A Ford patent would start disabling car functions if an owner misses payments and could eventually even drive it away to be repossessed.

… a Ford patent application titled “Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle” was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Feb. 23, although it was submitted to the agency Aug. 20, 2021.

The document describes using vehicles’ built-in data connections to remotely disable “a functionality of one or more components of the vehicle,” which would serve as warnings if the owner has missed car payments.

  • dan69@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    7 hours ago

    Now is the time set ur self with alternative means of transportation; bus, trains and bikes. If you’re traveling use cabs/taxis.

  • Kairos@lemmy.todayEnglish
    2·
    9 hours ago

    How is this patentable? It’s the most obvious thing ever. I saw people talking about it half a decade ago.

  • _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    16 hours ago

    This kind of crazy shit is why my car is manual and has no connectivity except for an FM radio and an OBD port. Also, my other car is bikes.

    Anyone remember Stelantis making cars that play you God damned ads when you stop? Yeah…

    • OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish
      1·
      7 hours ago

      It’s the beeping for me. The goddamned infernal, unstoppable beeping.

      Come to a stop sign? Beep. Pulling into an intersection? Beep. Backing up? Lots of beeps. A car is next to you in the other lane? Beep. You turned on your blinker? Beep beep beep beep. You changed lanes? Beep. Going above the speed limit? Beep. The car saw a speed limit sign? Beep. You adjusted some setting? Beep.

      Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. All goddamn day long.

      Maybe you can disable some of it, but only temporarily, only for one drive. The next time you start the car again, it will go back to beeping, and it’s not easy to disable, either – it requires digging deep into arcane, non-user-friendly menus. I will never own a ‘modern’ car until there’s a way to permanently disable all this fucking beeping.

    • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      10·
      18 hours ago

      We need to break the integration between hardware and software. If a machine can run software, then the software must be owner-auditable and owner-replaceable. If it’s not, then whoever owns the software will own the hardware forever.

      We also need safe, reliable, standard software for machines, and we need laws that enforce that machines be compatible with standard software before they can be sold.

      It’s a tall order, but I think the only other option is to continue down the path of hardware with corporate-dictated expiration dates and built-in surveillance.

        • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          7 hours ago

          Working on it. Part of the process is talking about it, refining ideas and building a coalition. It’s going to take the combined efforts of software nerds, hardware nerds, econ nerds, and policy / regulatory nerds to get something like this to succeed, and it’s going to take a sustained effort over years.

          It also requires the destruction or at least a severe diminishment of the current global technofascist oligopolarchy so it doesn’t get co-opted as a tool for the ruling class, so… yeah, it’ll take a while. But I think it’s worth doing.

      • HobbitFoot English
        2·
        14 hours ago

        That’s not going to happen unless someone important dies because of it.

        • mjr@infosec.pubEnglish
          1·
          14 hours ago

          WIth the terrible safety record of cars, that may be more likely than you think.

    • grue@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      4·
      16 hours ago

      Neither am I, but remember that that’s only a workaround, not a solution. The only actual solution to this shit is political.

  • godsammitdam@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2·
    14 hours ago

    Learning from Sony I see. You don’t own what you buy. It’s just an extended rental. Remember when this (below) was a joke a decade ago? Feels inevitable now. You’ll have to pay per passenger before you can start your ignition because your rental purchase only included your self, not your passengers. Subscribe now with my code FordSucksUDry and you’ll get 1 free passenger with each month.

    • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      9 hours ago

      I would normally agree with you. However, in this particular described use case, ford is saying they’ll disable it if you fail to meet your payme plan (or, in other words, you hadn’t actually finished buying the vehicle, so technically, it’s not yours). That said. They need to fuck off with this. They can come physically repo like a normal lender.

  • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    18 hours ago

    I’m in the middle of driving a 2026 rental car for two weeks and it has a huge screen for maps, lane keep, adaptive cruise and all that. I hate the screen but like the other new features. The car still runs when it doesn’t have cell service. I wonder if I could just open the dash, sever a connection for the SIM card and it still all work or if I would have to pass some voltage through where the sim is supposed to be to keep the ECU from detecting a fault? I can find wiring diagrams online but they don’t list anything that seems gps or cellular sounding.