[AutonomousVehicles] Ford working on ways for self driving vehicles to repo themselves

[Cornelius Butler]

Hi Everyone,
As we are heading towards a self-driving future, Ford is patenting
technology that will make a self-driving vehicle drive back to the dealer
if you miss payments.  Article Link and text is below.

Article Link:
https://gizmodo.com/ford-self-driving-repo-autonomous-vehicle-1850168765

Article Text:

Ford Tries to Patent a Dystopian Future Where Self-Driving Cars Repo
Themselves

The automaker filed a patent for a vehicle system that punishes drivers
directly, if they fail to keep up with their payments.
ByLauren Leffer
PublishedYesterday

Car companies often talk about autonomous vehicles as an avenue towards
increased freedom—enabling more people to access roadways and giving
drivers back their time and attention. But at least one auto giant is
considering alternate (and darker) uses of still-elusive self-driving
technology.

Ford has filed a patent for theoretical tech that would, among other
things, allow its vehicles to repossess themselves if a driver falls behind
on car payments. In Ford’s version of the future, delinquent customers’
cars could drive themselves back to a dealership (or to an impound lot or
even a scrap yard) if the owner fails to pay up in time. Unfortunately,
this is not joke.

The U.S. Patent Office published the company’s application last Thursday,
February—about 1.5 years after Ford first filed it. The patent, titled
“Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle,” hasn’t been officially
granted (yet), but is nonetheless an unsettling peek into an alternate
universe where private companies have even more of a say over our
day-to-day lives.

In the automaker’s dystopian, proposed and patented version of reality, a
couple skipped car payments would trigger a cycle of in-car consequences—or
a “multi-step repossession procedure,” as it’s called in the document.
First, an owner behind on their loan would get a notice of delinquency,
sent via their infotainment system screen. If the driver fails to respond
to that notice, there would be a second one. Then, your Ford personal
vehicle would slowly transform into a version of hell.

The company proposes varied early punishments for delinquent car owners—for
instance, a vehicle that could disable its own air conditioning, automated
key, GPS, or music system. Another idea Ford floats in the patent filing is
“activating an audio component in the vehicle... to emit an incessant and
unpleasant sound every time the owner is present in the vehicle.” Which
seems incredibly unsafe!

If the horrible noise and/or minimized functionality and comfort doesn’t
entice a car owner to cough up the money, the repo process would then
progress to locking a driver out of their vehicle. Ford notes that this
“lockout condition” could be variably enforced—potentially allowing people
to access their vehicles in a medical emergency (via a complicated system
of user monitoring) or still get back and forth to work by only restricting
travel outside of certain zones or times. Why, you might ask? Because Ford
cares—about getting its money. “Allowing the use of the vehicle during
weekdays avoids adversely affecting a livelihood of the owner of the
vehicle and hampering the owner’s ability to make payments,” the company
wrote.

And still, if the lockout doesn’t work, Ford has filed to patent tech that
would allow its vehicles to self-repo. The company proposes versions of
this idea that could work with both semi-autonomous and fully autonomous
cars. In the former, the vehicle would move a short distance to be more
easily towed away by a repo company. In the latter, the car would drive
itself all the way back to the dealership it was purchased from, or to a
nearby impound lot or scrap yard—depending on the vehicles’ value. The
company also includes safeguards against owner defenses (i.e. locking the
vehicle in a closed garage) that would automatically notify the police.

So, just to recap, in a possible future reality, a Ford car could lock you
out, cut off your AC, produce terrible sounds, take itself to get junked
for parts if you miss enough payments, and call the cops on you.

This is not the only absurd patent Ford has filed for its vehicles. In a
2018 filing, the company outlined a proposal for an autonomous police car
that uses AI to more effectively hide from and catch “violators of traffic
laws.” The automaker has also patented a bonkers movie screen windshield in
preparation for a far-off future where people no longer need to watch the
road in front of them. Also, the company has filed patents to bring
billboards inside your car and build vehicles with detachable motorcycles.

To be fair: Ford, and many companies, do this sort of thing a lot. It
doesn’t necessarily mean the automaker actually plans to put any of this
tech into play. However, the self-repo-ing car proposal sounds uniquely
lame. And the company has clearly put a lot of time, thought, and detail
into the 14-page application that includes schematics and explanations of
how this self-repossessing vehicle’s internet connectivity would work—for
maximum effectiveness.

“We submit patents on new inventions as a normal course of business but
they aren’t necessarily an indication of new business or product plans,”
said Ford spokesperson, Wes Sherwood, to Gizmodo via email. The company did
not respond to questions about if any aspects of this newly patented
technology are in development.

Notably, much of the system proposed in Ford’s recent patent application
would be dependent upon vehicles much more autonomous than what the company
currently has. Although Ford previously said it was aiming to build the
biggest self-driving car fleet in the world, the company announced it was
abandoning its goal of fully self-driving cars in October 2022.
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