Ford Quadruples BlueCruise Price to $800/yr for All Renewals

[Rt1AWD]

You sure that Boeing and Airbus don’t charge (via maintenance agreements or something) for software updates to keep aircraft current?

The new fee is not for software updates. The car software will be updated even without this service

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[GreaseMonkey]

Please forgive inaccuracies in exactly how BlueCruise and Tesla Autopilot work, I am just aiming for the basics of cost here.

I think the way BlueCruise works is the problem and the benefit of BlueCruise at the same time. It requires high resolution road data, which Ford must keep updated and which Ford must continually extend to get better coverage. As a result, there will be ongoing costs to Ford to maintain the accuracy of the data and the BlueCruise system has to keep fetching updates from the servers over time. Vehicles with scanners have to scan new roads to extend coverage but also repeatedly scan roads already in the system, looking for changes like new lane markings or dividers etc and ensuring the data stays accurate.

This will make it difficult for Ford to provide an "all in" price unless it is very high (see current pricing) since they have to provide this high resolution data for the life of the cars and they will have their own ongoing cloud costs over time, likely being dependent on some platform like Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure (or their own servers which they have to maintain then.)

As someone who works on cloud based SaaS software, I am always pushing our Product Managers to consider usage based pricing instead of flat fee as they always did in the past, because that's how we have to pay for cloud services. Users generate load, which consumers server, database, and bandwidth, all of which we have to pay for. So the more the users consume, the more it costs us. Some users generate a LOT of load and others generate very little. So shouldn't you pay for software usage like a utility? When you use a lot of electricity you pay a lot, or you use a little and pay a little?

Don't get me wrong, I am not justifying what Ford is doing here. If you bought a car with a feature requiring a bunch of hardware, which you paid for up front, but then have to continually pay to use that hardware, that's not OK.

Tesla's approach, for all its warts and limitations, seems to be less reliant on constant cloud based updates. i.e. my understanding is that Tesla's system makes real-time decisions based on camera data, not on high resolution road data from servers. Of course BlueCruise does this for traffic and obstacles, but data from servers tell it where the road is supposed to be. Tesla only has camera data telling it where the road is. So in theory, Tesla can offer a subscription-free AutoPilot type service. In theory.

I get all that. Pay for usage makes sense conceptually.

But Ford pricing gurus seem to have slept through Econ 101 and have no idea what Price Elasticity of Demand is all about. They will soon find out that it is VERY elastic. Likely stretching for 100,000s of miles worth (or whatever highway miles BC covers).

 

[Haydn12]

I just told my wife we won't be renewing it at that price. She will be driving 130 miles a day starting in July for her job which is almost all expressway driving. She relies on BC now for her drive which is about half the distance. She will just have to get used to keeping her hands on the wheel. I only drive the car for long trips. The roads we drive from Phoenix to Vegas have very little BC available. They need to get these roads added to make this worthwhile at $300 or $400 a year.

 

[astronut325]

What in the bloody f***? Is this some obscenely late April Fools joke?

 

[Gpj]

We were seriously considering purchase of a MachE. No longer.
This feature is important to my purchase but the pricing needs to be reasonable. Will wait for Lyriq availability to improve.
Assuming Ford reads this forum so thought it was worth giving feedback from a lost sale.

 

[astronut325]

We were seriously considering purchase of a MachE. No longer.
This feature is important to my purchase but the pricing needs to be reasonable. Will wait for Lyriq availability to improve.
Assuming Ford reads this forum so thought it was worth giving feedback from a lost sale.

GM is likely going to follow a subscription model. I just hope it's not as absurdly priced like Ford's.

 

[Rt1AWD]

We were seriously considering purchase of a MachE. No longer.
This feature is important to my purchase but the pricing needs to be reasonable. Will wait for Lyriq availability to improve.
Assuming Ford reads this forum so thought it was worth giving feedback from a lost sale.

Super Cruise is not free either.....

 

[JWPortland]

I think this deserves it's own new topic. Ford has decided to apply the 2023.5 BlueCruise pricing scheme to everyone (2021-2023's) seeking a renewal after their initial 3-year subscription expires. Source is this post in another topic:

As stated, things work a little differently for Job 1 2021 Mach-E's, which weren't delivered with functional BlueCruise. I believe they got a free 1-year trial starting when the feature was installed, and will have an opportunity to buy an additional 3 years for $600 to provide parity before the price goes up to $800/yr for subsequent renewals.

Obviously this is a huge increase from the previously stated $200/yr subscription rate. Everyone I've talked to is angry about this and no one wants to renew at that price (I agree). Ford likely feels the positive reviews of BlueCruise 1.2 in Consumer Reports and other media outlets (such as @OutofSpecKyle Hogback challenge) warrants a huge price increase to rival Tesla Enhanced Autopilot. I don't think it's worth anywhere close to $800/yr, BlueCruise 1.2 still has issues, constant dropouts on curves, very limited coverage, and uses outdated hardware (EyeQ4) designed in 2015. It is much less sophisticated than Tesla Enhanced Autopilot, which has many times more processing power and can automatically change lanes with no user input, take interchanges, and merge onto freeways.

I think an increase from $200/yr to $250/yr for BlueCruise 1.2 would be fair and reasonable, $800/yr is way too much for a Level 2 ADAS. Most people do not want to pay more than $20/month for it.

I have a Job 1 2021 Mach-e that shipped before Blue Cruise. Honestly, the Ford Blue Cruise is not functionality better than my 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and almost all new cars that have Adaptive Cruise Control, Lane Centering and Emergency Braking. The Tesla system is far superior to everyone else. Once again, Ford figures out a way to alienate their early adopters.

 

[Mach-Lee]

Super Cruise is not free either.....

For comparison, Super Cruise costs $25/mo standalone or $15/mo when bundled in a package, and was also criticized as being too expensive. Ford has priced BlueCruise 3x more at $75/mo. Coverage is probably 4x more than BlueCruise if you look at the maps.

 

[Socalsp3]

trying desperately to cut their ev losses in a very stupid way

 

[HuntingPudel]

For comparison, Super Cruise costs $25/mo standalone or $15/mo when bundled in a package, and was also criticized as being too expensive. Ford has priced BlueCruise 3x more at $75/mo. Coverage is probably 4x more than BlueCruise if you look at the maps.

$15/mo is still more expensive than my projected usage would indicate, assuming my car had the hardware to use it. ??

 

[Phil Martin]

Subscription is the new thing. The issue is, rarely does anyone take this into account when car shopping. Realistically assume 10 years subscription for roughly $900 a year to account for some future price increases. This is $9000 in extra expenses. So your $60k car really cost $69k. This isn't a maintenance or operational cost so it should be treated as part of the initial capex cost. Auto makers love these subscription add-ons because their somewhat hidden and amortized out over years.

Try and think of a pay per use. Use it a few times per week? That's $5 per use.

 

[Rt1AWD]

For comparison, Super Cruise costs $25/mo standalone or $15/mo when bundled in a package, and was also criticized as being too expensive. Ford has priced BlueCruise 3x more at $75/mo. Coverage is probably 4x more than BlueCruise if you look at the maps.

Frankly it doesn't make any sense to me. Right now they don't have enough data for good AI. They are supposed to be interested to have as many people as they could to generate that data. They are acting like it is all the way around: they want to significantly reduce the number of users of BC because it is too much burden for them.

 

[Mirak]

What except eye-nanny does this $75 per month service include?

It pays for the continual map updates to the geofences which limit where BC can be used.

It also includes lane changes if you first initiate them with a turn signal.

So… basically not much.

 

[Mach-Lee]

It pays for the continual map updates to the geofences which limit where BC can be used.

It also includes lane changes if you first initiate them with a turn signal.

So… basically not much.

I'll point out the map updates probably cost Ford less than $100/yr and so far Ford hasn't pushed out a coverage increase.

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