Ford patents car that can repossess itself and drive back to showroom

A new patent will allow Ford to build cars that will deal with owners making annoying noises and delinquent payments.

To Matthew Sparks

Ford has patented a system that allows cars to redeem themselves if their owners fail to pay. The company envisions the car driving itself back to the showroom. If the car is worth less, it may return to the scrap yard. But security experts warn that the proposed system could be used to remotely steal cars.

The patent, which was filed in 2021 but was only granted last week, explains how the system works when a car owner doesn’t respond to a message that they’re in arrears. I’m here. At that point, a series of measures are used to first make driving the car uncomfortable, then impossible. Finally, as a last resort, the car is returned to the showroom.

The system can start by disabling features such as GPS navigation, music systems, and air conditioning, creating what the patent describes as “a certain level of discomfort” for its owners. If this doesn’t work, the patent suggests allowing the car to produce a “constantly unpleasant sound” such as a chime or beep every time the owner enters the vehicle.

The next escalation would be to restrict access to the car on certain days or at certain times of the day and prevent it from being used for weekend leisure, but the owner would still be able to get to work, so eventually The vehicle’s ability to pay is never compromised. The patent also proposes using GPS to “geofence” certain areas that cannot be used by cars.

If all else fails, a waiting tow truck can be instructed to self-drive to a location where it can be picked up, or even instructed to self-drive to a collection storage location. If your car has high mileage and is in poor condition, you may be directed to go straight to a scrapyard for recycling instead.

Of course, such a system would require the car to be fully self-driving. This has been an enduring but elusive goal for automakers. Buying a truly self-driving car is now more impossible than it was 15 years ago. Ford itself recently announced that it would give up its $2.7 billion goal of developing fully self-driving technology.

Ford did not respond to a request for comment on the newly granted patent, but Alan Woodward, a security expert at the University of Surrey in the UK, said such a system poses security risks.

“It would be brave vehicle manufacturers to have this built into their vehicles as a standard,” he says. “You can imagine not only a car thief finding unauthorized entry into a system, but also giving access to ‘authorized’ users through social engineering. ”