BlueCruise v1 is a Let Down

[Aggie PT]

Has Ford said how much it will cost per year once the free trial is up? Ho wlong does the free trial last? I am still waiting on my Mach e.

Sponsored

 

[Neil4Real]

Does your dash display stay blue the whole time or does it revert back to the white background and blue bubble mode from time to time? If I'm not changing lanes I can keep lane keep assist (white background with blue bubble mode) going for a long time, but I generally only have the full BlueCruise (blue everything dash) for about 3-5 minutes at a time.

It stays blue, hands free. The only time it goes to hands on lane keeping is when I approach the toll.

 

[ponEpwr]

Have noticed some ping ponging with hands free blue cruise I figure I'll just get used to it. For me it doesn't disengage unless it's a tighter curve. Will be doing a 200 mile trip on Thursday this week that should all be on blue cruise. Interested to see how it goes.

Also, thought Tesla FSD was not available for public use. Is everyone in a Tesla who bought FSD using it?

Was thinking the only hands free systems were BMW, GM, and Ford.

 

[MG101]

Haven't used mine much but but I've found it works fine. A little ping ponging but my wife hasn't complained so it can't be that bad.

Those saying it's just glorified lane keep, what more did you expect? I don't think Ford ever claimed it would do anymore than it does.

 

[Blue highway]

Has Ford said how much it will cost per year once the free trial is up? Ho wlong does the free trial last? I am still waiting on my Mach e.

Initial period is 3 years for newly made cars. Unless pricing changes, it will be $600 for 3 more years at that time.

 

[HDer]

Has Ford said how much it will cost per year once the free trial is up? Ho wlong does the free trial last? I am still waiting on my Mach e.

Originally it was a $600/3 year "introductory" offer. Now they're giving everyone one year free, but they haven't announced "non-introductory" pricing as far as I know.

 

[RickMachE]

I see two big issues with BlueCruise right now.

1) Dealers are not properly installing updates and ENSURING IT WORKS, or the OTA updates aren't yet done.

2) Consumers don't understand that BlueCruise is hands-free driving, and Ford caused this confusion when they extended the name to other aspects of the software in the car.

I've driven with BlueCruise for LONG TIMES. Except when approaching a curve in the road, at 75mph, or an exit with me in right lane, it rarely asks me to hold the wheel. We used it to drive 550 miles and back without any issue.

 

[kdryden99]

Its definitely an adaptive cruise control with momentary hands free. I thought it may have been slightly more advanced with lane and route driving alas no but this is the first iteration. Ill wait to see where this goes

 

[JGuske23]

I went to Cincinnati from Kalamazoo last weekend and I'd say I was hands free 95% of the trip, I would say it definitely doesn't suck in my experience ?

 

[RickMachE]

Originally it was a $600/3 year "introductory" offer. Now they're giving everyone one year free, but they haven't announced "non-introductory" pricing as far as I know.

They are not giving it to everyone for free.

For those that got the prep kit in their car (Job 1 2021), it was going to be $600 for 3 years. Now, because it was delayed from last August to this late April / May, it's free for a year.

For everyone that got it in their new car from day 1, they already paid $600 for 3 years when they bought the car, as their MSRP was $600 higher.

 

[RickMachE]

Its definitely an adaptive cruise control with momentary hands free. I thought it may have been slightly more advanced with lane and route driving alas no but this is the first iteration. Ill wait to see where this goes

There is nothing momentary about it. Yours is not working properly.

I went to Cincinnati from Kalamazoo last weekend and I'd say I was hands free 95% of the trip, I would say it definitely doesn't suck in my experience ?

Yup.

 

[ZuleMME]

Was thinking the only hands free systems were BMW, GM, and Ford.

A big one not listed that few seem to know about is Comma's OpenPilot. Free. Opensource. Port it over and it'll work on even the Mach-E. And it's generally better when I last used it on a Lexus RX. The downside, you have a cell phone attached to your windshield all the time.

 

[voxel]

Also, thought Tesla FSD was not available for public use. Is everyone in a Tesla who bought FSD using it?

You are thinking of the beta. You pay $12K for FSD you get it to use it.

Was thinking the only hands free systems were BMW, GM, and Ford.

Subaru EyeSight I believe is also hands-free. Hyundai/Kia's systems are very close to being hands free to me because they rarely nag and their lane keep is excellent (no ping ponging and very few false positives).

 

[voxel]

A big one not listed that few seem to know about is Comma's OpenPilot. Free. Opensource. Port it over and it'll work on even the Mach-E. And it's generally better when I last used it on a Lexus RX. The downside, you have a cell phone attached to your windshield all the time.

It's their own device now but carmakers are encrypting CAN BUS messages and thus Comma doesn't work in the newer Toyotas and other carmaker I forget the name of.

https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/discussions/19932

 

[bp99]

Yup, the terminology is all a little screwed up, but my salesperson straight up told us when we were cross shopping that BlueCruise was only $600 compared to the 10K we'd have to pay at Tesla.

That's merely a salesperson either not doing their homework or blatantly lying.

Also, Mobileye, the makers of the BlueCruise tech, showed a demo of them doing fully autonomous driving in Manhattan in Fords last year: and it's clear that whatever is installed in these Mach-E's is not even close to the same level one year later.

That's a newer version of Mobileye shown as a tech preview. We have EyeQ4 which came out in 2018. EyeQ5 was introduced in 2020 and is now available on a few cars (e.g. BMW iX). EyeQ6 is in the works and not yet available. Mobileye is very incremental with their hardware/software and does not upgrade older installs. Tesla is taking a very different approach where they've tried to predict the hardware required for where they ultimately want to be and are incrementing the software stack to run on the installed base of hardware. Our cars will never be capable of more than what we have today. Hopefully they can at least improve the algorithms for a smoother experience.

My take is that Lane Keep Assist is supposed to compete with base Autopilot and BlueCruise is supposed to compete eventually with FSD (hence the added subscription cost). But for whatever reason the tech is behind schedule, so they've rolled out something that's basically a reskin of their existing feature.

FSD is far, far more ambitious with what its end goal is. If they ever get there is debatable. Blue Cruise is not behind schedule. It does exactly what it was designed to do. Although they do have a goal to also provide lane changing (driver must activate with a turn signal) and automatic speed reduction for road curves (Tesla Autopilot already does this). Ford's own press releases on Blue Cruise call it a Level 2 system and compare to Tesla's Autopilot with no mention of FSD (promoted by Tesla to reach Level 5).


As for what we get with Blue Cruise, I find it very lacking. My experience with it is that it is very much a reactive system with no predictive abilities. How people enjoy it in stop and go traffic, I cannot comprehend. It does not seem to calculate the relative acceleration of your car and the one in front of you resulting in very jerky motion. The few times I've tried it in stop and go, I thought I'd get whiplash. It keeps accelerating (it has a delay accelerating after traffic stops) to catch the gap for the car in front despite the car in front already braking again, causing the Mach E to slam on its brakes. Lane centering seems to be based on the immediate sides of the car with no attempts to look forward and create more gentle adjustments. I think this is part of what can get it in to the ping pong effect since it starts to over compensate based on position rather than choose a path to straighten out.

Sponsored