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Comment by xphos | Hacker News Reader

The 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

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Yep. 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.

Yeah, I remember when I sold my Honda Civic in 2010 they charged a couple hundred bucks to transfer the extended warranty I bought. Why? Presumably because they could. If it was $15 to cover the cost of updating their computer system, fine. But hundreds? That's just extortion.

Make everything a SaaS then the majority own little to nothing and are dependent on the providers. Reminds me of the land barons.

Even buying a land is not actually "buying" it anymore. You just rent it with a larger downpayment and smaller annual payments, in the name of land tax.

This is the biggest reason why I have zero interest in owning a new car.

Public transit for the win!

I 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.

Our system wins awards too, it's ok but we have a huge problem with safety on trains

public transit already is subscription model: you buy a ticket for a ride, or the monthly pass. It is even easier to deny you access to some form of public transport already (think subway entry gates, or long distance trains where you cannot really avoid ticket check). All this follows Klaus Schwab vision for the mankind "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy".

Yup. Today Musk bans people from using Twitter, tomorrow (I know it's a Ford patent) he can ban people from their Tesla's if they piss him off.

They can already disable features on your car, or reduce the reported battery capacity remotely. They don't need Ford's patent for that.

Tesla is much closer in terms of its stack to actually implementing this.

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