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

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521–530 of 568 posts

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

#521
post #103

In 10 years there will be love songs about your car leaving you.

Why wait 10 years, when you've got ChatGPT. Verse 1: I bought a brand new truck, shiny and so smart It had all the latest gadgets, it was a work of art But I got behind on payments, my bills just piled high And one day I woke up, to a big surprise Chorus: My smart truck repossessed itself, it had a mind of its own It drove away into the sunset, left me all alone I should have paid my bills on time, kept up with the l…

Damn, makes me want to break out the ol' acoustic guitar and I don't even play any instrument.

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

#522
post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, some old cars are well supported by completely open-source ECUs. Sadly, the number one best supported car is always the damn Miata.

Likely because they are inexpensive and are beloved track cars. I was hoping the GT88/BRZ would oust the miata from this position- I much prefer a hard top over a convertible, but I think the existing after market and price point make it hard to compete.

I think there are bolt-on hardtops for NA and NB Miatas. Looks kinda funky.

Also yeah, the Toyota 86 family is still too expensive to be a project car for most.

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

#523
I would remain calm, this is just a patent. I would not be surprised if it surfaced from some internal patent-storming event with no intention from the company to actually pursue it.

Such patents are among few other things useful for the company to convince investors that it innovates: "Look we have 100 patents in this area in the past year".

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

#524
post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many places where illegal parking is common, tow truck drivers stage close by or hire spotters so they can hook up cars quickly. They can make a lot of money hauling away cars from drivers who only plan to stop for 2 minutes. https://nyti.ms/3xW9OQX

This seems like stuff that should never be privatized or under non-police control. Police hires company to tow stuff away sure, but not "some random bumblefuck have right to do the police's job of "law enforcement"

I live in a neighborhood with impacted parking that’s poorly served by the local government. People keep parking in front of my driveway and blocking me in. If I call the cops they ignore me. If I call the tow company they come and tow away the offending car. Is this bad?

Suppose someone decided my front yard is a good place to store their belongings and dropped a shed there. Should I be able to hire movers to dispose of the shed? Or the police should be my only recourse?

I share the feeling that towing companies can be abusive and that’s not right. I think a better response is to regulate the towing companies and provide remedies. For example, make abusive towing practices illegal with heavy penalties (eg. if they tow illegally, they owe you $1000 per day you lose access to your vehicle). If it’s unfair to tow a vehicle after two minutes, make that illegal.

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

#525
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this perfect then? Once someone can actually implement it, the patent will have expired.

Which means that everybody and their dog will implement it, instead of just the patent holder.

Which they could also do if there was no patent to begin with. If you want different outcomes for different patents, then the point from the original comment will not help. If you think some patent blocks everyone from implementing a good idea, then you would prefer the patent being filled early without a working implementation so that it is closer to expiring when you can actually implement it. For a patent that you consider a bad idea and that no one should be able to implement on the other hand you would prefer that there has to be a working implementation so that it blocks everyone else as long as possible from also implementing it.

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

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

- Public transport doesn't go near to where I need to go

- Camping overnight is both illegal, and less comfortable than the hotel I was basing my hikes out of

I drove there, stayed at a hotel, and hiked out from that hotel every day. It was a very memorable trip. I then drove home.

The alternative would have been to get a bus to the train station (40 minutes), a train to the south of the park (2 hours), get a bus from the train station to another town (only 2 buses a day, morning and night, so we'd have had to leave home much earlier or lose a day), get another bus from that town to another town, then get another bus from that town to another town. All whilst lugging a large suitcase, camera bag & gear, and another backpack between us. The buses would have taken another 3 hours. Then if I needed to get home in an emergency, or otherwise leave quickly, I'd have to redo it all backwards, and hope I could make that twice a day bus.

No thanks, I'll just stick with my 1.5 hour drive from my front door to the hotel.

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

#528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brace yourself then, because the future of automotive is highly connected, and in many ways it already is. Every car since the early 2000s has computerized components that control everything from power steering to infotainment systems, and your car probably already communicates with some servers using a built in cellular sim. Hackers have been able to compromise cars for at least a couple of decades, and while car ma…

I recently was working on highly connected autonomous public transportation. Can confirm that connectivity is only increasing, and that cloud connectivity is going to be a hard requirement in the future. As for security, while the automotive manufacturers are aware of dangers, and standards like ISO21434 https://www.iso.org/standard/70918.html are driving them towards better security engineering practices, there is a…

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

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah what happens when someone gets out to pump gas with their child and phone in the car and fords automated repo algorithm decides is the optimal time to drive away.

Ford stock goes down 5%, media hushes it up

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

#530

The problem with this isn't the idea of a car repossessing itself per se, because repossession is already a legitimate thing; it's the idea that your car can be remotely controlled by anyone other than you. There are already so many things that can go wrong. I don't want to buy a car that can be remotely disabled because I drove near a protest, or because there was a "clerical error" at Ford, or because my payment di…

Im pretty happy with my 88 ford as well but have the opposite problem - am more worried about getting it to start at all
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