[landryraccoon]

Strict screening will make it harder for the poor, who have poor credit, to buy a car. Tracking vehicles will make lenders less paranoid about lending, which will enable less wealthy households to lend. IMO if you're wealthy ( like the vast majority of the readers of HN ) you should be able to opt out of tracking for an additional financing feel whereas the poor should still be able to voluntarily subject themselves to tracking in exchange for a more favorable rate. Personally I wouldn't care if the bank is tracking my car while it's not paid off, so I'd go for the lower rate anyway.

[Wistar]

The "Buy Here Pay Here" car sales lots that sell primarily to low-income folks often install tracking equipment in the vehicles they sell as a part of the deal.

Ken Bensinger's 2011 LA Times series about the practices of Buy-Here-Pay-Here car sales businesses:

"A vicious cycle in the used-car business" http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/30/business/la-fi-buy-h...

Fairly depressing.

[GFischer]

To me, used to the abusive interest rates here in Uruguay, 20% sounds really good.

And while the tactic they used to repossess the car was pretty shady, they were in their right. And 25% default rate is tough.

It's depressing, but the alternative would be leaving people with no financing options.

A NGO or maybe a startup that helped people balance their economies would be doing a lot of help, in the U.S. and everywhere. I've read about some that try to disrupt lenders, including a Y Combinator backed one (LendUp).

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/12/lendup-raises-14m-from-goog...

[zacinbusiness]

I can see a sort of opt-in thing working. And that would be better than just sending out camera equipped cars to scan all the vehicles. But in the same way that I would agree to a tracking system I would also agree to an automatic debit from my account each month. At least that way there's no location data for the government to subpoena.