【Watch I was dragged into prison by my ex】

Remember the scene in Minority Reportwhere Tom Cruise's self-driving car tries to automatically take him in for a crime he hasn't committed yet?Watch I was dragged into prison by my ex Ford isn't trying to do that, necessarily, but it's closer than I'd like.

According to a report from The Drive earlier this week, the U.S. auto-maker filed a patent in late 2021 (before being published just last week) that would allow future Ford vehicles to inconvenience their owners in myriad ways in the event of missed car payments.

Vehicles with onboard computers and/or internet connections would theoretically be able to take advantage of these features, none of which have been implemented in any real-world scenarios yet.

For instance, if you miss a payment, your car could disable cruise control, radio, or GPS. Miss another payment and the air conditioner goes, too. Keep missing payments and, eventually, your car could actually relocate itselffrom your home to a spot where it would be easier for the repo people to pick it up. That is, if the car has any self-driving features. The patent said the vehicle would only need to be "semi-autonomous" for that particular feature to work.

Of course, as with everything to do with patent filings, it's worth pointing out that Ford might never actually do any of this. Companies file these patents so nobody else steals their ideas, not because they necessarily have a specific plan to implement said ideas. Still, anyone who wants a Ford vehicle in the future might want to at least think about this.

• Tesla Investor Day: Here's Elon Musk's latest 'master plan'
• Tesla starts opening its Superchargers to other EVs
• Tesla warns Full Self-Driving can cause crashes, recalls 362,758 vehicles
• MIT has its own version of a self-driving car
• Tesla to drastically increase price of Full Self-Driving Beta

Either way, at least we got a nice excuse to think about Minority Reportfor a minute.

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