just came back from a trip to a national park that simply would not have been doable without my car. My commute into work each day would be significantly harder without my car. I wouldn't be able to visit much of my family without my car.

I can get into the nearest city and town just fine on public transport, and that's what I do. But public transport here is spoke-hub. If you want to go somewhere that is moderately far away from a hub, it becomes incredibly difficult (and expensive).

If you live in a city, and you never leave that city other than to go to other cities, then you absolutely do not need a car. Most other people do.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#52

Post by spacephysics »

ilovetux wrote: post #40

> The patent also outlines a potential to lock the vehicle out on weekends only so that the driver can still access a job and might be able to come through on those delinquent payments What if you usually work weekends which is common for a lot of the jobs people who are missing payments might be working? In that case you would be out of luck. You would also be out of luck if you are trying to get a side-gig or pick…

I think this misses the forest for the trees.

This technology in any car should be a violation of our rights. A corporation dictates when to access the vehicle remotely?

It’ll start with justifiable use cases. In a not too distant future, imagine something like:

* can’t access car during peak CO2 emission times because you got the cheaper monthly rate that uses a green subsidy to pay for the cheaper rate

* your incorrectly a suspect of a petty crime, your car is now inaccessible because Ford doesn’t want liability if you do something bad with their car (despite you cooperating with law enforcement)

* you’ve been categorized as spreading hate speech/misinformation/disinformation and that breaks our terms of service

I could go on, but you get the point.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#53

Post by nkozyra »

motohagiography wrote: post #41

I work in security and anti-fraud is the use case of last resort for terrible ideas. When you finance a car, the vehicle becomes collateral for a loan, but it belongs to you. A technology like this means that the vehicle still belongs to Ford, which means if something goes wrong with it, or if you get sciatica from their shitty seats, you can class action sue them into oblivion. The reason we have laws is so that peo…

> A technology like this means that the vehicle still belongs to Ford, which means if something goes wrong with it, or if you get sciatica from their shitty seats, you can class action sue them into oblivion.

Nothing prevents that from happening now, though. I'm also uncertain how reclaiming the collateral for the loan is any different in this scenario.

Granted, I think this is extraordinarily gross and consumer-hostile. Aren't there myriad of options on the table for reclaiming the vehicle? How often does someone "get away" with keeping a car, anyway? That's what the repossession industry exists for.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#54

Post by nradov »

motohagiography wrote: post #41

I work in security and anti-fraud is the use case of last resort for terrible ideas. When you finance a car, the vehicle becomes collateral for a loan, but it belongs to you. A technology like this means that the vehicle still belongs to Ford, which means if something goes wrong with it, or if you get sciatica from their shitty seats, you can class action sue them into oblivion. The reason we have laws is so that peo…

I don't think that's legally correct. Including automated repossession technology in the vehicle wouldn't cause ownership to stay with the manufacturer or dealer. Even if the manufacturer retained legal ownership it wouldn't change anything from a product liability standpoint. Many drivers lease their vehicles today instead of buying and so the vehicle still belongs to the lessor. If a person is injured by a faulty vehicle then they can potentially sue the original manufacturer anyway regardless of who happens to own the vehicle.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#56

Post by monetus »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #27
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You may be thinking of Michael Hastings?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist...

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#57

Post by sircastor »

rootusrootus wrote: post #31

The real story here is that Ford incentivizes employees to write patents (though I doubt very much this makes them particularly unique). Beyond that, the technology required to support this functionality is so far ahead of what's available today (or likely to be available anytime soon) that it's not worth a serious debate.

I used to work for an automotive OEM. I can confirm this. We got regular (yearly) reminders to submit patient ideas for concepts we’d come up with. There was a bonus incentive once the patent was awarded (maybe just submitted) It was something on the order of $500-1000 IIRC.

Our lawyers were pragmatic about it. They were very clear that the concept should be novel and plausible, and were willing to offer guidance and help with the text of the parent. It was neat, and I wish I’d taken advantage of it.

Re: Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments

#58

Post by horsawlarway »

lmkg wrote: post #36

Well if this is how the new cars are gonna be, I guess I'll just go ahead and teach myself to be a Car Guy so that the one I have now will run forever. It's not that I'm afraid of missing a payment. At this point I would probably buy the car outright. But after the robo-signing debacle with BoA repossesssing houses that they were never party to, the mere capability renders the machine fundamentally untrustworthy.

> the mere capability renders the machine fundamentally untrustworthy.

I've said this a couple of times before, but I find it fairly astonishing that we don't have legislation covering what manufacturers are allowed to do to a product with embedded devices after a user has purchased it.

I want to be very clear - after I have bought a product, ANY CHANGE WITHOUT MY CONSENT done by the embedded software at the behest of the manufacturer is essentially breaking and entering (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)). They have the ability to stick a "little green man" inside the car, that should not absolve them of the legal repercussions of using it without my permission.

I don't believe that sticking a term/clause into a user agreement that is not negotiable is an acceptable way to deal with this situation.

This is rapidly becoming one of my strongest political beliefs. I think the concept of ownership is at stake.

My wishlist is essentially:

1. Devices that contain digital locks MUST provide all keys to all locks to the buyer at time of purchase. The user can opt into allowing the manufacturer to keep a copy, but they must be allowed to opt out.

2. Devices that require remote services must explicitly list all services and features that depend on those services. The user must have the option to opt out of remote services.

3. Buyers of devices that choose to opt out of remote services are revoking consent for manufacturer access to the device. Any future access by the manufacturer (at all, from updating code to reporting usage to remotely starting a car) will be considered a violation of the CFAA.

4. Manufacturers must justify why a feature requires a remote service. "Profit" is not an acceptable answer.

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