I, too, agree that this is a mixed bag; both good and bad. I can see the benefits to Ford and to the repo companies. But I also believe a lot of vehicles will be damaged in retribution ("Gosh - I dunno, officer ... I came out this morning and the truck was burnt to a crisp ... Yes - it is odd that all the wheels are missing ..")
My concerns are more personal; what happens to ME if this system is present on MY car? If the shut-down feature is present in all future vehicles, there's always a potential mistake waiting to happen:
- if you never financed the vehicle thru Ford (paid cash), why would there be any reason for Ford to care? (they already got their money)
- if you financed the Ford vehicle, but not via FMC and thru a bank or CU; again - why would Ford care? (would they "help" the other financial institution and shut the vehicle down for them, and would they charge a fee for that "help"?)
- if your vehicle is paid off after financing it, but someone, somewhere, makes a VIN mistake or code error, your vehicle could be shut off for an invalid reason. Human error causes big problems at times. (Don't think this happens? Ask several of the Hertz customers who were arrested and jailed for driving a "stolen" vehicle even though they had legit evidence of current rental contracts in possession while operating the cars).
The more tech that creeps into vehicles, the more I'm glad my cars are "ol skool" and don't have all this junk on them. Once they bake this tech into the vehicle platforms, it's there forever. It may be dormant, but it lurks in the background and has the potential to always be a problem.
