We all know automakers want to keep tabs on their cars. Stolen vehicle tracking? Sure. Fleet management? Fine. Microphone eavesdropping to serve more ads? Hate it, but OK, that’s a thing.
Hold onto your tin-foil hats: Ford just published a patent for something that takes vehicle tracking into full-blown Twilight Zone territory.
Always-On Tracking… In Your Car, or Somebody Else’s
Ford’s patent application is descriptively titled: “Crowdsource tracking of vehicles having disabled positioning or communication systems.”
That’s US20240385013A1 for my patent-heads in the peanut gallery.
The patent, which was published without coverage in November 2024, describes a crowd-sourced vehicle tracking system that can locate a car even if its cellular transmitter is turned off.
How can you track a car without cellular tech? By using other vehicles or smartphones as a decentralized tracking network for short-range tracking, and then broadcasting a cellular signal by hitchhiking through those other systems.
“Wait, I Can’t Turn Off the Tracking?” That’s The Whole Point
Yeah. That doesn’t sound great, does it?
Your car would be trackable, even if:
- You physically yanked out the cellular transmitter (like a car thief might).
- You deactivated your cellular transmitter, because it’s your car and you’ll mod it if you feel like it.
- You’ve powered down your vehicle altogether. Yep, they even thought of that, there’s a backup system, effective beyond 14 days of being powered off.
If your car’s transmitter isn’t working for whatever reason, Ford’s system proposes using the sensors and transponders of other cars to detect and report your vehicle’s location.
This is basically a rolling, networked surveillance state, where every other Ford on the road acts as a little snitch in a giant automotive hive mind.
“Gotcha!”
The Good, The Bad, and the Orwellian
Now, let me be uncharacteristically reasonable for a second. There are pros and cons here:
- Tracking stolen vehicles is a good thing. Car theft is on the rise with easy exploits that even the knuckle-headed Kia Boyz can manage, and recovery rates suck. This could be a powerful tool in the fight against carjackers and chop shops.
- Tracking everything is a bad thing. Your vehicle belongs to you, and that means choosing who gets to know where it is. A manufacturer-installed, always-on tracking beacon that you can’t even smash with a hammer? That’s dystopian as all get out.
- Crowd-sourced tracking is creepy. Imagine an Orwellian network of random cars that can report your location even when you think you’ve gone dark. That’s not security… that’s like the ending scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). That’s a worse world for everybody.
The incomparable Donald Sutherland (RIP) makes like a 2031 Ford Fiesta and digitally points you out to the authorities. Artist’s interpretation.
Patent Disclaimer
We should talk about patents…
A patent filing doesn’t mean a manufacturer will develop or implement the technology… it just means they’ve called dibs. Automakers patent all sorts of ideas, some of which never see the light of day. Why would Ford want to build a rolling surveillance network? Maybe they don’t. Maybe we’ll find out. Time will tell.
“Thanks, I Hate It.”
Look, we get it. Automakers want to keep tabs on their products, and the authorities love the idea of an always-on tracking network for getting the bad guys. But cars are supposed to be about freedom, they have all the promise of open-horizons and a wide open throttle. If your vehicle is reporting on you even when you tell it not to, that feels like a definite step in the wrong direction.
Ford, if y’all are reading this, maybe just let us drive. Try and (Ford) Focus on building a half-way respectable transmission. Getting lost is part of the fun.
