Ford Expands BlueCruise Availability with Complimentary Trial, Monthly Or Annual Activation

Ford BlueCruise Expands Flexibility with Complimentary Trial, Monthly or Annual Offers for Hands-Free Driving Tech | Ford Media Center

• Building on its 225,000 Ford BlueCruise-equipped vehicles on the road today globally, Ford is projected to install BlueCruise hardware on an additional 500,000 vehicles for the 2024 model year in North America across Ford and Lincoln, expanding availability
• With BlueCruise hardware included as standard from the factory on equipped vehicles, Ford is offering greater flexibility to customers to activate BlueCruise at any point during the vehicle ownership journey – at purchase, annually or even monthly
• Customers who choose not to activate at time of order or vehicle purchase will be given a complimentary 90-day trial starting from purchase to experience hands-free highway driving and after that, can activate BlueCruise when and if they choose
• Ford and Lincoln customers have spent 1.4 million hours enjoying and using BlueCruise and have driven 100 million hands-free miles and counting

DEARBORN, MICH., Aug. 14, 2023 – As Ford continues to evolve how the company offers products and services, this includes the way customers access BlueCruise – Ford’s hands-free highway driving technology. Ford now is including BlueCruise hardware standard from the factory to provide flexibility and choices to more customers.

Now, customers with equipped vehicles can choose to activate BlueCruise at any point during their vehicle ownership journey – at purchase, annually or even monthly – as well as have the opportunity to experience it through a complimentary trial if they choose not to activate at purchase. Ford is projected to install BlueCruise hardware on 500,000 vehicles for the 2024 model year in North America across Ford and Lincoln – expanding the availability onto more electric and gas-powered vehicles.

“BlueCruise is an experience-it-to-believe-it technology, and people are amazed at how BlueCruise can help make driving less stressful and more enjoyable – especially in traffic or on long drives,” said Ashley Lambrix, Head of Commercial Acceleration – Ford Model e. “We believe in this technology and how it can help transform the highway driving experience and want to give more customers the opportunity to try it and provide flexibility for them to activate it when they want to use it.”

Ford customers who know and love BlueCruise can choose to order or purchase a vehicle with BlueCruise already activated for three years. It can be rolled into the financing as part of the vehicle purchase. For customers who want to try out BlueCruise first, they can use BlueCruise for 90 days from vehicle purchase during a complimentary trial. At the end of the trial or at any point during their vehicle ownership, customers can activate it on an annual or monthly basis. Plus, to meet the needs of active or occasional users, there is no minimum length commitment required to activate it. For example, a customer could activate the service for one month for a road trip and not activate it again for another year.

Previously, customers would have to decide when ordering the vehicle if they wanted BlueCruise so the hardware could be installed. Now, Ford is removing this burden from customers, not forcing them to decide upfront if they might want access to this technology.

Expanding BlueCruise Flexible Offering to Additional Vehicle Lines

According to the results of an S&P Global Mobility study from March, consumers are willing to activate connected-car services that add value if they have the chance to try them first. In fact, 82% of respondents who had experienced a free trial or an existing connected service plan said they would “definitely” or “probably” consider purchasing a connected service on a future new vehicle purchase.

Ford first applied this approach on the Mustang Mach-E, and the company now is expanding this flexibility on all 2024 model year vehicles where BlueCruise is available – F-150 Lightning, Ford F-150 and Ford Expedition.*

BlueCruise activation for Ford customers costs $2,100 for three years at time of order or vehicle purchase. If a customer chooses not to activate upfront, after their complimentary trial they can choose an annual plan for $800 or a monthly plan for $75. If a customer chooses to forego activating BlueCruise, they can continue to experience Adaptive Cruise Control, which lets the driver set a cruising speed and distance from the vehicle ahead, including in stop-and-go traffic.

Expanding BlueCruise Offering for Lincoln Vehicles

The company also is expanding the BlueCruise offering for Lincoln customers. Now, all series of the 2024 Lincoln Navigator and Lincoln Nautilus and select trims of Lincoln Corsair will come equipped with BlueCruise hardware.** BlueCruise will also be available for the first time on the all-new Nautilus when it launches early next year.

Based on the vehicle trim, Navigator and Nautilus customers will receive either four years of BlueCruise access included at purchase or a 90-day complimentary trial with the option to choose an annual plan for $800 or a monthly plan for $75 and activate it at any point during the vehicle ownership. Corsair trims built with the BlueCruise hardware, will receive four years of access included at purchase.

BlueCruise Will Continue to Improve

BlueCruise can add value to highway driving time, helping make stop-and-go traffic for a daily commute or a long road trip easier and more enjoyable.† Customers have spent 1.4 million hours enjoying BlueCruise to date, and the number of miles driven has grown by more than 40% since the end the first quarter, reaching more than 100 million miles and counting.

Ford is continuing to improve BlueCruise with a dedicated in-house team of advanced driver assist systems (ADAS) engineers. There are currently 225,000 Ford and Lincoln vehicles equipped with BlueCruise hardware on the road today globally. By adding additional BlueCruise-equipped vehicles, Ford’s ADAS team can continue to use the power of large-scale data, which customers have agreed and opted-in to share with Ford, to deploy improvements and features to vehicles through software updates.

Earlier this year, Ford rolled out BlueCruise 1.2 and will soon be rolling out BlueCruise 1.3, first to 2021-2023 Mustang Mach-E vehicles equipped with BlueCruise hardware. The latest generation of BlueCruise software makes hands-free highway driving even better. It has improved performance when driving around curves and in narrow lanes. For example, based on our internal testing, BlueCruise 1.3 stayed engaged in hands-free mode for an average of 5X longer compared to BlueCruise 1.0, the first version of BlueCruise.

Customers can verify their BlueCruise access and status as well as renew the service via the FordPass App and Ford Account under Connected Services. If the vehicle has Ford BlueCruise capabilities, it will appear under Connected Services and include the status as well as the date the BlueCruise active service plan began.

For more information visit ford.com/bluecruise.

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*Ford BlueCruise requires a Connected Service plan that provides regular map updates, FordPass® App, and modem activation. Ford BlueCruise-equipped vehicles come with either a 90-day trial or a 3-year BlueCruise Connected Service plan, after which purchase is required. See ford.com/bluecruise for BlueCruise availability and version details. See the Connected Services section of your Ford Account for your BlueCruise Connected Service plan status and available plan options.

**Lincoln BlueCruise requires a Connected Service plan that provides regular map updates, Lincoln Way® App and modem activation. Lincoln BlueCruise-equipped vehicles come with either a 90-day trial or a 2 or 4-year BlueCruise Connected Service plan, after which purchase is required. See your retailer to confirm BlueCruise Connected Service plan options for your vehicle. Owners, see the Connected Services section of your Lincoln Account for your BlueCruise Connected Service plan status.

†Driver-assist features are supplemental and do not replace the driver’s attention, judgment and need to control the vehicle. BlueCruise is a hands-free highway driving feature. Only remove hands from the steering wheel when in a Hands-Free Blue Zone. Always watch the road and be prepared to resume control of the vehicle. It does not replace safe driving. See Owner’s Manual for details and limitations.

Even monthly, that price is a complete non-starter. What a ridiculous cost for that service.

Still the same crappy pricing for owners who had BlueCruise hardware and subscription baked into the price of the car when they bought. I.e any '21 or '22 owners, or '23 owners who purchased an MME before the 2023.5 Job 2 cars came out.

now just fix the price to $600 for 3-yrs, $210/yr, and $20/month and you'll have a winner.

I wonder if this will end up working out like a Sirrius/XM subscription. They hit you with a crazy number, you call in to say no way, they drop the price considerably.

Paid $600 for 3 years on both Mach-E and Lightning in purchase price. $800 a year is too much. $75 a month will be what we take, if anything, and only for a long trip.

Ford needs to take a basic economic class so they will know - The equilibrium price is the only price where the plans of consumers and the plans of producers agree—that is, where the amount consumers want to buy of the product, quantity demanded, is equal to the amount producers want to sell, quantity supplied. This common quantity is called the equilibrium quantity. At any other price, the quantity demanded does not equal the quantity supplied, so the market is not in equilibrium at that price.

In fact, 82% of respondents who had experienced a free trial or an existing connected service plan said they would “definitely” or “probably” consider purchasing a connected service on a future new vehicle purchase.

I bet that survey was taken before the $800 price increase. I bet that 82% has dropped big time now.

I’ve got more than another year and a half of my trial. If they don’t reduce the price significantly, I won’t renew. Pretty simple, honestly. We can complain about the pricing, but Ford seems like they are sticking to it. So all we can do is show them we won’t pay it, and we will, I am sure.

I hope that this at least means that BlueCruise 1.3 is a giant leap forward, otherwise I'll happily make do with adaptive cruise control.

My current use case on drives of 1-2 hours consists of me hitting traffic, activating BlueCruise, putting up with 3-4 "BlueCruise Not Available" messages and annoying chimes, then turning off the lane centering and writing off bluecruise for the rest of the trip.

These prices just solidify my decision to never buy another Ford vehicle =/. I wish they'd make smarter decisions.

This makes a ton of sense for Ford. They WANT customers to drop the service after the first 90 days.

Advertising BlueCruise as a capability gets new customers through the door. The vast majority of customers won’t understand/care that the capability is only a trial when they’re signing the paperwork. That’s the primary profit mechanism.

Maintaining the software capability with maps and data connections is pricey, so they have no incentive to continue to support existing customers unless the customers offset the cost completely AND have a significant margin. Giving this to existing customers at $10-20 a month might build a little goodwill but looks horrible on paper. The more people who keep the service, the more money they’ll lose.

Does it suck for us existing customers? Yes. Will it affect our willingness to buy our next vehicle that comes with a complementary trial of the coolest new technologies? We’ll see…

The fact they don't have a whole heck of a lot to make money on so someone is stupidly trying to get Ford to charge way too much for it. It'll Be reduced until it's a solid product. Maybe that's 10 years down the road. Maybe it's next year. The trouble of the whole thing is they're already having to deal with hardware variations being an issue. Be it code or the actual hardware. If they don't reel in the number of variances they're going to be fighting a downhill battle and getting their ass handed to them with failed subscriptions.

I wonder if it will be possible down the road to fully disable faulty BC modules. Or if it'll become an annoyance for whoever owns the things after 80k miles. I really hope they're working on huge recycling plants for the future. They could save a few bucks reusing the working modules from a 5 year old car again. Just look at Apples recycling of the iphone6's to 'Iphone SE'. We could have a Fiesta SE EV. Or we could have a whole lot of crap that needs recycled as people ditch faulty machines.

ThatGuyLando said:

These prices just solidify my decision to never buy another Ford vehicle =/. I wish they'd make smarter decisions.

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lol ok..

Logal727 said:

lol ok..

Also where do you see the new pricing?

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It's in the first post.

BlueCruise activation for Ford customers costs $2,100 for three years at time of order or vehicle purchase. If a customer chooses not to activate upfront, after their complimentary trial they can choose an annual plan for $800 or a monthly plan for $75. If a customer chooses to forego activating BlueCruise, they can continue to experience Adaptive Cruise Control, which lets the driver set a cruising speed and distance from the vehicle ahead, including in stop-and-go traffic.