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 filed a patent for something that takes vehicle tracking into full-blown Twilight Zone territory. Always-On Tracking… In Your Car, or Somebody Else’s.
I’ve thought of creating a tracking-free app for modern cars that would be vendor agnostic so if your family has 2 or 3 cars from different manufacturers, it’d still be the same app instead of 3. But even if I do no tracking, the car company will still track the vehicle, they only lose out on the data from your phone, which likely isn’t nearly as interesting for them anyways.