Ford Patent Sees Weird Twist to Self-Driving Cars

The Drive has spotted a doozy of a patent application from Ford, one that takes the concept of self-driving cars down an unexpected road. The new technology would first allow the vehicle to lock out owners if they fall behind on payments. The crazier part is that the vehicle would then be able to drive itself away to a second location to make repossession easier and less confrontational. Or, if the powers that be (think bankers) determine in advance that it would be cheaper to scrap the car, the vehicle could drive itself to a junkyard. A Ford spokesperson confirms the concept to NPR but says the company doesn't intend to implement the idea.

"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," says Wes Sherwood. Still, the patent application goes into great detail on how the system would work. A snippet:

• "In some cases, the vehicle can be a semi-autonomous vehicle and the repossession system computer may cooperate with the vehicle computer in the semi-autonomous vehicle to autonomously move the vehicle from a first spot to a second spot that is more convenient for a tow truck to tow the vehicle. The first spot may, for example, be located inside the property line of the owner (a garage or a driveway, for example) and the second spot may be outside the property line (a public road, for example)."

At the Verge, Patrick George finds the application disturbing. For one thing, people can fall behind on payments for all kinds of understandable reasons. But a bigger problem in his view is that the "patent represents a kind of nightmare scenario for the connected-car future, one where the automobile—long a symbol of personal freedom and still advertised as such—comes with a lot more external software-driven control over where we go, what we do, and how we do it." (More Ford stories.)