Forget Repo Man, Ford applies for a patent that would put a repo computer in your car

I think I will stick to my e-bike.

In the poster for the movie classic Repo Man, they ask, "it's 4AM, do you know where your car is?" If you haven't made your payments, it might be in the hands of the repo man. He's got a dangerous job; people don't like losing their cars, and you never know what's in the trunk. Fortunately, this will no longer be a problem if Ford is granted patent US 2023/0055958 describing "systems and methods to repossess a vehicle." 

This is a bit of a diversion from talking about carbon, but I have some experience with silly and expensive patents. You could read mine for a ski helmet or a hard shell backpack with their tedious "illustrative embodiments." I also have a theatre design I could sell you. But this Ford patent is hilarious; it could be a script for an episode of Twilight Zone or a horror movie where your car turns malevolent and starts terrorizing you. "My Mother the Car" it ain't.

The story starts with a message from a lender, dealer or bank that might come through your phone or the infotainment system with a polite request to pay your bill. Meanwhile, the cameras on the car figure out where it is parked "to determine whether the vehicle has been parked inside a closed garage to foil a repossession operation of the vehicle." 

Then it gets weird, disabling components to "cause a certain level of discomfort to a driver and occupants of the vehicle. It might turn off the air conditioning or the entertainment system. 

Still not paying? the car moves to the second level, causing the audio system to make unpleasant sounds "a tone, a timber, a pitch, a cadence, a beat, or a volume of sound." The driver cannot turn it off without contacting the lending agency. Ignore that? "the repossession computer may disable the door lock mechanism, thereby placing the vehicle in a lockout condition."

But do you need your car for work? The computer might only lock you out on weekends or do a geofence that lets you buy groceries. Now it really is turning into your mother the car, telling you where you can go and what you can do.

When all of this fails, it's time for the repo man. Of course, the car tells him where to go. If the car has self-driving features, it might move itself to a public road or place where it is easier for a tow truck to pick it up. As self-driving features improve, the car will autonomously move to "the premises of the repossession agency, lending institution or impound pound." 

If the computer determines that the car's value is less than the cost of a repossession, it can figure out its value and take it straight to the junkyard.

Now you may wonder, as I have, what is the invention here? What is patentable? There is no device or object in these figures that is new. This is known as a "business method" patent, the most famous of which is Amazon's 1-click system. Many patent experts think they are questionable; Polk Wagner, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, is quoted in Knowledge at Wharton: “Business method patents have been controversial, and there have been many calls for them to be disallowed, [while] others think they are the subject of a lot of research and innovation.”

Then there is the basic principle of patents, the requirement for "nonobviousness," where a supposed invention is "usually obvious if someone of ordinary skill in a relevant field could easily make the invention based on prior art." It seems pretty obvious that if you have a computer in a car that can control all these functions, and a network connection to another computer, then it could do a repossession. This already happens. 

Systems like Onstar can already disable a car if it is stolen; they were discussing this on GM websites a decade ago. Another article notes that Tesla has done this already and discussed the car driving itself back. It certainly seems to me that it is obvious and that there is significant prior art. It will be interesting to see if the patent is ever issued; I wouldn’t put money on it.

All of this makes me yearn for the days when cars were like my 1990 Miata with a manual transmission, windows with cranks and the electronics were limited to an AM-FM radio. I don't have these problems with my e-bike either. 

In a recent article for Green Building Advisor, I called for simplicity in the design of buildings. It's time that we should have some simplicity in the design of cars and get rid of all this crap that adds weight and cost. Start with the repo computer!