With so many screens in our cars nowadays, they’ve pretty much turned into smartphones on wheels. What’s also on our smartphones? Ads, especially your social media accounts that track every movement you make and then target you with ads based on your behavior. Apparently, in-car ads could also be a thing in the future based on Ford’s latest patent.
Based on this patent filing, Ford’s system will use the car’s forward-facing cameras, which are also used by the driver assistance systems, to display information from a billboard and create a pop-up window in your Ford’s infotainment screen. The window can also include a hyperlink if it’s applicable. The provided image is just a mere representation of what in-car ads could look like.
A lot of people think this is going to be a distraction, and rightfully so. We’re not yet aware of the extend of these in-car ads, but this feature bets on a future where vehicles are already capable of full self driving. In the future, we will witness the birth of true self-driving cars, aka cars that pass Level 4 or Level 5 autonomous driving rankings provided by the SAE. At these two levels, manual driver intervention is barely or not even needed at all.
So far, the highest level humanity ever achieved is Level 3 with the Japanese-market 2021 Honda Legend and its Honda Sensing Elite. Driver intervention is not needed in a number of circumstances such as traffic jams and highways, but the system will still ask the driver to take over the driving if it thinks it’s necessary. In the future, the feature could work, but in the here and now, this will prove to be more of a nuisance rather than a benefit.
Whether you like it or not, with this patent filing though, in-car ads are definitely going to happen in the future. It’s not a matter of if, but when.
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