A new Ford patent imagines a future in which self-driving cars repossess themselves

That's the vision of a new Ford patent published last month that describes a variety of futuristic ways that Ford vehicle systems could be controlled by a financial institution in order to aid in the repossession of a car. The company told NPR that the company has no intention of implementing the ideas in the patent, which is one among hundreds of pending Ford patents published this year by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Of the innovations described in the patent, titled "Systems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle," perhaps the most striking is about self-driving cars. Among the various ideas described in the patent is a gradual disabling of a smart car's features. The repossession patent was one of 13 Ford patents published on Feb. 23 alone, and one of more than 350 published this year to date, according to a review of U.S. patent records.