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Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars
- gleenn 4y agoOne more disgusting show of corporations doing the wrong thing in the name of profits.
- m00x 4y agoWe already have car immobilizers on leased cars. This would just make it innate to the car's computer instead of an external tool, making it more reliable and harder to remove.
- bumby 4y agoI know this is going to be an unpopular take, but why should a person be allowed to maintain use of an item they don’t own and are delinquent on? The unpopular part is that this just removes some friction from an already existing process. This is assuming there are the appropriate regulations in place to notify and give a reasonable option to rectify the payment issue, but isn’t this exactly how we deal with stuff from homes to furniture? You agree to pay a certain amount and if you are sufficiently delinquent, you lose access to that item because you don’t actually own it yet.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bakugo 4y ago> I know this is going to be an unpopular take, but why should a person be allowed to maintain use of an item they don’t own and are delinquent on? > an item they don’t own That's the problem, you don't own anything. We're already quickly moving into a future where cars you "buy" have random features locked behind yearly subscriptions that can be remotely disabled if you don't pay, the only reason you can even still "buy" cars instead of renting them is because full self driving isn't capable of safely driving the car back to the manufacturer on its own yet.
- bumby 4y agoI actually agree with this and I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. The car companies tried to pass a law a few years back where "owners" can't actually own a vehicle, and are essentially turned into long-term leasers. IIRC, the guise was the "right to maintain" is no longer applicable since vehicles are too complicated now.
- bobthebuilders 4y agoWe already have that though, it's called repossession. This feature just removes the human barrier and makes it vulnerable to hacking.
- vuln 4y agoIt removes the risk of a human getting hurt or injured. I can't be the only one that's seen repos gone bad. I'm not talking about that dumb, scripted _reality_ show either
- Nextgrid 4y agoThe human getting hurt or injured is a necessary evil against abuse and puts a limit on how unreasonable or petty the lender can be (as the risk of repos is ultimately baked into the commission charged by the goons, thus not making it profitable to repo for minor things). Same reason why people are generally much more civil in real life than online - the risk of being punched in the face keeps everyone in check and assigns a real cost to assholic behavior.
- bumby 4y agoEhhhh...really? Physical injury is a necessary risk for enforcement of a legal contract? Where else does this extend? Does a marriage contract bear the risk of injury? How about a business merger? This is weird logic that belies a desire for vengeance, not justice.
- Nextgrid 4y agoA fundamental physical limit on corporate greed sounds like a very good thing to me. Keep in mind that the potential for violence doesn't mean violence has to occur - every party in the contract is still free to not force the other side to resort to violence (which usually happens out of desperation).
- bumby 4y ago
- flangola7 4y agoThere's an inherent fundamental creepy grossness to punishing someone for misbehavior by pushing a button from afar. If we had an all pervasive surveillance system that instantly reported any crime it would be bad for the same reason. A world where power is wielded opaquely by distant controllers in a unilateral and instantaneous manner is not a world we want to live in, and it cultivates an even worse world the longer it exists. Rules and laws that might be fair and just when they were first written can become very unjust and dystopian when the ability to enforce them dramatically increases. Your argument is the same one made for justifying credit systems, especially ones like the social credit system enforced by the CCP. "If you wanted to have access to the tram you should have just been a better person and earned it."
- bumby 4y agoI largely agree with the point about opaque use of power. However, the current situation isn't much different. It's not the bank manager coming down to evict you or repossess your car. They distance themselves by outsourcing the enforcement through third parties like repo companies and sheriffs. This doesn't create the type of accountability you seem to want and makes it easier for banks to wield their power.
- flangola7 4y ago>It's not the bank manager coming down to evict you or repossess your car. They distance themselves by outsourcing the enforcement through third parties like repo companies and sheriffs. I don't think the current status quo is good either. The distance between the one with power and the one who is effected has been very far for a very long time, but pushing it even more distant and cemented is worse. The consequence of using power unjustly is decreasing. If a dictator wanted to prevent a protest by arresting all attendees before they arrived, it would require enormous resources and be extremely visible and unpopular, and inspire future resistance. If he can instead push a button and drive all the attendees cars to an out of the way lot (or simply immobilize them), the overhead is much lower.
- bumby 4y ago
- gnicholas 4y ago> isn’t this exactly how we deal with stuff from homes to furniture? Repossession is how we deal with these situations. We don't have recliners that lose the ability to recline if a bank payment doesn't go through on time. Or smart homes that lock you out if your mortgage payment is late.
- bumby 4y agoIs there a functional difference? Or put differently, why would someone prefer to have a repo person come and take away the asset, putting themselves and other people at risk of a physical encounter?
- gnicholas 4y agoThe remote locking requires remote connectivity, which means risk of errors or hacking. Also, once the ability to remote lock is built-in, it makes it easy to say "oh sure you paid for XYZ features, but once you sell the vehicle it is reset to factory defaults" — meaning the new owner has to pay for whatever you paid for already.
- bumby 4y agoI'm not making the case that it's zero risk. But I think the risk is preferable to the alternative of a physical encounter. Maybe I'm old, but paying for software features seems a bit more of an edge case (I know HN skews towards SV, with a higher prevalence of Teslas. I don't know how prevalent paying for additional software-enabled features is with other car companies). I think the feature piece can easily be handled through other mechanisms, like regulations.
- JohnFen 4y agoI love to scold corporations more than most, but this use case seems OK to me. They're talking about doing this with leased cars -- cars that you don't own -- not with cars that you do own. If I'm leasing a car, that car is the property of the leasing agent, not me. I think it's totally fair that they can do anything they like with it within the terms of our contract, as long as they're disclosing it to me.
- l-lousy 4y agoLooking forward to the eventual zero-day presentation at DEFCON :)
- honkler 4y agoyou vill own nothing...
- m00x 4y agoDid you read the title up to the word "lease"?
- duttonw 4y agosays 'lease' but its built into all cars they sell, so yeah.
- gnicholas 4y agoYou're right that the patent is specific to leased vehicles. But that shouldn't be confused with the underlying technology, which would have to be baked into the software of all vehicles, including those sold outright. This means the vulnerability of remote hacking will exist for all vehicles. And who knows what will be buried deep in the TOS — perhaps in a few years we'll hear about Ford shutting down vehicles for people who attended a particular protest that is not in line with the current social mores.
- sieabahlpark 4y ago[dead]
- Nextgrid 4y agoIt's just a matter of time before this technology is used to extract rent on non-leased cars just like subscriptions for heated seats/etc (or intentionally make the full "own outright" model unaffordable so everyone is forced into leasing where they can use this tech).
- googoo00 4y ago[dead]
- otikik 4y agoI hereby declare myself a neverfordian.
- googoo00 4y ago[dead]
- legitster 4y agoSo given that they have the legal right to come to your house and forcibly take a leased car from you if you miss payments, a few nag features honestly seem like an improvement. I would just want to be sure as hell that a car I own outright wouldn't even have the hardware available to do such a thing.
- Nextgrid 4y agoProblem is that it makes it so easy that eventually we'll end up in a world where you can't outright own a car and everyone is stuck in perpetual leases. This already happened with the software industry with most stuff nowadays being a subscription.
- JohnFen 4y ago> This already happened with the software industry with most stuff nowadays being a subscription. It hasn't really happened yet. There is still plenty of software you can own. None of the software I use is subscription-based, and there no software that I lack. But yes, this is clearly the direction that software companies want to go, and I think it's important that we reject this.
- kube-system 4y agoThe software doesn’t do that. Cars that cost as much as a typical yearly salary does that.
- Nextgrid 4y agoYes but right now car manufacturers have probably done the math and realize it's profitable to sell cars outright at a certain price, that while expensive, is still affordable to at least the upper middle classes. With this technology that allows ultra-personalized, real-time rent seeking over every minor feature of the car, it may become more profitable for car manufacturers to force everyone to a lease so they can use this tech, thus intentionally raising the price even more (out of reach of pretty much everyone) for the "own outright" model.
- 4y ago
- xphos 4y agoThe problem with this is that I think it plays on good nature of people. Ford right now says it's for leased cars but it feels like a step to normalize restricting and milking people later on. It also open a whole new attack vector these companies are not ready to secure
- SoftTalker 4y agoYep. Like software, car manufacturers want a car to be something you subscribe to rather than buy. Also lets them continue to receive income from secondhand sales or ownership changes.
- JohnFen 4y agoThis is the biggest reason why I have zero interest in owning a new car.
- nothingneko 4y agoPublic transit for the win!
- JohnFen 4y agoI wish. Public transit exists here (our system even wins national awards), but it's terrible. To commute to work, for instance, would take over an hour, but I can bike the distance in under 20 minutes. So, bike for the win! Which, to be honest, isn't a huge lifestyle change for me anyway. I own and use a car when needed, but the bike is my primary transportation. It's faster, more convenient, and more pleasant under most circumstances.
- nothingneko 4y agoOur system wins awards too, it's ok but we have a huge problem with safety on trains
- 988747 4y ago
- selcuka 4y agoFrom Ubik [1], by Philip K. Dick: The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt." ...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. "You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik
- gamedna 4y agoHopefully ford patents this and then decides to bury it so nobody else will be able to use it. Too much potential for abuse by 3rd party, or even nefarious actors.
- steponlego 4y agoBuying a new car's pretty dumb, but leasing? LOL get outta here.
- incompatible 4y agoSounds like if you buy a used car in future, you'll have to worry about which of the previous owners can still tamper with it. Edit: previous owners and script kiddies, since it probably stopped getting security updates 5 years ago.
- steponlego 4y agoI've already decided my next car will be something built before 1984.
- incompatible 4y agoBack when I owned cars, they were always pretty old, and it was an endless job replacing various parts as they wore out. These days, I just walk, it's faster.
- steponlego 4y agoThanks for the WEF spam! Any more great tips?
- incompatible 4y agoWorld Economic Forum and the 15 minute city thing? I guess I was an early adopter, but some places take me longer than 15 minutes to get to.
- gnicholas 4y agoYour cars must have been pretty old if they're slower than walking!
- 4y ago
- peoplearepeople 4y agoIf they're that worried perhaps they shouldn't lease the car.
- gnicholas 4y agoDo you think this 'feature' (and all of its potential vulnerabilities) will only exist in vehicles that are leased? I can't imagine that would be the case.
- major505 4y agoThe distopia grew closer each day...
- throw7 4y agoHow do I read patents again to see if it's bogus or actually novel?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mberning 4y agoFinancing is a cancer upon many industries, and cars are no exception. If we really cared about poor people we would seriously reform the dealer system, outlaw predatory sales and lending tactics, and seriously curtail the parameters on auto loans. I think limiting the term on loans for new cars to 5 years would be a good start. It would eliminate a lot of foolish purchases and auto makers would be forced to offer more affordable vehicles.
- JohnFen 4y ago> Financing is a cancer upon many industries, and cars are no exception I agree. Debt itself is poison. > auto makers would be forced to offer more affordable vehicles. There are multiple cars on the market in the US that you can buy for $20k or less. Adjusted for inflation, I don't think cars have ever been cheaper than that. It's hard to see how they could pare the cost down much lower.
- mberning 4y agoThe low end of the market is fine. The high end is insane. And 9 year loans are making the high end accessible to people that shouldn’t, but this also applies upward pressure on prices at the high end.
- kube-system 4y agoShitty loan terms are all you can get when you are at the fringes of the financial system. The end result of tightening credit requirements is that poor people will not get credit. Give people the information they need to make a smart decision, but we should let people choose bad loans if they find it to be the best choice for themselves.
- indymike 4y agoHopefully, Ford gets an exclusive on these "features" so I can just buy from another manufacturer.
- fwungy 4y agoHonestly, the notion of private vehicles has to end if the planet has even a sliver of a chance for survival. But it's going to take a lot to change the habits of people used to owning their own planet destroying vehicles (yes, even EVs), let alone getting to the point that private vehicle travel is anything more than an occasional treat. So as an individual who loves cars, guiltily, although I find such inventions creepy, I also recognize these things as the sour medicine required to heal the planet, and the greater good.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoI, for one, welcome our new SAAS overlords.
- justinclift 4y ago"You are travelling over 60 miles an hour. You are not licensed for this, so the brakes have been disabled until you upgrade your license..."
- some_other_time 4y agoI can easily imagine another HN headline after such a patent is implemented: Ford sued in death of individual after A/C was shut off during a heat wave Depending on which features may be affected, many different things could have drastic effects. The A/C shutting off is just one example. Another may be losing your map navigation at 2-3AM while driving through the south side of Chicago (or the dangerous areas of some other city). There are probably many different types of features that, during some edge case, could put a life at risk. And, if that life is lost, both Ford and the leasing company may be considered at fault.
- jcadam 4y agoThe software in my '21 F150 is flakey. Every time they push an OTH update, they fix one bug whilst breaking 2 other features. I don't trust any vehicle with this feature not to erroneously leave me stranded on the side of the road.