The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you."
"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt."
...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
"You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug.
I read the book because I saw this quote. This quote is at best tangential to the story in the book. The book is much better than this quote would let on.
The problem with this is that I think it plays on good nature of people. Ford right now says it's for leased cars but it feels like a step to normalize restricting and milking people later on. It also open a whole new attack vector these companies are not ready to secure
Yep. Like software, car manufacturers want a car to be something you subscribe to rather than buy. Also lets them continue to receive income from secondhand sales or ownership changes.
Yeah, I remember when I sold my Honda Civic in 2010 they charged a couple hundred bucks to transfer the extended warranty I bought. Why? Presumably because they could. If it was $15 to cover the cost of updating their computer system, fine. But hundreds? That's just extortion.
Even buying a land is not actually "buying" it anymore. You just rent it with a larger downpayment and smaller annual payments, in the name of land tax.
I wish. Public transit exists here (our system even wins national awards), but it's terrible. To commute to work, for instance, would take over an hour, but I can bike the distance in under 20 minutes.
So, bike for the win!
Which, to be honest, isn't a huge lifestyle change for me anyway. I own and use a car when needed, but the bike is my primary transportation. It's faster, more convenient, and more pleasant under most circumstances.
public transit already is subscription model: you buy a ticket for a ride, or the monthly pass. It is even easier to deny you access to some form of public transport already (think subway entry gates, or long distance trains where you cannot really avoid ticket check). All this follows Klaus Schwab vision for the mankind "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy".
Financing is a cancer upon many industries, and cars are no exception. If we really cared about poor people we would seriously reform the dealer system, outlaw predatory sales and lending tactics, and seriously curtail the parameters on auto loans. I think limiting the term on loans for new cars to 5 years would be a good start. It would eliminate a lot of foolish purchases and auto makers would be forced to offer more affordable vehicles.
> Financing is a cancer upon many industries, and cars are no exception
I agree. Debt itself is poison.
> auto makers would be forced to offer more affordable vehicles.
There are multiple cars on the market in the US that you can buy for $20k or less. Adjusted for inflation, I don't think cars have ever been cheaper than that. It's hard to see how they could pare the cost down much lower.
The low end of the market is fine. The high end is insane. And 9 year loans are making the high end accessible to people that shouldn’t, but this also applies upward pressure on prices at the high end.
Shitty loan terms are all you can get when you are at the fringes of the financial system. The end result of tightening credit requirements is that poor people will not get credit.
Give people the information they need to make a smart decision, but we should let people choose bad loans if they find it to be the best choice for themselves.
So given that they have the legal right to come to your house and forcibly take a leased car from you if you miss payments, a few nag features honestly seem like an improvement.
I would just want to be sure as hell that a car I own outright wouldn't even have the hardware available to do such a thing.
Problem is that it makes it so easy that eventually we'll end up in a world where you can't outright own a car and everyone is stuck in perpetual leases. This already happened with the software industry with most stuff nowadays being a subscription.
> This already happened with the software industry with most stuff nowadays being a subscription.
It hasn't really happened yet. There is still plenty of software you can own. None of the software I use is subscription-based, and there no software that I lack.
But yes, this is clearly the direction that software companies want to go, and I think it's important that we reject this.
Yes but right now car manufacturers have probably done the math and realize it's profitable to sell cars outright at a certain price, that while expensive, is still affordable to at least the upper middle classes.
With this technology that allows ultra-personalized, real-time rent seeking over every minor feature of the car, it may become more profitable for car manufacturers to force everyone to a lease so they can use this tech, thus intentionally raising the price even more (out of reach of pretty much everyone) for the "own outright" model.
An issue will appear down the road when you have title in hand and can’t fully confirm the car is “clear” of all ability from them to brick it or features.
Who knows - maybe a lot like the John Deere thing - a title may transform into a long contract whereby you wrench yourself and it becomes void.
You're definitely in the minority when it comes to the Western world. The people who can still afford to purchase a house/place to live can only do it via mortgage, which means you're not an outright owner until, I don't know, you get to 50-60 years of age.
You could say that people who can't afford a mortgage and are hence forced to rent (I'm part of that group) are then not part of the "not outright owners" discussion, but I don't know if that makes the situation better for them, to the contrary.
What if my landloard decides to remotely stop some things working around the house if I happen to be late with paying rent some months? Such as the AC not being available anymore. Or one of the clothes cabinets not opening. Because that's what's happening here with Ford and its leasing clients.
> You're definitely in the minority when it comes to the Western world.
This is certainly true, and it's because of conscious decisions I've made to avoid debt and fixed recurring expenses.
I wasn't trying to say that my situation is the norm, I was using myself as an example to demonstrate that "There's very few things left that we "own outright"" isn't accurate, or at least isn't because there are no other options.
A house is an obvious exception, because they're too expensive for almost anyone to buy outright.
I can easily imagine another HN headline after such a patent is implemented:
Ford sued in death of individual after A/C was shut off during a heat wave
Depending on which features may be affected, many different things could have drastic effects. The A/C shutting off is just one example. Another may be losing your map navigation at 2-3AM while driving through the south side of Chicago (or the dangerous areas of some other city). There are probably many different types of features that, during some edge case, could put a life at risk. And, if that life is lost, both Ford and the leasing company may be considered at fault.
The software in my '21 F150 is flakey. Every time they push an OTH update, they fix one bug whilst breaking 2 other features. I don't trust any vehicle with this feature not to erroneously leave me stranded on the side of the road.
There is this weird thing going on here in Australia where you buy a new car, drive around for a year or two, and sell it second hand and make a profit.
I think people must assume that second hand cars are cheaper and not actually checking what price they can get on a new car.
Perhaps they just check the advertised price and not realize you can get the dealer to knock off thousands if you pretend you are not interested.
I'm in the US, and I bought the car I currently drive used for $2,000. It is, without exaggeration, the best and most reliable car I've owned in my life (even counting the new car I owned). Used cars can absolutely be cheaper than new ones even if you have great haggling skills at the dealership.
I bought it pre-covid, though, and I know that used car prices became insane during the pandemic. But they'll settle back to norm (if they haven't already).
Back when I owned cars, they were always pretty old, and it was an endless job replacing various parts as they wore out. These days, I just walk, it's faster.
They would go at the speed limit, when they were working, but once I added on the time spent maintaining and repairing them, it just didn't seem worth it.
Hopefully ford patents this and then decides to bury it so nobody else will be able to use it. Too much potential for abuse by 3rd party, or even nefarious actors.
Do you think this 'feature' (and all of its potential vulnerabilities) will only exist in vehicles that are leased? I can't imagine that would be the case.
You're right that the patent is specific to leased vehicles. But that shouldn't be confused with the underlying technology, which would have to be baked into the software of all vehicles, including those sold outright.
This means the vulnerability of remote hacking will exist for all vehicles. And who knows what will be buried deep in the TOS — perhaps in a few years we'll hear about Ford shutting down vehicles for people who attended a particular protest that is not in line with the current social mores.
It's just a matter of time before this technology is used to extract rent on non-leased cars just like subscriptions for heated seats/etc (or intentionally make the full "own outright" model unaffordable so everyone is forced into leasing where they can use this tech).
I know this is going to be an unpopular take, but why should a person be allowed to maintain use of an item they don’t own and are delinquent on? The unpopular part is that this just removes some friction from an already existing process.
This is assuming there are the appropriate regulations in place to notify and give a reasonable option to rectify the payment issue, but isn’t this exactly how we deal with stuff from homes to furniture? You agree to pay a certain amount and if you are sufficiently delinquent, you lose access to that item because you don’t actually own it yet.
There's an inherent fundamental creepy grossness to punishing someone for misbehavior by pushing a button from afar.
If we had an all pervasive surveillance system that instantly reported any crime it would be bad for the same reason. A world where power is wielded opaquely by distant controllers in a unilateral and instantaneous manner is not a world we want to live in, and it cultivates an even worse world the longer it exists.
Rules and laws that might be fair and just when they were first written can become very unjust and dystopian when the ability to enforce them dramatically increases.
Your argument is the same one made for justifying credit systems, especially ones like the social credit system enforced by the CCP. "If you wanted to have access to the tram you should have just been a better person and earned it."
I largely agree with the point about opaque use of power.
However, the current situation isn't much different. It's not the bank manager coming down to evict you or repossess your car. They distance themselves by outsourcing the enforcement through third parties like repo companies and sheriffs. This doesn't create the type of accountability you seem to want and makes it easier for banks to wield their power.
>It's not the bank manager coming down to evict you or repossess your car. They distance themselves by outsourcing the enforcement through third parties like repo companies and sheriffs.
I don't think the current status quo is good either. The distance between the one with power and the one who is effected has been very far for a very long time, but pushing it even more distant and cemented is worse.
The consequence of using power unjustly is decreasing. If a dictator wanted to prevent a protest by arresting all attendees before they arrived, it would require enormous resources and be extremely visible and unpopular, and inspire future resistance. If he can instead push a button and drive all the attendees cars to an out of the way lot (or simply immobilize them), the overhead is much lower.
This reminds me of the idea that the nuclear codes can only be accessed by the president if they personally kill someone to get them. The idea is that it takes the idea of abstract power and translates it to a much more emotional decision.
I think there are certain aspects that appeal to that as a natural bulwark against power. But I’m not so sure we should want such decisions to be emotional. Just like we want justice to be blind, I think it may be a good idea for it to be dispassionate as well. This is why we generally frown on countries that let the victims determine the sentencing of their perpetrators.
> I know this is going to be an unpopular take, but why should a person be allowed to maintain use of an item they don’t own and are delinquent on?
> an item they don’t own
That's the problem, you don't own anything. We're already quickly moving into a future where cars you "buy" have random features locked behind yearly subscriptions that can be remotely disabled if you don't pay, the only reason you can even still "buy" cars instead of renting them is because full self driving isn't capable of safely driving the car back to the manufacturer on its own yet.
I actually agree with this and I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. The car companies tried to pass a law a few years back where "owners" can't actually own a vehicle, and are essentially turned into long-term leasers. IIRC, the guise was the "right to maintain" is no longer applicable since vehicles are too complicated now.
> isn’t this exactly how we deal with stuff from homes to furniture?
Repossession is how we deal with these situations. We don't have recliners that lose the ability to recline if a bank payment doesn't go through on time. Or smart homes that lock you out if your mortgage payment is late.
Is there a functional difference? Or put differently, why would someone prefer to have a repo person come and take away the asset, putting themselves and other people at risk of a physical encounter?
The remote locking requires remote connectivity, which means risk of errors or hacking. Also, once the ability to remote lock is built-in, it makes it easy to say "oh sure you paid for XYZ features, but once you sell the vehicle it is reset to factory defaults" — meaning the new owner has to pay for whatever you paid for already.
I'm not making the case that it's zero risk. But I think the risk is preferable to the alternative of a physical encounter. Maybe I'm old, but paying for software features seems a bit more of an edge case (I know HN skews towards SV, with a higher prevalence of Teslas. I don't know how prevalent paying for additional software-enabled features is with other car companies). I think the feature piece can easily be handled through other mechanisms, like regulations.
It removes the risk of a human getting hurt or injured. I can't be the only one that's seen repos gone bad. I'm not talking about that dumb, scripted _reality_ show either
The human getting hurt or injured is a necessary evil against abuse and puts a limit on how unreasonable or petty the lender can be (as the risk of repos is ultimately baked into the commission charged by the goons, thus not making it profitable to repo for minor things).
Same reason why people are generally much more civil in real life than online - the risk of being punched in the face keeps everyone in check and assigns a real cost to assholic behavior.
A fundamental physical limit on corporate greed sounds like a very good thing to me.
Keep in mind that the potential for violence doesn't mean violence has to occur - every party in the contract is still free to not force the other side to resort to violence (which usually happens out of desperation).
I would rather rely on well-structured legal limits rather than brutish physical ones. People who advocate for physical violence as an arbiter of disagreements tend to either be the types who prefer to get their way by strong arming others or have not experienced the devolving of the rule of law for extended periods of time.
Keep in mind that I have never advocated for violence being the primary arbiter of disagreements. In fact, resorting to violence pretty much always turns out poorly for the attacker and is thus not a winning strategy - it is usually done out of desperation more than anything else.
The possibility of someone reacting unreasonably however keeps everyone more honest and assigns an actual cost to pushing people to a situation where they will resort to violence out of desperation.
That possibility exists regardless; someone can always create a "Falling Down" scenario when they're fed up. But I don't see any real advantage to a civilized society in increasing the possibility of the equivalent of vigilante justice.
I'm not talking about some kind of organized, premeditated, high-cost vigilante operation like making people fall out of windows (I'm assuming that's what you meant by "falling down" scenario?).
I'm talking about the repo goon having to risk that the car leasee he's repossessing from being at their breaking point (because that car is the only way they can keep their job and avoid losing everything) and/or mentally unstable and pulling out a gun or a crowbar and thus pricing this risk into their services (or outright declining the job if it feels too sketchy) which ultimately trickles back up to the lender and encourage them to let go or be more lenient with this particular case (something they'd have no reason to do if they could turn the car off remotely).
“Falling Down” was a reference to the movie by the same name.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a threat of violence from the enforcement of a contract. There’s a reason why we tend to give the monopoly of (non-self-defense) violence to the government.
We already have car immobilizers on leased cars. This would just make it innate to the car's computer instead of an external tool, making it more reliable and harder to remove.
I love to scold corporations more than most, but this use case seems OK to me. They're talking about doing this with leased cars -- cars that you don't own -- not with cars that you do own.
If I'm leasing a car, that car is the property of the leasing agent, not me. I think it's totally fair that they can do anything they like with it within the terms of our contract, as long as they're disclosing it to me.
Honestly, the notion of private vehicles has to end if the planet has even a sliver of a chance for survival. But it's going to take a lot to change the habits of people used to owning their own planet destroying vehicles (yes, even EVs), let alone getting to the point that private vehicle travel is anything more than an occasional treat.
So as an individual who loves cars, guiltily, although I find such inventions creepy, I also recognize these things as the sour medicine required to heal the planet, and the greater good.
The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you."
"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt."
...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
"You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubik