Future Fords could repossess themselves and drive away if you miss payments • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by AlbertCory » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:47 PM UTC

True story: my neighbor's lease payment was under, by a dollar or two, no more. An error in his banking practices, I guess.

They came and repossessed it in the middle of the night. He offered to pay, and they wouldn't take a credit card, PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, wire transfer, or any other modern form of payment. No, he had to go to Western Union. Someone who's more up on this sort of stuff can explain that.

A week later I drove him to the parking lot where they take repossessed cars. I waited until he signaled that all was OK.

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

#192

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:47 PM UTC

nkozyra wrote: post #53

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-host…

Doing an actual repo is much more costly and sometimes involves doing PI stuff like trying to track down the location of the vehicle. The cost of one repo easily wipes out profits on many months' worth of interest payments.

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

#193

Post by anonymouskimmer » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

nkozyra wrote: post #53

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-host…

> Granted, I think this is extraordinarily gross and consumer-hostile.

It seems like a good idea for stolen autos (at least until the car can be modded to remove the ability, so recently stolen autos). As long as there are enough checks to ensure that only the owner (or law enforcement with a warrant) can repossess the car. There just has to also be a requirement that the lease holder can't lawfully repossess without a court judgement.

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

#194

Post by nradov » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

lasermike026 wrote: post #177

nradov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, I've considered them. Now what?

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

#195

Post by Clubber » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:53 PM UTC

Kon-Peki wrote: post #86

toast0 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would Ford want to do this for sales anyway, in the case of a sale, the financing company pays ford in full. The only exception would be if ford financed the car with its own financing arm. Ford has a huge financing arm. And it will probably get bigger as interest rates rise, because they have more room to offer lower than market interest rates as a hidden discount without dropping the purchase price.

Their financing makes money on the differential between the rate they pay on demand notes and the rate they lend to car buyers. Anyone (well, US Persons at least) can buy the demand notes [1], which are currently paying 4.75%. So as long as they are lending at an average rate above 4.75% after defaults and other problems I guess they are in a good position. But they can also move money around internally, I suppose, t…

I've heard people opine that motor companies: Ford, GM, Harley Davidson, etc. aren't really motor companies anymore, they are finance companies and just use the vehicle as a means to get the financing paper. They are obviously both, but it would explain why the quality of US vehicles keeps deteriorating since around 2007 or so.

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

#196

Post by BoorishBears » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #156

lotsofpulp wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you finance a car, the vehicle becomes collateral for a loan, but it belongs to you. The title stays with the lender until all the payments are made per the loan agreement. I would not say the vehicle legally belongs to a borrower until they have possession of the title. > The reason we have laws is so that people have recourse to principle, whereas when you implement something like this in hardware (a car), i…

If the cost of repossession is low it also means that riskier buyers are more likely to get financed.

This is a pretty naive take if you're trying to paint it as enabling an even better outcome for "riskier buyers"

This article is something like 5-10 years behind reality: Right now subprime auto loans are mostly enforced with GPS trackers that buyers are usually not made properly aware of, or even worse, tricked into paying for as an add-on pitched as being for their own benefit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/dealbook/gps-dev...

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There are entire businesses built on selling poor people cars at truly insane interest rates, on payments they clearly can't afford, repossessing the cars on the cheap with GPS trackers, then selling then to the next poor person with bad credit.

This grift isn't new, but cheap GPS trackers and license scanners reduced the cost per repossession in a way that enabled these places to be signficantly more brazen about it.

Unfortunately the two prevailing takes I see on this are "they're subprime for a reason" as if they deserve it, and "well at least someone is still giving them a chance, you need a car in this country" (and of course some well meaning but ill informed people think you can just take public transport in every part of the country)

The reality is this is worse than nothing in many cases. Buy here, pay here have people pay more frequently so that they can repo a car within days not months of someone buying them. The process isn't free either, it's disruptive, and they'll continue to leech off the owner in collections.

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Overall it feels like a classic case of short sightedness from society. Saying we should directly subsidized subprime people's access to affordable loans and cars would be a non-starter: It sounds like some bleeding heart charity case making the responsible pay for the irresponsible.

But then we'll all indirectly fund a much worse version of that when subprime auto loans start to implode (like they're probably already starting to with the interest rate hikes...) and we're all paying to pick up the pieces in multiple ways. If the bottom falls out the car market, well right now even middle class families are taking loans with insane terms that leave them underwater in a good market. The pain will trickle up and out from just subprime lenders and cars specifically.

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

#197

Post by luckylion » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:55 PM UTC

georgemcbay wrote: post #133

luckylion wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a large problem with FSD to do it at speed? If you never go above 5mph, a lot of things suddenly get much simpler because the amount of time you need to stop the car is very close to zero, and you probably don't care how long it takes for your possessed car to make it back to your show room.

> and you probably don't care how long it takes for your possessed car to make it back to your show room. But you probably do care that your self-repossessed car is now impounded for driving dangerously slowly on public roads.

Might be cheaper to pay the fine and get your cars by the truck load while the local law enforcement takes care of transport and security.

But then again, I'm sure you can increase the speed to the average careful elderly driver.

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

#198

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

20after4 wrote: post #188

lotsofpulp wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would assume that either the only game in town is Honda or that all the other manufacturers are colluding with Honda. Absent significant evidence, it is safer to assume people’s preferences are causing the lower sales.

Where I live, all of the major new car dealerships are owned by the same company. No I'm not making this up: https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/business/2014/10/02/w...

This is true in my town. Believe it or not some customers and employees really love some car dealers and speak reverently about them and that was true of the last Toyota dealer but it is not true of the current one.

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

#199

Post by necovek » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

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…

One of the bad "inventions" of software distribution: you don't own a copy, you are only licensed to use it.

No surprise the dark tactic is spreading.

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

#200

Post by SilasX » Tue, Feb 28, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

daveslash wrote: post #154

bm3719 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you finance a car, the vehicle becomes collateral for a loan, but it belongs to you Is it not correct that the lending entity you use to purchase a vehicle is the party that legally owns it? The borrower has possession and right to use the vehicle, but the lender holds the title. That's why you get the title transferred over to your name once the balance of the load is repaid.

That's what I thought too. I got pulled over once and the cop asked me " Is this your car? ". I replied " Well, no... the bank owns it, but they let me drive it ". He was not amused, but I was not being snarky -- I took the question to mean: " Do you own this car? ", and the honest answer was no - at least, as I understood it, because the owner name on the title was the bank, not mine.

As others have noted, states typically have you on the title and the bank just has a lien, so I’m not sure that would even be technically accurate. And even if accurate, your tone is too lackadaisical and overclever for this kind of interaction. You could have said, “in the lay sense, yes, though the bank is the owner of record.”