Even if a block is not publicly advertised, it is still entirely possible that it is used internally. Using the 10/8 range was not common place, and certain organisations have IP's that are technically publicly routable in their internal infrastructure.
As for 44/8, there are still those that use it, taking it away would mean having to renumber all of the equipment on that network...
No, trying to reclaim IPv4 addresses by making people go through herculean efforts to renumber their networks is not the way forward and simply delays the inevitable. IPv6 is the way forward, start pushing that, and get more people using it.
Ford has an entire /8, a significant chunk of the entire address space. Ford does not have as much reason to need that much address space compared to, say, major ISPs.
In practice, I imagine they'd outsource the internet connectivity bit to cellular carriers (as is the case for OnStar and similar at the moment) and those companies would be the ones to worry about provisioning IP addresses.
I would agree, and say that universities with an entire /8 probably shouldn't have them anymore either. That's a case where it definitely made sense early on, but stopped making sense quite a while ago.
10/8 is off limits, but there are a bunch of /8 blocks which could likely be reclaimed if we really needed to, including:
- About half a dozen which were allocated to the US military in the early 1990s, most of which aren't even publicly advertised at all
- 44/8, reserved for amateur radio
- A number of other /8 blocks owned by corporations, which could potentially sell or return chunks of them if properly convinced