Ford has released a patent it’s filed for a predictive maintenance system that would estimate the remaining lifespan of a component, according to Tesla Oracle.
First filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in September 2021, the automaker released the patent earlier this month. It outlines a system that would track the status of different parts through sensors placed around the vehicle.
This system would then gather data on the vehicle’s health and share it with a central database, where artificial intelligence technology will determine how long a certain part has before it needs to be addressed.
Ford also plans to utilize connected vehicles, having them exchange data to better predict maintenance needs. The patent suggests Ford would divide its fleet into different segments based on vehicle class, and would train AI models for various parts, such as a fuel injector, based on ground truth degradation data.
While the filing of patents does not signal plans to implement the technology, other automakers including Tesla and General Motors already have their own predictive maintenance systems in their vehicles.
