Gadgetory

future Ford cars could spy on other vehicles cars are integrating all kinds of new technologies all the time Ford has made a commitment to build fully autonomous cars for the purpose of ride-sharing in 2021 however a new patent to Filan shed some light on some other technology Ford is working on the patent title is method and apparatus for crowd-sourced vehicle identification here's how the system would work the system would be able to obtain an image of a vehicle plate then it would identify the characters on that plate here's where people start thinking twice about the tech the license plate tag would be checked against a database of sought vehicle plates if there's a match of a sought vehicle and that license plate the system would report it the patent says the system would even be able to check partial images of plates so in theory if his tech was in many vehicles those cars could act in concert to consistently check license plates all the time Ford also outlined a potential business model for this tech here's what the patent says for example in one model use of the vehicle tracking may be free if a user participates in finding other vehicles but may cause some nominal amount if the user wants the service side only without participating and locating other vehicles that could mean that if this tech does reach a four vehicle the company could incentivize people into allowing their cars to participate in the tracking network now this is just a patent not some grand announcement that Ford will track all the cars ever so stay calm for now if you want more information check out cnet.com am i as a colonel see you online