Don’t call it Sentry Mode, but the refreshed 2024 Ford F-150 has some neat new security features that make a whole lot of practical sense. Being the best-selling vehicle in the country every year means that the F-150 also tends to find itself high on “most-stolen” lists by virtue of there being so many of them out there, so it’s great to see Ford taking security more seriously than ever before.
The system shown at the Detroit Auto Show doesn’t have a fancy name beyond “Stolen Vehicle Services,” but we suspect it’s a package any (even slightly) paranoid owner might want to opt in for. The vehicle has a number of triggers that will in turn send a notification to your Ford Pass app. They range from something as simple as a GPS-based trigger that will tell you that your truck is being towed away, to an accelerometer letting you know someone is jacking up your vehicle to perhaps steal your wheels.
Using tools that are already within in the truck, like said accelerometer, Ford can simply send a notification to your phone to let you know that someone could be trying to quickly steal your wheels. From there, Ford will give you shortcuts or hotkeys via the app to contact the relevant authorities to ensure emergency services are able to go capture the would-be thieves. Ford’s call center will work with authorities to provide them location information for the truck and keep the owner updated throughout. Course, you can always take matters into your own hands, but do so at your own risk.
Other neat features in this package involve alerts if someone bumps your car (thanks to the accelerometer), if someone reaches past an open window to open a door, triggers any kind of diagnostic trouble code within the vehicle or tries to factory reset the vehicle via the infotainment system. You’ll now need to provide dual-factor authentication to factory reset a truck, because otherwise, a thief could do so if they get the truck on.
Again, these security services aren’t a copy of Tesla’s Sentry Mode with live cameras you can watch via an app. That said, it’s a seriously useful suite of features that should hopefully deter and stop more thieves than the truck’s security system does today. Ford says it’ll be offered as an option for buyers, so you’ll need to tick the right box to get all of these fancy monitoring and response capabilities.
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