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Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

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41–50 of 93 posts

Re: Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

#41
post #15

The problem with this is that I think it plays on good nature of people. Ford right now says it's for leased cars but it feels like a step to normalize restricting and milking people later on. It also open a whole new attack vector these companies are not ready to secure

Yup. Today Musk bans people from using Twitter, tomorrow (I know it's a Ford patent) he can ban people from their Tesla's if they piss him off.

Re: Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

#42

Buying a new car's pretty dumb, but leasing? LOL get outta here.

Sounds like if you buy a used car in future, you'll have to worry about which of the previous owners can still tamper with it. Edit: previous owners and script kiddies, since it probably stopped getting security updates 5 years ago.

Depends on how old the used car is. I'll be sticking with the old ones, personally. The ones that don't have any sort of data connection.

Re: Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

#43

Buying a new car's pretty dumb, but leasing? LOL get outta here.

There is this weird thing going on here in Australia where you buy a new car, drive around for a year or two, and sell it second hand and make a profit.

I think people must assume that second hand cars are cheaper and not actually checking what price they can get on a new car.

Perhaps they just check the advertised price and not realize you can get the dealer to knock off thousands if you pretend you are not interested.

Re: Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

#44

So given that they have the legal right to come to your house and forcibly take a leased car from you if you miss payments, a few nag features honestly seem like an improvement. I would just want to be sure as hell that a car I own outright wouldn't even have the hardware available to do such a thing.

Problem is that it makes it so easy that eventually we'll end up in a world where you can't outright own a car and everyone is stuck in perpetual leases. This already happened with the software industry with most stuff nowadays being a subscription.

The software doesn’t do that. Cars that cost as much as a typical yearly salary does that.

Re: Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like if you buy a used car in future, you'll have to worry about which of the previous owners can still tamper with it. Edit: previous owners and script kiddies, since it probably stopped getting security updates 5 years ago.

I've already decided my next car will be something built before 1984.

Back when I owned cars, they were always pretty old, and it was an endless job replacing various parts as they wore out. These days, I just walk, it's faster.

Re: Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

#46
post #15

The problem with this is that I think it plays on good nature of people. Ford right now says it's for leased cars but it feels like a step to normalize restricting and milking people later on. It also open a whole new attack vector these companies are not ready to secure

Yep. Like software, car manufacturers want a car to be something you subscribe to rather than buy. Also lets them continue to receive income from secondhand sales or ownership changes.

Make everything a SaaS then the majority own little to nothing and are dependent on the providers. Reminds me of the land barons.

Re: Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

#47

So given that they have the legal right to come to your house and forcibly take a leased car from you if you miss payments, a few nag features honestly seem like an improvement. I would just want to be sure as hell that a car I own outright wouldn't even have the hardware available to do such a thing.

There's very few things left that we "own outright", unfortunately. That's the whole problem with acts like this one.

Re: Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is that it makes it so easy that eventually we'll end up in a world where you can't outright own a car and everyone is stuck in perpetual leases. This already happened with the software industry with most stuff nowadays being a subscription.

The software doesn’t do that. Cars that cost as much as a typical yearly salary does that.

Yes but right now car manufacturers have probably done the math and realize it's profitable to sell cars outright at a certain price, that while expensive, is still affordable to at least the upper middle classes.

With this technology that allows ultra-personalized, real-time rent seeking over every minor feature of the car, it may become more profitable for car manufacturers to force everyone to a lease so they can use this tech, thus intentionally raising the price even more (out of reach of pretty much everyone) for the "own outright" model.

Re: Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

#49
post #15

The problem with this is that I think it plays on good nature of people. Ford right now says it's for leased cars but it feels like a step to normalize restricting and milking people later on. It also open a whole new attack vector these companies are not ready to secure

Yep. Like software, car manufacturers want a car to be something you subscribe to rather than buy. Also lets them continue to receive income from secondhand sales or ownership changes.

[deleted]

Re: Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars

#50

Financing is a cancer upon many industries, and cars are no exception. If we really cared about poor people we would seriously reform the dealer system, outlaw predatory sales and lending tactics, and seriously curtail the parameters on auto loans. I think limiting the term on loans for new cars to 5 years would be a good start. It would eliminate a lot of foolish purchases and auto makers would be forced to offer mo…

> Financing is a cancer upon many industries, and cars are no exception

I agree. Debt itself is poison.

> auto makers would be forced to offer more affordable vehicles.

There are multiple cars on the market in the US that you can buy for $20k or less. Adjusted for inflation, I don't think cars have ever been cheaper than that. It's hard to see how they could pare the cost down much lower.

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