Ford has applied for a patent named “Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle”, which The Drive believes can be used to give owners hell if they are late on their loan payments. The car may block certain features or even confiscate itself and head either for the nearest bank or the nearest landfill.
At first, the patent argues that the owner should be penalized in the form of turning off select creature comforts, like cruise control, seat setting memory and multimedia functions (like the FM radio). Should the loan payment fail to come through again, the car will disable all air conditioning or lock doors and play back unpleasant nagging sounds when the driver is inside. We shudder to imagine what those are supposed to be like.
Once all else fails, Ford will let the loan provider automatically repossess the vehicle. As long as there is a semi-autonomous driving system on board, cars will be able to escape from their undutiful owners into areas from where they can be picked up and towed away. The more advanced autonomous rides may even drive themselves all the way to the bank or straight to the landfill – the latter if the financial institution finds it not worth repossessing.
On top of all of it, the feature may be added to a new car without any kind of prior notification to the owner – for example, via a silent over-the-air update. An external control unit may be required to update disconnected cars.
The Drive emphasizes that a patent application in no way guarantees that the feature will be implemented anytime soon or at all – if anything, it might just remain there as a means of protecting that particular invention. That said, we cannot help but wince at the numerous implications.
