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

thedrive.com

171–180 of 568 posts

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

#171
As a current Ford Mustang Mach E owner I laugh about stories like this. The Mach E had so many TSBs, recalls, software updates, attempted software updates, updates that _bricked_ the update ECU (the APIM module) that I have no worry what so ever that this will ever work reliably in this decade.

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

#172
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see it now: A cash-strapped, frazzled single-mom parks her car on her driveway to unload groceries, leaving her child in the car seat while she carries bags inside the garage. While the mom is walking toward the door the car repossesses itself and heads back to the dealership, child trapped inside.

After this happens the first time they will add some kind of checking mechanism which means you can defeat repossession by putting a doll sitting on some bricks in a child car seat to avoid this happening automatically.

haha! At this rate, in the future, fooling an AI will be considered a form of hacking and met with computer fraud and abuse or inauthentic behavior charges.

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

#173
post #81

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.

The car may be an environmental disaster, but I don't see how it's an engineering disaster? It fulfils the desire to go from point A to point B in relative comfort at relative speed, at reasonable cost that scales to the local economy. US market cars tend to have lots of extraneous features and not be suitable for rugged roads; less developed economies get models with fewer comfort features, but a more robust suspens…

There is no way for a human to operate a car safely over a mid to long period of time. The human brain does not have bandwidth to process all the information taken in while driving a car. Eventual the driver will get into an accident with a high probability of injury and possibly death. Cars are designed to filter information from the environment. A driver can't sense what is around them. Cars are too big and too heavy. Infrastructure demands are too great. The fuel costs are too high no matter what fuel you use. A cars fails on practically every meaningful metric.

Walking, biking, and public transit in a livable community is the only rational way forward.

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

#174

This illustrates a problem with current penalties - they're too harsh if you have 100% exact enforcement. Violating auto speed limits is a good example. Society can't enforce speed limits 100% of the time if it relies on the occasional state trooper with a radar gun. Therefore society sets the penalty very high so that the small risk of a citation isn't worth the benefit of speeding. 100% enforcement should have much…

Virtually every serious speeder I know runs laser jammers, radar detectors, and cell phone based monitoring and religiously is alert to the warnings. Short of aircraft enforcement (oh they monitor that too) it's about impossible to nab the most dedicated speeders, so most the tickets are going people like the soccer mom who went 10 over, etc. I feel like speeding enforcement is one of the biggest example of how these…

Speeding was just a convenient example. Shoplifting would work just as well. So would jaywalking, or loitering or disturbing the peace.

Penalties are set high because in the US they're enforced only irregularly. If the US moves to some kind of near universal enforcement, problems will occur because of that.

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

#175
post #61

Great, now we're going to get country music about how some guy's truck left him.

I thought country music was already about my wife died, my dog won't start, and my truck ran away?

No: your beer died, you cried into your dog, and your wife wouldn't start.

Yes: your truck still ran away with your fishing boat and eloped on BLM land.

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're great cars, but (unfortunately) compact SUVs are far outselling them. Compare the Fit and HRV sales figures and it's clear why Honda did it.

That assumes that sales figures are entirely controlled by demand. The OP points out a perfectly plausible mechanism by which demand is not the only factor affecting sales volume. It's almost certainly true that dealerships will stock what's profitable, customer preferences be damned.

HRV sales have consistently blown away even the all-time peak year of US Fit sales.

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

#177
post #37

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.

The car is an engineering miracle . It's one of my most useful possessions and I'll never voluntarily give up the personal mobility that it enables.

Consider alternatives.

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

#178
post #69

I just had an idea: how about a car that makes you stop by the side of the road to watch 2 minutes of ads before being able to continue. And for a certain amount you can unlock adless travel.

Park in front of the billboard until you read the ad text out loud, or pay the toll.

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

#179

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 somewh…

Take public trans to the park. Hike and camp overnight. Your experience in the park will be heightened. Those memories will warm you into old age.
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