I suspect it would be dealt with in the same way that human error is dealt with today.

Which means, not at all, look at the recent Hertz case about rental cars reported as stolen and then doubling down, because admitting to problems with the process would mean admitting to criminal intent.

The poster was talking about "human error". If you are out of a car because your lender messed up (perhaps intentionally to pocket the late fee) you are in trouble, because everyone needs a vehicle to get to work on time. And of course you have as much recourse against your lender as the people at the receiving end of the Hertz case. Didn't Peter Thiel say you need a seven-figure sum to make the legal system work for you?

I don't disagree with the end point, but I have a hard time understanding why the Hertz case demonstrates that Ford is likely to lie with criminal intent about a mistaken repo. It has literally nothing in common except that it involves a car.

If Ford wants to lie about repos or lie about human error, they can do that now, they don't need a computer to do it. The whole damn process is subject to human error as it is today.

On the "people lying" side of the issue you're describing, up until now a tow company needed to be involved. With this system, the middle man is gone, so potentially a single employee could initiate repossesion of a whole fleet by themself.

Will the owners have recourse after being stranded without their car explaining their boss it just went away ? probably. Will the employee be punished ? surely. Is it something we want to allow on the first place ? I'm mot so sure.

Here we're really digging on the "working as intended" side, bit the more probable issues would be it's just buggy and sometimes an older cars thinks it got repossessed, goes away, and you're left to battle for getting reparations and/or another car, knowing you're probably broke so not in a strong position for that.

> On the "people lying" side of the issue you're describing, up until now a tow company needed to be involved. With this system, the middle man is gone, so potentially a single employee could initiate repossesion of a whole fleet by themself.

Tow truck drivers don't currently play any role in certifying the requests they get. A bank emails them repo paperwork, and they tow the car. If the paperwork they receive is not correct, they would have no way of even knowing that. In fact, the human tow truck drivers themselves create another layer of possibility for human mistakes.

The reduction of friction has me worried here. Nowadays you have to get a tow truck out to retrieve the vehicle, and you have an incentive not to do that pointlessly. But once the car can drive itself back to the dealership the bar will be lowered pretty quickly.

It's all the same to the lender, no? They file the correct paperwork to do it, and it is handled by some outside process.