Ford is introducing a fully integrated theft recovery service designed to help prevent or mitigate the impact of a vehicle theft.
Between 2009 and 2018, more than 500,000 vehicles were stolen across the EU each year, while in the UK over the same period most stolen vehicles were never recovered. Ford said this leads to further emotional and financial stress for the victims.
The car manufacturer has therefore developed a range of vehicle sensors that can detect a number of events which could indicate a vehicle is being stolen. This includes master reset, an attempt to deactivate FordPass Connect, and inconsistent location – when the ignition is turned on and the vehicle’s location coordinates are different to when the ignition was last turned off.
If one of the sensors is triggered, a push notification is sent to the owner’s smartphone to indicate a potential theft has occurred. The FordPass app shows the recent vehicle status to help the owner determine if the vehicle has been moved or entry attempted without their knowledge, and gives the option to cancel in the event of a false alarm.
The app guides the user through the process of reporting the incident to the police and provides 24-hour on-call support including vehicle tracking. It finds the telephone number for the local police based on the owner’s current location, enabling them to report the vehicle as stolen and obtain a crime reference number.
The app also provides a text box to record that number and any other information, automatically saving it for later reference. The stolen vehicle services call centre can remotely enable ‘theft mode’, where some vehicle features are disabled in a safe manner in order to make vehicle tracking and recovery by the police more efficient.
“No one wants to think about the consequences of having their vehicle stolen. Stolen vehicle services provides a heightened level of detection of an attempted theft, on-call support to assist the police to track and locate the vehicle, increasing the likelihood of recovery and supporting our customers if the worst should happen,” said Charles Nolan, manager of retail connectivity solutions, Ford Enterprise Connectivity.
Initially, available on the Mustang Mach-E GT, the Thatcham S7-rated stolen vehicle service is one element of Ford’s secure subscriptions. The service will be free for trial period on compatible vehicles and aims to builds on the functionality of Ford’s SecuriAlert solutions. Introduced in the UK and Republic of Ireland this year, the service will be rolled out across Europe in 2022.
