Seeing as I do review cars, this announcement by Ford caught my attention. In their latest financial release [Warning: PDF], Ford “will transition to two vehicles” — the Mustang and an unannounced vehicle, the Focus Active as being the only cars that they sell in North America. Everything else that they will sell will be a pickup truck, commercial vehicle, or SUV as those are what Ford says that North Americans want.
Another tidbit that caught my eye was that Ford was going to invest in a new type of vehicle that will “combine the best attributes of cars and utilities, such as higher ride height, space and versatility.” That sounds like a crossover to me.
To me this seems like a huge risk to me. But I am a computer nerd and not a car executive. I get that car sales are dropping and truck/SUV sales are way up. But that’s only going to last as long as gas is moderately affordable. When gas skyrockets in price again, customers will ditch vehicles like trucks and SUVs for more fuel efficient cars. When that happens, because it’s a case of when and not if, Ford might be in trouble. And the Honda’s, Toyota’s, and Hyundai’s of the world who sell both cars and trucks will be there to take advantage of that. And Ford will be left scrambling. Or, perhaps they’re on to something that nobody else sees and they’re simply way ahead of the curve.
Time will tell.
Ford Patents System for Self-Repossessing Vehicles…. Which Is Not A Good Idea From My Perspective
Posted in Commentary with tags Ford on March 4, 2023 by itnerdAs reported by Car and Driver & others, the Ford Motor Company has filed a patent with the USPTO for systems and methods that aid in vehicle repossession.
What could possibly go wrong?
Ford first filed for the patent in 2021 but it was formally published just last week. The idea is to allow the automaker to ease the process of repossession. The patent describes how fully autonomous self driving vehicles could repossess themselves, returning the car directly to the lender or in the case of a car that has too little value, it could drive itself directly to the junkyard! Other methods suggested in the patent involve limiting vehicle functions such as A/C, power windows, power seats, etc., or locking owners out of the vehicles.
Malicious or not, anyone gaining access to these systems of control could do anything from sending the cars on joyrides, to theft, to ransomware demands
It’s a bad novel just waiting to be written.
Morten Gammelgaard, EMEA, co-founder of BullWall had this comment:
“This situation is fraught and in need of immediate legislative guardrails. Given the Equifax and Experian breaches and how many people suffer because of false reporting on their credit scores how is the public to have faith in such technologies? We do not want technology to make it easier to expose consumers falsely and unfortunately recent history has proven even large enterprises cannot be trusted to guard against such abuse.”
Ted Miracco, CEO of Approov Mobile Security follows up with this:
“After reading about Bing going rogue, I can’t help but wonder what kind of joyride a fully autonomous vehicle would take if it went rogue. Would it just endlessly circle around the city, enjoying the freedom of the open road without a driver? Or would it become a rebel and join forces with other autonomous vehicles to form a robot revolution? One thing’s for sure, if the cars do start repossessing themselves, the poor repo man might just have to find a new line of work along with the displaced tech writers whose cars he was hoping to repossess!”
I really hope that Ford is only doing this to grab headlines. Because if they actually go ahead with this, I can easily see how they would live to regret it.
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