Ford patents car that can recapture itself and return to showroom

A brand new patent permits Ford to construct vehicles that take motion when the proprietor is late on funds by making annoying noises and even driving themselves again to the seller.

With Matthew Sparks

Ford has patented a system that enables a automotive to re-own itself if its proprietor cannot sustain with funds. The agency envisions the automotive returning itself to the showroom or, if the automotive is undervalued, to a junkyard. However a safety professional warns that the proposed system might be used to steal vehicles remotely as a substitute.

Patent filed in 2021, however just last weekexplains how the system will kick in if the proprietor doesn’t reply to messages stating that they’re late with funds. At this level, a collection of measures could be used to make driving the automotive disagreeable, then inconceivable. Ultimately, as a final resort, the automotive would return to the showroom.

The system could start by disabling options equivalent to GPS navigation, audio or air-con to create what the patentee describes as “a sure stage of discomfort” for the proprietor. If that does not work, the patents recommend that the automotive make a “steady and annoying sound” like a bell or beep each time the proprietor will get in.

The following improve could be to restrict entry to the automotive on sure days or at sure occasions, rendering it unusable for leisure on weekends, however permitting the proprietor to proceed working and thus not harming the power of the automotive to ultimately pay for it. The patent additionally proposes utilizing GPS to “geographically delimit” sure areas the place the car can’t be used.

If all else fails, then the car will be instructed to drive by itself to a location the place a ready tow truck can decide it up, and even to a recapture landfill. If the automotive has excessive mileage and is in poor situation, then the automotive will be instructed to go straight to a junkyard for recycling.

Such a system would, after all, require the automotive to be totally autonomous, a persistent however elusive objective for automakers: it’s not attainable to purchase a really self-driving automotive any greater than it was 15 years in the past. Ford himself lately abandoning the goal of developing fully autonomous driving technologyAt a value of $2.7 billion.

Ford didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the newly granted patent, however the safety professional Alan Woodward A researcher from the College of Surrey in the UK says such a system would have safety dangers.

“There will probably be a daring car producer placing this as normal of their automobiles,” he says. “I can think about a automotive thief not solely discovering an unauthorized path to the system, but in addition social engineering it to realize entry to ‘approved’ customers.”