Ford Motor Company has filed a patent for an obsolescence system that may be used in future Ford fleet vehicles, Ford Authority has learned.
The patent was filed on October 13th, 2022, published on April 18th, 2024, and assigned serial number 0127137.
The Ford Authority Take
If there’s one thing that’s become abundantly clear from Ford’s recent patent filings, it’s that the automaker envisions a future where vehicles are far smarter than even today. As it continues to offer more and more connected vehicles services – including an entire suite of them for fleet operators – the automaker has also filed patents for a suspension damage detection system, a vehicle defect detection system, a vehicle resale value evaluation system, and a specialized diagnostic reporting setup. Now, this newly filed patent introduces a new yet similar type of idea – an obsolescence system that may be used in future Ford fleet vehicles, specifically.
As Ford points out in the patent, fleets tend to lease or purchase vehicles at different times, and they’re often deployed in different ways, meaning that those vehicles wear at different rates, making things a bit more difficult when it comes time to consider a replacement. Thus, it proposes this system, which would collect data related to the degradation of each individual vehicle in a fleet, after which it would assign a score.
That score aims to help fleets determine where each vehicle stands in its respective lifecycle, with a higher score reflecting a higher rate of degradation. From there, fleets could also use this data to determine which should be deployed to even things out, as well as how the operator might want to change routes, cargo load, charging methods, or even where that vehicle is stored – perhaps proving useful and saving quite a bit of money in the long term.
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Comment
And I always thought planned obsolescence has been standard for years now.