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

Depends on the state, in many states the lienholder retains the physical copy of the title to prevent a fraudulent sign-off on the lien being used to sell the vehicle. In a lot of these states they actually don't hold the physical copy because the DMV allows major lienholders to use electronic retention. In this case, when you pay off the loan the DMV actually produces a physical title for the first time so that the lienholder can mail it to you. The lienholder isn't interested in having filing cabinets full of title certificates to keep track of.

That said, physical possession of the paper doesn't really matter to ownership---as electronic retention demonstrates. The owner listed on the title is the owner regardless of who has the paper, and the DMV's electronic records are far more important than the paper certificate (you can just get the DMV to print a new certificate from their records, but of course they'll charge a hefty fee and policy usually prevents doing so when there's a lien).

The physical possession issue is just around the ability to fake a lien release signature and sell the vehicle. For the same reason some buyers won't accept a title with a signed-off lien and want a new "clean" title printed by the DMV first, but others will just verify the sign-off. Dealers usually have direct access to query DMV records and can check whether or not a lien sign-off is genuine that way (relase of lien is reported to the DMV by the lienholder), but private party purchasers don't have such an easy way to do this and are more vulnerable to this kind of fraud. Multi-sale title certificates that have sales logged on the back are also regarded as suspicious by a lot of buyers, and they'll want a new clean one.

That said, I think the GP here is making a big assumption about how courts would interpret the situation. A lienholder has the right to repossess the vehicle as is, by sending a tow truck. Whether or not a court would interpret "remote repossession" as somehow changing the fundamental nature of ownership is an open question and I'm pretty skeptical. It's already not that uncommon for lienholders to install GPS tracking devices with fuel pump cutoff, in which case they have a more limited degree of remote control of the vehicle, and I've never heard of anyone thinking this changes the fundamental owner-lienholder relationship. I just don't think this idea about transfer of liability really holds any water.

Not sure why you picked July 2021 on a monthly index... easily the most misleading month in the last decade:

https://www.fitchratings.com/structured-finance/abs/auto-ind...

As soon as the government assistance I'm advocating dried back up we skyrocketed back to historical highs of subprime delinquency.

And notice how when graphed together, right on the timeframe I describe of 5-10, you see a massive divergence between subprime and prime trends even in your own article. Recovery rates tell you percentages, not absolute scale. (graph is a stunning representation of our current K-shaped recovery btw)

With cheaper repossessions the scale was what increased, and that's what Fitch is referring to with record performance.

We gave more people than ever who couldn't afford loans loans, and so while the relative rate of recovery didn't change, delinquency went insane, and is gearing up to get even more insane with the interest rate hikes.

> People who give out car loans want you to pay back the loan.

I can't tell if this is just a naive or at least uninformed take. At a high enough level the financial system wants people to pay back loans... but that's not what's being discussed here.

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There are dealers who want buyers to fail to pay. They're additionally enabled by both GPS trackers and license scanners to be even more efficient in their grift.

Additionally, you accidentally exposed an amazing example of what I described in terms of "we will subsidize it either way"

We don't provide a direct form of assistance specific to cars... but we did pay individuals to keep them afloat during the pandemic. They then had to take that money and pay subprime lenders to keep cars with exorbitant interest fees for longer, driving record profitability for the subprime market.

Now interest rates are spiking, those people are losing their cars. They're in a more desperate situation than ever, with less assistance then when interest rates were better. Used car prices fell, but not enough to cover all the ground they gained during the heat of the pandemic.

It's like this country just lets looming crisis walk up face to face without every trying to change course lest we seem like communists. To me this shouldn't even be a partisan issue, we can enable a smaller need for government intervention in the next economic slump by just not donating money to these lenders

>> * 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

This sounds like a feature that opens up a new avenue of potential financial engineering. If your car could enforce that it was in 'green mode' or didn't drive at certain times and you could get a subsidy or tax break for it, that might potentially be a good incentive to encourage more environmental friendly lifestyles and practices. That doesn't seem like a bad thing to me, I might not want to buy that feature but it allows for some interesting possibilities. The buyer would have to agree to some stuff at the time of purchase (or lease as it sounds like it would be) to enable this.

We should be mindful of potential unintended consequences of these things. There are some good frameworks in place though, despite what you're second point suggests, Ford has relatively limited liability in the case that their car is driven by a bad actor (cooperating the the police or not) the second that car starts driving on its own, for whatever reason, Ford has some liability.

I remember my grandfather being relatively upset at the idea of GM knowing his GPS coordinates when his Cadillac had onstar. Now there have been hundreds or even thousands of cases when OnStar has had a positive outcome on peoples lives after a crash or something, including times they've reported it before anyone else. His tune changed dramatically one time they remotely unlocked his car and remotely started it so he could get home when his fishing boat turned over and his car keys were at the bottom of a lake though.

And who owns the brick of weedheroin fentanyl in the wheel well?

This is news to me! I'm very glad to hear this. Renews a bit of faith in the patent process.