Skip a payment and there goes the your a/c.
Skip a payment and there goes the your a/c.
So... don't buy more vehicle than you can afford? The buy-here-pay-here places that do a lot of repo business already have GPS trackers and remote starter disables for people who miss payments, so I don't really see this being the big deal that lots of people are making it out to be.
Also, big companies like Ford file a lot of patents that they never actually turn into products. Filing patents is relatively cheap (by large corporation standards, at least), and they are mainly intended to be defensive. The way the patent system works right now it's pretty easy to get a patent on something that's overly broad and pretty simplistic, so the way to avoid getting sued by other car companies is to have enough patents of your own that they can't help but infringe as well. Then they set up a cross-licensing cartel deal, and it acts as a barrier to entry for newcomers.
codrus (Forum Supporter) said:
Also, big companies like Ford file a lot of patents that they never actually turn into products. Filing patents is relatively cheap (by large corporation standards, at least), and they are mainly intended to be defensive.
Totally agree.
They'll be a workaround. There always is.
I don't want to 'own' a vehicle that others control. Period.
Image the consequences of them disabling a car right when a parent is trying to get their kid to a hospital, and the kid dies. I doubt that a jury would side with "yes but they skipped payments." That said, I do agree with "if you can't afford the car, don't buy it".
Not a fan of internet connected vehicles in general but this is the wave of the future. Luckily for me I'll always have an old POS "dumb" vehicle around.
kb58 said:Image the consequences of them disabling a car right when a parent is trying to get their kid to a hospital, and the kid dies. I doubt that a jury would side with "yes but they skipped payments." That said, I do agree with "if you can't afford the car, don't buy it".
Gotta love the extreme, made up scenarios. What if the car got repossessed the day before the kid needed to go to the hospital? Still the banks fault the kid dies? Disabled the night before? Where's the cutoff in this magical example?
Miss a payment and Ford will force you into '90s dance workout?
I'm conflicted on this one. I am generally opposed to things that are Internet-connected that have no need to be. My sous vide heater, for example. Why do I need an account on your website in order to see the status of a device that is on my local network? (Okay, fine, the answer to that is a little more complicated - it's just easier to write the code to speak to a central server than to do ad hoc networking or run a small web server on the appliance, but still). I have no desire for my car to be in communication with a remote server somewhere. If you want to give me the option to connect it to perform a software-based recall, that's one thing. But think about the fault domain that this creates. I haven't read the full details of how they're going to accomplish this, but what happens if the servers go offline for some reason? On start-up will the system determine that if it can't talk to the server that all features are enabled or will it disable everything until it can communicate? What safeguards are in place to prevent coding errors from erroneously locking cars? If the car is capable of responding to a certain signal to have it drive off to the dealer or shut down while driving, then it is absolutely possible that an error could be introduced through a code update on the server, for example, that would send that signal by mistake. What about a man in the middle attack that sends a more powerful radio signal and allows someone to execute code maliciously? SSL certs aren't perfect. And, by the way, try using a really old browser with today's web servers; will they continue to run webservers on the public internet 30, 40, 50 years from now that can't have the latest SSL encryption algorithms installed because there are old cars out there that can't support it? Will there be a software update available for that barn-find 2026 Ford that's found in 2083 so it can call-home and get its authorization to start?
On the other hand, I can't really feel a ton of sympathy for folks that aren't making payments on their loans. You signed the paperwork making the car the collateral on the note and it's pretty simple: make the payments or the car gets repossessed. If your car suddenly gets disabled because you're months delinquent on your car payment, it's not Ford's fault that you couldn't get your baby to the hospital. You're an adult, you signed the contract, the contract said if you do X, Y will happen, you did X, Y happened, that's on you, not Ford. Unless of course in a move that should shock absolutely no one, the system doesn't function absolutely perfectly.
John Welsh said:Miss a payment and Ford will force you into '90s dance workout?
I'm glad someone got it.
Fueled by Caffeine said:John Welsh said:Miss a payment and Ford will force you into '90s dance workout?
I'm glad someone got it.
Nope.
As to Ford, you all forget that you live in the perfect free-market capitalist society. If you don't like something, just don't buy it. Companies are free to build whatever they want as long as it generated the stock price increase to keep shareholders happy. You are free to not make that happen. Simple.
I am more interested in the fact that Ford is going to introduce a path for outside communication into their vehicles. If Ford can tap in, I guarantee other less benign entities will also find a way in for fun and profit. Imagine a scenario where 5 years after the intro of this great technology, some clever 12 year old hacker shuts the fleet down just for fun? What other vehicle control options might be available once you are in the system?
NOHOME said:I am more interested in the fact that Ford is going to introduce a path for outside communication into their vehicles.
Introduce? Where you been, man?
NOHOME said:Fueled by Caffeine said:John Welsh said:Miss a payment and Ford will force you into '90s dance workout?
I'm glad someone got it.
Nope.
As to Ford, you all forget that you live in the perfect free-market capitalist society. If you don't like something, just don't buy it. Companies are free to build whatever they want as long as it generated the stock price increase to keep shareholders happy. You are free to not make that happen. Simple.
I am more interested in the fact that Ford is going to introduce a path for outside communication into their vehicles. If Ford can tap in, I guarantee other less benign entities will also find a way in for fun and profit. Imagine a scenario where 5 years after the intro of this great technology, some clever 12 year old hacker shuts the fleet down just for fun? What other vehicle control options might be available once you are in the system?
They already can tap in. They offer you cellular data in the car for 1 of 2 reasons. The second reason being so they can push over the air updates to the car, track the car, send reports back to the mothership, etc. No different than OnStar or Subaru Starlink these days. GPS tracking so if you take your truck off-roading and break something, they can deny a warranty claim for using it outside of intended purposes.
There's a reason why I will never get rid of my 01 Sequoia and S2000.
As with anything there are work arounds. A few snipped wires and cellular data and GPS tracking no longer work. Take those modules wire them up to a battery pack and strap it to a raccoon that you just tranquilized and Ford will get some entertaining telemetry to diagnose once that trash panda wakes up.
Steve_Jones said:kb58 said:Image the consequences of them disabling a car right when a parent is trying to get their kid to a hospital, and the kid dies. I doubt that a jury would side with "yes but they skipped payments." That said, I do agree with "if you can't afford the car, don't buy it".
Gotta love the extreme, made up scenarios. What if the car got repossessed the day before the kid needed to go to the hospital? Still the banks fault the kid dies? Disabled the night before? Where's the cutoff in this magical example?
The cutoff would be for the courts to decide. That's how it works now-a-days...
Fueled by Caffeine said:codrus (Forum Supporter) said:
Also, big companies like Ford file a lot of patents that they never actually turn into products. Filing patents is relatively cheap (by large corporation standards, at least), and they are mainly intended to be defensive.
Totally agree.
Most patents are traded among companies.
Steve_Jones said:kb58 said:Image the consequences of them disabling a car right when a parent is trying to get their kid to a hospital, and the kid dies. I doubt that a jury would side with "yes but they skipped payments." That said, I do agree with "if you can't afford the car, don't buy it".
Gotta love the extreme, made up scenarios. What if the car got repossessed the day before the kid needed to go to the hospital? Still the banks fault the kid dies? Disabled the night before? Where's the cutoff in this magical example?
All moot points, the buyer would've opted into a binding arbitration clause when they accepted the vehicle's EULA 
kb58 said:Image the consequences of them disabling a car right when a parent is trying to get their kid to a hospital, and the kid dies. I doubt that a jury would side with "yes but they skipped payments." That said, I do agree with "if you can't afford the car, don't buy it".
True, but I don't shame victims. Sure, plenty of people make dumb decisions and buy outside their budget, but that doesn't account for people whose lives get flipped upside down. My BFF lost her dad and her job in the same week. Paying for a funeral which drained her savings and suddenly losing her income was a problem that she had no control over. She had 15 payments left on her car and suddenly couldn't afford it after having never missed a payment for 4 years.
So Ford credit makes a poor decision on a loan to sell a car to increase their profits, and opens themselves up to various lawsuits based on the emergecy scenarios noted herein, where someone dies because their system locked someone out for non-payment, costing them 10x or more in legal fees than the value of the vehicle they sold, and 100x more than the profit they made on the vehicle, and it's even a debate?
God help us.
In reply to ГУЛАГ мальчик УР следующий :
Bean-counters at Ford already projected those costs. For every 1 person who dies, they will have 1000 other cars repossessed or paid-up which more than offsets the hush money they'll have to pay to the family of the one dead person.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
Nobody is shaming victims, but making up some magical scenario where a car gets disabled and a kid dies, is just laughable. Flip it the other way, Guy drives somewhere and kills his ex wife, it's Fords fault for not disabling the car....
As someone who hasn't had AC in his truck in 15 years. Ok?
Edit: do they even still make non-fleet vehicles that don't have AC?
ГУЛАГ мальчик УР следующий said:So Ford credit makes a poor decision on a loan to sell a car to increase their profits, and opens themselves up to various lawsuits based on the emergecy scenarios noted herein, where someone dies because their system locked someone out for non-payment, costing them 10x or more in legal fees than the value of the vehicle they sold, and 100x more than the profit they made on the vehicle, and it's even a debate?
God help us.
So now it's Ford Credits fault for making the loan? God help us is right.
The Infrastructure Bill mandates a "kill switch" in cars sold from 2026 on.
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