Ford’s Newest Patent Is for a System That Farms Your Data to Serve You In-Car Ads
Ford has filed a patent for a system that uses all sorts of data points to help determine what kind of in-car ads to serve to you, according to a report from Motor1.
The system parses mountains of data, such as your destination, route, speed, travel history, traffic, and more to determine types of in-car ads that it could display on the car’s various screens. Ford will then gather information on the back end regarding how its drivers interact with said ads, to help it “understand the user’s tolerance for a particular advertisement’s count,” said Motor1, quoting the patent.
More than just passive data gathering, though, this system appears to have an audio component. Future Ford models could listen to your conversations, to perhaps reduce the number of ads that show up during conversation or to focus on what you’re saying to help better hone in on the type of ads that it might serve to you. Suddenly, uttering “man, I sure could use a burger” to your co-driver could spawn an ad for the nearest Chili’s.
If we’re being honest, yet another step on the seemingly inevitable march toward ubiquitous surveillance is not at all appealing. It’s also not surprising: GM used to have a system called Marketplace in some of its vehicles that would enable users to order food, make dinner reservations, and more, but it shut down that system in 2022. However, expect the idea to resurface again in some other form in the years to come.
As automakers hunt around for new sources of revenue, the idea of becoming a “tech company” and somehow monetizing the millions of terabytes of data generated by drivers every week gets ever more attractive to the bottom line. Remember, most of your internet experience is subsidized by advertising models that allow you to access videos, songs, and billions of stories online for free. It’s a dark bargain, but one that has become so normal in our everyday lives that we don’t think twice about it.
If you needed another reason to hold on to that older car, maybe this is your sign.
UPDATE 09/05/24: After this article was published, a Ford spokesperson reached out to Hagerty with the following statement:
Submitting patent applications is a normal part of any strong business as the process protects new ideas and helps us build a robust portfolio of intellectual property. The ideas described within a patent application should not be viewed as an indication of our business or product plans. No matter what the patent application outlines, we will always put the customer first in the decision-making behind the development and marketing of new products and services.
It’ appears that the time has arrived for legislation that protects the privacy rights of motorists and outlaws the collection and sale of vehicle data without the express written consent of a car’s owner.
Right to drive
Right to repair
freedom from forced subscriptions and deactivated options you didn’t order
dealer/sales reform
and others…. there’s work to do for sure.
You’d think the government would be our ally in implementing the types of protections you mention. But unfortunately, it will most likely end up being exactly the opposite. That’s because anything that A) drives up the cost of private vehicle ownership and B) drives up the hassle of private vehicle ownership is fully supported by a huge swath of unelected bureaucrats that have very real power to implement exactly those things. Those people celebrate anything that allows us to be micro-managed and controlled.
Both of my cars have multi-speaker sound systems, which for me are dead money and dead weight. I never turn them on. I want to hear what my car is doing, and more importantly, what the morons around me are doing. We have too many transplants from Portland Oregon, home of the world’s worst drivers.
There is not enough space to list the areas known as having “the world’s worst drivers”
Um. No. Their statement only made me feel a smidge better.
F.F.S. If this (horrible) idea ever did get implemented, I suppose we’d shortly be hit with, “You can opt out of this mandatory advertising for only $49.99 per month. If you want to opt out of data collection too, that will be an additional $49.99 per month.”
And the comparison to how our internet experience is subsidized by advertising models is a bit of a non-sequitur. Because our current driving experience is not free in any way and not subsidized to be free (or even lower cost) by advertising. We already pay A LOT to drive and that price is getting worse all the time. That latter part is intended by the way but that’s an article and comment thread for another time.
Yes companies do patent ideas sometimes before the decision is made to builtd them, just to prevent competitors from being able to consider them but here’s my suggestion to Ford: win the patent, then license the system to every competitor foolish enough to buy in, but never utilize it in your own lineup. Get the competition to subsidize your market advantage!
How exciting. I wonder what the ratio of software engineers to automotive engineers is at Ford and GM? I need to figure out the way to make a 1995 Corvette last another 10 years.
“…we will always put the customer first in the decision-making behind the development and marketing of new products and services.”
Unless it suits us to act otherwise.