A Ford patent depicts a future where self-driving cars repossess themselves
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The car could also call the police, the patent suggests – or, if the lender determines the car is not worth the cost of repossession, the self-driving car could drive itself to a junkyard.
“We don’t have any plans to deploy this,” said Wes Sherwood, a Ford spokesperson. Patents on new inventions can be submitted, but they’re not an indication of new business plans or product plans.
Companies apply for patents to protect ideas from being used by others, whether or not they actually use the intellectual property themselves, explained patent attorney Michael Messinger, a partner in the Washington, DC, office of the firm Vorys. Messinger said that these processes take a long time with lots of back-and-forth.
Sometimes, borrowers behind on payments will lock up their car and place it in a garage that makes it impossible for them to drive away. In the end, a good old-fashioned human being taking back the car may be the only answer.
This week, it was revealed that Ford applied for a patent on a system that would use connected car technology to better aid in vehicle repossession. News of the patent’s publication was first reported by The Drive this week (which, in the interest of full disclosure, is a publication where I previously served as editorial director), and it describes a variety of procedures around repo-ing cars when payments are delinquent.
Step one involves making the owner pay in other ways. Features like the air conditioning, cruise control, or the radio might stop working. (Some of that is already possible in many vehicles.)
If that doesn’t work, the vehicle could become proactively irritating. The stereo might be programmed to “emit an incessant and unpleasant sound every time the owner is present in the vehicle,” according to the patent.
One way to turn off the noise would be through contact with the lending institution to address the payment delinquency.
It is a requirement for a borrowers to drive to work in order to pay back the loan. The car could be restricted to only being allowed to be taken to work or dropped off at school. That is it. And all the while, the driver will be unable to listen to the stereo, might not have air conditioning and could be subjected to that irritating, unstoppable noise.
There is an issue regarding what to do in a medical emergency. In a situation where there is a car wreck, the car could be given permission to go to the nearest emergency room or even to coordinate with the emergency medical personnel who are at the scene. The car would then go back to locking out its owner.
So, while Ford’s idea for a self-repossessing car might never be granted an actual patent, some of the ideas included in the patent — a car that makes horrible noises if you don’t pay, for instance, or that lets you drive to only one or two places — those just might be patentable, said Messinger.
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So when we look at how car technology is advancing in the years to come, it’s worth drivers everywhere asking this: Who is all of this for, anyway? Will the new generation of cars save the planet and its people or will it save the auto industry?
Those include sending messages to the owner’s smartphone or the vehicle itself, locking drivers out entirely, disabling functions like air conditioning, geofencing drivers to only operate within a certain time or set area so they can still get to work, and in one especially harrowing example, enabling an autonomous car to just drive itself to an impound lot — or a junkyard if the car’s market value is determined to be below a certain threshold.
The patent document describes dozens of ways to remotely and electronically revolutionize the entire repossession process, including liaising directly with lending institutions and police.
Whether car owners can even reinstate their loans by getting the balance current depends on what’s in their loan agreement, and their right to do so varies from state to state. If they can’t get their car back, it could be sold at an auction.
There has been a rise in the use of electronic transponders on cars financed with certain types of loans. There are devices that put lower income or bad credit buyers at risk of having their vehicles disabled if they miss payments.
Automakers have spent years pushing buyers into more expensive trucks, SUVs, and crossovers and eliminating smaller cars from their lineups in order to take advantage of those vehicles’ higher profit margins. The result has been longer loan terms, a rise in negative equity from past loans, and more total car debt than ever. High interest rates and skyrocketing prices have put a squeeze on people’s budgets and caused America’s “severe delinquent” rate to reach its highest level in 6 years. Used car prices are even more out of whack.
Car companies may beLessons from the Pandemic car shortages The result has been shows like General Motor hitting pause on production of its most popular trucks because of the fear that they could be kept artificially low in order to maintain high prices.
In other words, automakers and their dealers have spent years ramping up car prices or taking advantage of market conditions. If owners don’t pay up, they’re coming up with high tech ways to hit them back.
Even if Ford is worth more than you think, this kind of thing can be done. In a world where automakers are actively fighting your ability to fix your own car, there’s no reason to believe they have consumers’ best interests in mind all of the time. And while connected car technology is still in its relative infancy, it is only a matter of time before those cars enter the used market or the tech spreads to cheaper vehicles.
The patent suggests that a semi-autonomous vehicle that is incapable of driving long distances could instead move from private property to a more convenient spot, such as a tow truck yard.
As a last resort, a lender could disable “the engine, the brake, the accelerator, the steering wheel, the doors, and the lights of the vehicle,” the patent suggests, or simply lock the doors.
If the owner does not make the payments, the lender can play an unpleasant sound from the audio system, or turn off the air conditioner.
Patents on a Wide Range of Applications: Powertrain, Speech Recognition, Autonomous Parking, Tailgate Attachments and Fuel Inlets
The company’s other recent patents cover a wide range of applications: powertrain operations, speech recognition, autonomous parking, redesigns of tailgate attachments and fuel inlets.
