Tesla Tracks And Logs Its Customers: Does Ford?

[V8BoatBuilder]

Very interesting read: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tesla-autopilot-data-scope

Is Ford doing the same to us?

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[beatle]

Probably. Ford already has their "Telematics" service for fleet owners. It would surprise me if they didn't at least collect the same data on all of the vehicles that they sell. Though it would be nice if you didn't have to be a fleet owner to get that kind of data on your own vehicle. It's actually super useful as an owner.

https://fordpro.com/en-us/telematics/

There are other 3rd party services that will regularly poll your Tesla for data and provide what I believe are similar reports back to you.

Not saying that a company having all this data on your vehicle (and you) is 100% a good thing. There can be (and usually is) a bad side to pretty much every good technology, and I'm sure not everyone wants to be tracked via their vehicle.

 

[FlasherZ]

Prior to the third party services appearing, I used to use Tesla's streaming API to capture all the data of every drive taken in my Model S and Model X. I used it twice, once to prove my wife did not roll back into another truck who was trying to commit insurance fraud, and another time to understand a rear-end accident that knocked me unconscious.

NHTSA requires "black box" functionality to be active, so at a minimum the truck collects the data and keeps it on board locally (as many cars today do).

I hope they take steps (as Tesla does) to anonymize the data as much as possible. And selling the data is definitely a non-starter for me.

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