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.
The car listening to everything you say is absolutely not ok.
I get that’s not what this article is about, but I hate how they’re getting creepier and creepier things normalized.
It’s why the rare times I end up going in my college club instructors EV I tend to stay fairly quiet. Quieter than normal.
Unfortunately I think the ICE cars are just as stalkerish at this point (if the EV=creepy implication is intended). Kia and nissan even have bits in their privacy policies about monitoring sexual activity somehow.
I am simply flabbergasted to find that you are correct about KIA.
Collected information: Health, sex life, or sexual orientation.
https://www.kia.com/us/en/privacy.html
Oh man I was just repeating what I read from an article, but there’s so much more in that list.
Surely none of this could be used for nefarious purposes, right?