Ford Seeks Patent That Turns Car Into Dystopian Nightmare If You Miss a Payment

Ford is seeking a patent for a system that would enable its cars to annoy users with endless notifications and constant beeps and chimes or even lock owners out of the car entirely if they miss a payment, according to a patent application published last week.

The application, first reported by The Drive, modestly titled “systems and methods to repossess a vehicle,” is essentially a playbook for how an internet-connected software-based car—especially one with some autonomous driving capabilities—can punish owners for missing payments. In laying out a series of increasingly significant punishments, the application can alternately can be read as a dispatch from a future dystopia, one that may be unlikely to occur but has elements that feel entirely possible if not inevitable as cars become more software-based.

The basic concept at the patent’s core is a description of how the internet works: An interconnected system between the car, a centralized network, and various other institutions such as a repossession agency, “police authority,” medical facility, and lending institution. Along with the car’s on-board computers, this would enable dozens of scenarios for the car to punish an owner for missing payments.

The lending institution may use the car’s infotainment system or smartphone app to bug you about late payments. After that, it will start disabling certain features, starting with the radio, GPS, smartphone integrations, and other features which “may cause a certain level of discomfort to a driver and occupants of the vehicle.”

After that, the car will escalate matters by disabling the air conditioning and automatic door locking and unlocking systems, which may cause “an additional level of discomfort” to the people in the car. It will cycle through the different components, disabling some one day and others the next.

Then, the car will activate “an audio component in the vehicle (such as, for example, a radio, a beeper, or a chime)” which will be “unpleasant.” It will be impossible for the owner to disable this sound without contacting the bank and resolving the missing payments.

At that point, the vehicle will offer “a final warning” before locking the person out of their car. At first, it might only be during weekends, “allowing use of the vehicle during weekdays” in order to avoid “adversely affecting a livelihood of the owner of the vehicle” (this is not out of good will, but because doing so would “hamper the owner’s ability to make payments towards the vehicle”). Or, it may geofence the car’s use “to purchase groceries or to drop off a child at school. No travel is permitted outside the geofence.” The owner will be able to submit images to the car’s external cameras to prove there is a medical emergency so it can use the car to get to a hospital.

After locking the owner out of the car, the patent then describes how the car will aid in its own repossession. The car might use on-board cameras—both inside and outside the vehicle—to aid repo companies in finding the exact location of the vehicle and send directives to the repossession agency. If the vehicle has self-driving capabilities, it may move itself to an area where repossession is easier, such as the garage or driveway, or a public road. If the car is fully autonomous, it will simply drive itself to the repossession agency. If the owner has somehow blocked the car from physically being repossessed, the car will call the cops.

In a section that reads better as a pitch for a future Pixar film, the patent describes the vehicle evaluating its own market value against “a predetermined threshold price in order to evaluate a financial viability of executing a repossession procedure.” In other words, the car will decide for itself if it is worth saving. “If the market value of the vehicle is below the pre-determined threshold price,” the application reads, “the repossession system computer may cooperate with the vehicle computer to autonomously move the vehicle from the premises of the owner to a junkyard.”

When asked if Ford has any plans for this patent, spokesperson Wes Sherwood told Motherboard, “Ford was granted more than 1,300 patents in 2022 as part of encouraging a culture of innovation. We submit patents on new inventions as a normal course of business but they aren’t necessarily an indication of new business or product plans.”