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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

#301

Post by kkielhofner »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #148
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…

> 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…

Not to mention the (current) alternative is an often shady/creative/aggressive repossession agent who in many cases[0] has the legal authority to go on your property to hook and tow the vehicle (often in the middle of the night). Even when they "don't" they often do anyway.

In a country with very high firearm ownership it's actually dangerous[0]. From a quick Google search violence breaks out pretty often[2][3] in these circumstances.

[0] - https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/car-repossession-law...

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti0NHC6oVnk

[2] - https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/crime/2011/03/02/rep...

[3] - https://www.fox4news.com/news/repo-man-shot-while-trying-to-...

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

#302

Post by drnonsense42 »

jader201 wrote: post #149
rootusrootus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, this was the number one comment yesterday on the Reddit thread about this.

When I read the parent comment, I thought “Am I on Reddit?”. HN used to bury Reddit-like comments a while back, but it seems the Reddit influence is becoming more and more accepted on HN these days, as I’m starting to see them more at the top vs. the bottom of threads.

Serious question. Are there any alternatives to HN? Been reading HN on and off since 2010 and the decline to this is painfully obvious. Used to learn a lot from reading on here but now only check or post out of habit and lack of a high quality alternative.

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

#303

Post by userbinator »

TheCondor wrote: post #245
spacephysics wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 incor…

>> * 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…

potentially be a good incentive to encourage more environmental friendly lifestyles and practices

Hell no. It starts that way, and it ends with "you are not allowed to live".

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

#304

Post by Merad »

AlbertCory wrote: post #191

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 late…

> 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.

I'm guessing they told him to get a Western Union money order, as those can't be reversed after they're cashed (AFAIK). Most modern forms of payment offer some level of consumer protection, as in they can be canceled or reversed. TBH a repo business might not even be able to get a merchant account for CC processing due to being a high risk business. Merchants that have high chargeback rates have to pay higher processing fees and can even lose their merchant account if their chargeback rate is too high for too long.

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

#305

Post by jwilber »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #278
jwilber wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah these comments are awful. Someone even wrote, “take my upvote.” Not a good look for HN discus quality. Back on topic: I find this hard to believe, what happens if it repossess itself by mistake? Gets in an accident on the way home during said repo? Especially since nowadays most Fords are just oversized trucks. And why is this even a desired feature? Is the average Ford customer that untrustworthy? I’m curious w…

Aren't mistaken repossessions and accidents during repossession things that happen already? The used car market is incredibly predatory and full of the same car getting repeatedly repossessed from new owners.

I’m sure they are, though probably pretty rare.

But my comment isn’t about the occurrence of them, it’s about the muddied waters when a vehicle repo’s itself with no driver. Who’s at fault if the vehicle crashes?

The purchaser of the vehicle clearly did not crash - they may not even know the vehicle was being repo’d. So then is the dealership or bank to blame? (If so, will this add to higher premiums?) Say a predatory dealership has some stake in the game. Given the asymmetry of information, maybe they will claim the car wasn’t being repo’d at all, rather the purchaser must have caused the damage and lied.

What if no repo even occurs but the software malfunction?

It just seems like such a mess.

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

#306

Post by bloomingeek »

GuB-42 wrote: post #214
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…

> > 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. Maybe the confusion comes from the meaning of "owning". There are essentially three parts to ownership: the right to sell, to rent, and t…

Two of my vehicles are Chrysler's. Both send me a monthly email telling how the car is doing: tire psi, oil change status, etc. Both are paid off, but I'll bet anything they can still disable them. So do I really own them?

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

#307

Post by ladyattis »

user3939382 wrote: post #26
shahbaby wrote: post #17

I 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…

>And by replacing ownership with either de facto or de jure rental of any and all private property.

My theory is that as profits decline due to the tendency of markets to reach equilibrium with respect to products/services supplied that capital owners will begin to reintroduce pre-capitalist norms and practices such as landlordism as these can sustain revenues to their liking as you renter won't have any ownership rights to contest their actions. It means they can raise rental rates anytime in the majority of cases and then just evict you from or repossess what was rented. Kind of like feudalism but without the fancy hats and titles.

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

#308

Post by user3939382 »

e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #274
user3939382 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you see that it's not legitimate for a government to do, then by the same logic it's not legitimate for an individual I see the rights of government as secondary by default with exceptions meted out strictly as necessary. There exists a very limited number of jurisdictions where property taxes don't exist and land ownership is therefore real, so there's no philosophical/legal impediment to foregoing property tax…

My argument is that even without property taxes the land ownership isn't real - someone can have a piece of paper and a government to back them up and say they "own" the land, but ultimately it's not the same as personal property and doesn't make sense to treat the same way. As far as I've seen it's impossible to establish a chain of custody for land ownership that doesn't involve theft and invalidate the current own…

> it's not the same as personal property

Do you mean because it's immobile?

> it's impossible to establish a chain of custody for land ownership that doesn't involve theft

This is a big issue in some places, e.g. I've heard in South Africa, because of legal issues arising out of confiscation when apartheid ended. Not so much in the US. There are some disputes going back to deeds with native Americans but they're very rare.

> the government is the only thing that grants the land ownership claim, if there is no government than anyone can come along and kick you off your land

The government's authority is the only reason a theory of any private property can exist in the real world anyway. Unless we're talking about super abstract theories of private enforcement in anarchist philosophy or something. In the world we live in, no government means people take your stuff, whether it's land or not.

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

#309

Post by AlbertCory »

AlbertCory wrote: post #191

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 late…

Update, after hearing back from him:

"Yes, Western Union was legit and used by GM Finance to collect."

So, not a scam. Just ultra-conservative business practices.

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

#310

Post by ubermonkey »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #148
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…

> 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…

You're on the title at purchase, but the lender has a lien on the title.
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