Ford's new patent proposes a way for banks to disable features on leased cars
image-ppubs.uspto.gov
image-ppubs.uspto.gov
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You could say that people who can't afford a mortgage and are hence forced to rent (I'm part of that group) are then not part of the "not outright owners" discussion, but I don't know if that makes the situation better for them, to the contrary.
What if my landloard decides to remotely stop some things working around the house if I happen to be late with paying rent some months? Such as the AC not being available anymore. Or one of the clothes cabinets not opening. Because that's what's happening here with Ford and its leasing clients.
This is certainly true, and it's because of conscious decisions I've made to avoid debt and fixed recurring expenses.
I wasn't trying to say that my situation is the norm, I was using myself as an example to demonstrate that "There's very few things left that we "own outright"" isn't accurate, or at least isn't because there are no other options.
A house is an obvious exception, because they're too expensive for almost anyone to buy outright.
The town will come and arrest you, taking the land by threat of death. (They’ll use police.)
Who knows - maybe a lot like the John Deere thing - a title may transform into a long contract whereby you wrench yourself and it becomes void.
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.
Edit: previous owners and script kiddies, since it probably stopped getting security updates 5 years ago.
I think people must assume that second hand cars are cheaper and not actually checking what price they can get on a new car.
Perhaps they just check the advertised price and not realize you can get the dealer to knock off thousands if you pretend you are not interested.
I bought it pre-covid, though, and I know that used car prices became insane during the pandemic. But they'll settle back to norm (if they haven't already).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
The possibility of someone reacting unreasonably however keeps everyone more honest and assigns an actual cost to pushing people to a situation where they will resort to violence out of desperation.
I'm talking about the repo goon having to risk that the car leasee he's repossessing from being at their breaking point (because that car is the only way they can keep their job and avoid losing everything) and/or mentally unstable and pulling out a gun or a crowbar and thus pricing this risk into their services (or outright declining the job if it feels too sketchy) which ultimately trickles back up to the lender and encourage them to let go or be more lenient with this particular case (something they'd have no reason to do if they could turn the car off remotely).
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a threat of violence from the enforcement of a contract. There’s a reason why we tend to give the monopoly of (non-self-defense) violence to the government.
> 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.
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."
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.
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.
I think there are certain aspects that appeal to that as a natural bulwark against power. But I’m not so sure we should want such decisions to be emotional. Just like we want justice to be blind, I think it may be a good idea for it to be dispassionate as well. This is why we generally frown on countries that let the victims determine the sentencing of their perpetrators.
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.
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.
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.