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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

Think of the implications of throwing the car away once you lose your keys. Environmentalists will hunt you and rightfully so, most of the emissions a car produces happen during its manufacturing.

If they introduce a mechanism where the manufacturer only can unlock the car, it would mean that they will need to be involved in all kind of disputes people have over the ownership or usage of the car. You will also have people telling you that you don't own the car as with the case of the some agriculture manufacturers that lock down their systems against unauthorised repairs.

I'm more in favour of leaving the police work to the police, let's not integrate the law enforcement and manufacturers. There's already interest in disabling cars when authorities deem necessary. The problem here is that the authorities might not be or may not remain your favourites.

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Say at some point there wasn't a proper title transfer. Maybe a relative gave it to you or loaned it indefinitely to you and no one thought about the title and the relative passed away. Or some other informal joint ownership. People's names change. Edge cases? Sure. But there are a lot of them and the manufacturer has every incentive to just go "Here's the rules. No exceptions."

Uhm, yeah, I'd absolutely expect an official dealership to refuse to produce a key for a car you cannot prove ownership of, regardless of whether it was loaned to you, inherited, or if you found it in a ditch - no proof of ownership, no key.

If you are one of those edge cases, there are tonnes of unofficial garages which will happily make you a new key for money. The manufacturer - and by extension, they official dealerships - should never make keys for anyone but the legal owner.

I've never owned a car with modern keyless fobs but I've certainly had new spare keys made and I'm sure I've never had to produce a title to do so. Of course in that case I already had a key and I was in their computer system in some manner.

I think it's a bit different if you turn up with the car and a working key already - in that case making you another key doesn't really change anything about the situation(although I suppose it could still be someone just borrowing a car intending to use the spare to steal it later....).

But yeah, I specifically mean a situation where someone doesn't have a key, turns up with the car on a trailer and asks for the key for it - in that case yeah, why would a dealership unlock and provide you with a key for a random car that you can't prove ownership of? That would be just weird.

Yeah. That would be very weird especially if it were a dealership you had no previous dealings with. (I don't actually know how interconnected a manufacturer's dealership network is at the back end.)

>all kind of disputes people have over the ownership

At least where I am, when a car is registered the owner gets an "ownership" document, which is also registered with the government. Lists the vehicle, VIN, owner, etc.

Would this not stop whatever disputes over ownership you're referring to?

Sure, you can works something out but it would also mean that the company will need to maintain a system for unlocking cars for each country according to the local regulations.

Then they will need to deal with stuff like "Toyota unlocked the car of a Putin critic", "Audi refused to unlock the car of a pregnant woman who lost her keys during the emergency, the baby died. They previously unlocked the car of Joe Rogan's girlfriend".

You also will have issues where the legal owner and the regular user are different people(i.e. father and son, romantic partners etc). Someone passes or the relationship sours and now you have people begging the car company let them use the car they have been using for years.

You will also have governments demanding you disable the cars of people who have problems with the regime. In Philippines the government might demand lock down the cars of LGBT people, in USA they might lock down the cars of people with debt.

Who knows? It makes the manufacturer part of the running the car just the way Apple and Google are part of running your phone.

I don't know if it has to be that complicated.

I own X car, and key is lost/broken/whatever. I go to my dealership, show my ownership. They validate it with the systems they already have (again, at least in my country) that communicate with the ministry, and check my ID. Done. All handled at the local dealership level (where they are already familiar with local laws, so it's not onerous to follow local regulation).

>Audi refused to unlock the car of a pregnant woman who lost her keys during the emergency, the baby died.

Starting to get a bit out of hand with speculation, I think. I don't follow the logic with this one. If there is an emergency, emergency services would be called rather than Audi.

>Someone passes or the relationship sours and now you have people begging the car company let them use the car they have been using for years.

Dealership says "Please provide ownership documents". It's not a complicated thing or a novel concept.

Yeah and even if Audi unlocked her car, how does that help exactly? Why didn't she call an ambulance instead?

Who knows what were the exact circumstances of that poor imaginary woman? Maybe The only ambulance driver in that little town she lives was her abusive BF?

Anyway, the idea is that you will have circumstances where unlocking the car would save somebodies lives but due to procedures not covering situations like this bad things will happen and people will blame the manufacturer. The way system works will be a constant debate.

>Who knows what were the exact circumstances of that poor imaginary woman? Maybe The only ambulance driver in that little town she lives was her abusive BF?

I can make up millions of wild scenarios, as well. I'm sure a few will be true here and there.

However, I don't think speculating about a hypothetical person with a hypothetical abusive partner who is the sole emergency responder in a hypothetical world where corporate Audi is the only other solution (what about taxi, uber, neighbor, cop, etc.?) to a hypothetical medical emergency is worth discussing.

Okay, what is need for centralised key production mechanism that leaves out any 3rd party?

Car theft? Big deal, insurance covers it. You can put the car into a garage, you can install your own tracker, the police can find it and there are many other ways to to steal the car and even if the car is not unlockable the "selling the parts" business model can still make it a target for the thief.

What's the argument for leaving it to the manufacturer?

My entire comment chain started with me saying that ownership should not be difficult to prove because ownership is recorded on an ownership document and with the government, at least in my country.

I'm not sure what you're arguing about anymore.

I argue that there are enough edge cases and risks that make it not worth having centralized vehicle locking system.

And I said it's not a difficult situation to prove ownership.

What does that have to do with centralized vehicle locking systems?

You don't need to get into weird scenarios. There are a thousand reasons why someone may not have immediate access to the title of the car (a document issued by individual states in the US), have a different name on that title, or simply be using the car formally or informally but it belongs to someone else. Depending on the complexity of the situation it may take a week to months to get your hands on a proper title if the dealer requires you to present it.

>have a different name on that title

>simply be using the car formally or informally but it belongs to someone else

And why in these cases should someone be able to claim ownership of the car, when they are not the owner?

I'm wondering if I mistyped something, or miscommunicated something. My whole point, originally, was that it is not some incredibly difficult thing to prove that you own the car.

The comment that I originally replied to said:

>all kind of disputes people have over the ownership

And all I said was

>At least where I am, when a car is registered the owner gets an "ownership" document, which is also registered with the government. Lists the vehicle, VIN, owner, etc.Would this not stop whatever disputes over ownership you're referring to?

Where that got lost in translation, I don't know.

To sell a car, it's perfectly reasonable to require a proper title in the seller's name even if it requires jumping through some hoops in order to get a title reissued to that person. (And, if there's some dispute, that dispute will simply have to be resolved.)

However, I've never needed a title for any other purpose and I think the last car I traded in I actually had to get a new title because it wasn't in my file cabinet where it should have been.I certainly wouldn't expect to need one to get spare keys issued, the car inspected (though they need an insurance-stamped registration for that in my state), or anything else.

Sure thing, and what should or shouldn't require proof of ownership via title or proof of insurance, etc., was never the focus of my comment. Just that ownership disputes can generally be resolved quite easily* by reverting to ownership documents.

*Easily, but not necessarily quickly in the case where you need the document reissued or whatever.

Just FYI, only super high end brands deal with trivial issues like producing spare keys themselves. If you lose a key to your Lamborghini then yes, you will be waiting a week to get a new key sent from Italy to you. But a normal Audi or KIA? The dealership does it - official dealerships have computers which can do this, and outside of authenticating with manufacturer's servers to issue a key, it's entirely within their purvue who they provide this service for. So no, Toyota doesn't really have any say as to who they make new keys for in Russia, other than providing official Toyota dealerships in that country with machines which can program new keys. After that point it's down to the dealer and to the local regulations.

So a bit of a devil's advocate - when my dad passed away, my mum kept using his car but because it was registered in his name, and because the registration document was in his name, we ended up in an idiotic and bureaucratic situation where the car was due another annual inspection, but the registration document ran out of spaces for stamps the year before. Normally, this isn't an issue, you just go to the government office and they give you another blank registration document with more room for stamps(the stamps prove you had the car inspected basically). However, because the owner of the car(my dad) was deceased, there was no one who could do this, and the government official refused to issue the document to my mum as it wasn't her name on the document, not without the court documents proving that the inheritence proceedings have been settled(which took another 6 months). Yes, she could produce the death certificate, but that wasn't enough. So she couldn't get the car inspected, and therefore wasn't legally allowed to drive it.

I'm almost certain a car dealership would accept a death certificate if she needed another key made, but my point is - yes, even with an official document stating who is the owner, you can still end up in some weird edge case scenario.

There are edge cases to everything, and there are already other solutions to this issue. But yes, death or debilitating illness is something that should be (and generally is, from the bureaucratic side anyways) considered in the context of asset ownership.

>Yes, she could produce the death certificate, but that wasn't enough. So she couldn't get the car inspected, and therefore wasn't legally allowed to drive it.

What if your dad willed the car to someone else? I suppose a death certificate isn't evidence of being the successor.

This definitely wouldn't work in the EU, you might have some sort of official ownership document from one country but still sell the car in another.

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