(CNN) Ford has some interesting ideas about what self-driving cars could soon be capable of. The company not only frees us from the tedium of commuting, but also envisions cars that could reclaim themselves.
According to a document recently published on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, Ford said it was considering a system that would allow a car to leave you alone if you stop making your monthly car payments.
But no worry. The patent has not yet been approved. And Ford insists it’s just a thought.
“We have no plans to use this,” Ford said in a statement, noting that the company had 1,342 patents issued — not just applied for, but issued — in the past year. That’s an average of 3.7 patents per day.
Companies apply for patents to protect ideas from being used by others, whether or not they actually use the intellectual property themselves, said patent attorney Michael Messinger, a partner in Vorys’ Washington, DC office. These processes can take a long time, says Messinger, with a lot of back and forth.
But perhaps some parts of Ford’s 14-page application, filled with ideas for getting people to check out, are more patentable than others.
Before it gets to the point where the car would just drive itself away, defaulting payers would be in for a litany of annoyances. First, harassing messages on owners’ smartphones and even on car screens. These messages would at least require a receipt, or even better, payment on the spot.
If the owner insisted on ignoring these messages, the vehicle would, in the words of Ford’s patent application, “initiate execution of a multi-step take-back process.”
Step one is to have the owner pay in some other way. Functions such as the air conditioning, cruise control or radio may no longer work. (Some of this is already possible in many vehicles.)
If that doesn’t work, the vehicle could become proactively irritating. According to the patent, the stereo could be programmed to “emit a continuous and uncomfortable tone whenever the owner is present in the vehicle.”
There was only one way to stop the noise, which of course would be to “…contact the lending institution to resolve the arrears”.
Otherwise, the car would render itself unusable by initially refusing to open its doors. This is where it gets really complicated.
A borrower may need to commute to work to earn the money to pay off the loan. The car could be restricted to only allow itself to be taken to work and perhaps to go grocery shopping or to take the children to school. That’s it. And all the time, the driver can’t hear a stereo, may not have air conditioning, and could be exposed to that irritating, unstoppable noise.
Then there is the question of what to do if there is a medical emergency. In such a situation, Ford’s request could enable the car to drive itself to the nearest emergency room or even coordinate with emergency medical personnel to meet at one location. The car would then go back to locking out its owner.
Only in the most extreme scenario of non-payment would the car receive an over-the-air order to leave its owner. In this case, if the car is not able to drive fully autonomously in traffic, it may simply move to a spot where it can be easily picked up by a tow truck, such as at a parking lot. B. at the edge of a road.
However, sometimes defaulting borrowers take the step of locking their car in a garage or leaving it in a place where it is impossible to easily drive away. In the end, a good old-fashioned person taking the car back may be the only answer.
So while Ford’s idea for a self-recovery car may never get an actual patent, some of the ideas are in the patent — a car that makes horrible noises if you don’t pay, for example, or that you can drive to just one or two Places – they could be patentable, said Messinger.
It might not have been your idea of the “car of the future,” but if you don’t pay, it might be.