BlueCruise Stopped Working

[SnBGC]

I lost hands-free Bluecruise again during a 220-mile trip on confirmed Bluecruise highways. I reset the infotainment system twice without luck. Really frustrating for a feature that was part of my decision making to buy a MME.

I have now had my blue cruise stop working on 4 separate occasions. No error messages it just acts like it's on a non blue cruise road but it has been on my daily commute, so I know exactly where blue cruise doesn't work. I have just received that update listed above , which deleted my home and work charging stations leading to 100% charge, so I will wait and see if that fixes it.

This happens to me occasionally. No amount of rebooting helps. The only way to get it to come back is let the car sit off for a while and then it seems to come back next time I drive.

Are you saying BlueCruise Hands-Free drops out into BlueCruise Hands On and doesn't revert back after a mile or two? Or are you saying Blue Cruise quits completely and you are left with just cruise control and Lane Keeping Assist (no Lane Centering)?

BlueCruise Hands Free doesn't remain engaged for the entire time, even though the car might be on a BC highway. It will drop out frequently. At least it does in my car. This afternoon it kept displaying the "Watch the road " message even though I was watching and even steering. ???

It really isn't that dependable to be honest. BCHF will drop when hitting bumps in the road, along gore points, entering tunnels, changing freeways etc.

For me, it usually comes back after a minute or two. I just completed a 40 mile round trip on all BC enabled roads and BCHF functioned about 75% of the time (in my estimation....)

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[Gullwingdmc]

Are you saying BlueCruise Hands-Free drops out into BlueCruise Hands On and doesn't revert back after a mile or two? Or are you saying Blue Cruise quits completely and you are left with just cruise control and Lane Keeping Assist (no Lane Centering)?

BlueCruise Hands Free doesn't remain engaged for the entire time, even though the car might be on a BC highway. It will drop out frequently. At least it does in my car. This afternoon it kept displaying the "Watch the road " message even though I was watching and even steering. ???

It really isn't that dependable to be honest. BCHF will drop when hitting bumps in the road, along gore points, entering tunnels, changing freeways etc.

For me, it usually comes back after a minute or two. I just completed a 40 mile round trip on all BC enabled roads and BCHF functioned about 75% of the time (in my estimation....)

When it doesn’t work for me it will never engage hands free blue cruise. When I turn cruise control on I will get the standard blue cruise (hands on).

This will happen on stretches of road I drive all the time and hands free normally works. Just some drives it’s doesn’t want to go hands free. When that happens there is nothing I can do to get it to go hands free. Even pulling over, turning the car off, opening the door, letting it sit for a few minutes and then driving again, will make it go hands free.

The only fix is time. Leaving the car off for a while. Not sure how long, maybe an hour? This could happen once in a day, or every time I drive that day and the next day. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason. The in car GPS Knows what road I’m on, settings are all correct, just doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

I thought it was a flaw in my 2021 Job 1 update, but then it happened in my husbands 2021 Job 2, at the start of a 3 hour road trip no less. Same behavior

 

[SnBGC]

When it doesn’t work for me it will never engage hands free blue cruise. When I turn cruise control on I will get the standard blue cruise (hands on).

This will happen on stretches of road I drive all the time and hands free normally works. Just some drives it’s doesn’t want to go hands free. When that happens there is nothing I can do to get it to go hands free. Even pulling over, turning the car off, opening the door, letting it sit for a few minutes and then driving again, will make it go hands free.

The only fix is time. Leaving the car off for a while. Not sure how long, maybe an hour? This could happen once in a day, or every time I drive that day and the next day. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason. The in car GPS Knows what road I’m on, settings are all correct, just doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

I thought it was a flaw in my 2021 Job 1 update, but then it happened in my husbands 2021 Job 2, at the start of a 3 hour road trip no less. Same behavior

Okay, that sounds more severe than what I am seeing. I have times where hands free won't engage on roads where it worked previously. In those cases, I drive in the hands on mode and eventually (after a few miles) the hands free will usually engage.

I still keep my hand on the wheel because it will usually drop back to hands on after a mile or two in heavy traffic. If traffic is light and camera visibility is good then it will hold for quite a while (maybe 5 miles or longer...)

 

[Gullwingdmc]

Okay, that sounds more severe than what I am seeing. I have times where hands free won't engage on roads where it worked previously. In those cases, I drive in the hands on mode and eventually (after a few miles) the hands free will usually engage.

I still keep my hand on the wheel because it will usually drop back to hands on after a mile or two in heavy traffic. If traffic is light and camera visibility is good then it will hold for quite a while (maybe 5 miles or longer...)

Yeah I have that happen occasionally too. That seems to be a different problem.

For me when I have it not work, it never works, for the whole drive. You know how when you turn blue cruise on the screen goes blue and you get the blue pop up box on the instrument cluster saying “blue cruise is active watch the road…”?
For me, when I see the pop up come up and it’s white, because the screen never went blue, I know it’s probably not going to work for that drive.

 

[awp0]

When it doesn’t work for me it will never engage hands free blue cruise. When I turn cruise control on I will get the standard blue cruise (hands on).

This will happen on stretches of road I drive all the time and hands free normally works. Just some drives it’s doesn’t want to go hands free. When that happens there is nothing I can do to get it to go hands free. Even pulling over, turning the car off, opening the door, letting it sit for a few minutes and then driving again, will make it go hands free.

The only fix is time. Leaving the car off for a while. Not sure how long, maybe an hour? This could happen once in a day, or every time I drive that day and the next day. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason. The in car GPS Knows what road I’m on, settings are all correct, just doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

I thought it was a flaw in my 2021 Job 1 update, but then it happened in my husbands 2021 Job 2, at the start of a 3 hour road trip no less. Same behavior

This is a prefect summary of the behavior that I'm seeing. Yesterday hands-free stopped working for about 100 miles of divided highway that it has previously worked on (quite well) just a few days before. This isn't just a curve or a merge or some other temporary condition where it asks you to take control. This was 100'ish miles of continuous hands-on Bluecruise where it never once switched to hands-free. No error messages, no feedback indicating a problem. Interestingly, it DID tell me to watch the road when I stared at the cluster for too long, so it appears the "eye nanny" was operational. Last time this happened, hands-free just magically started working the next day, however I haven't haven't had a chance to test it since yesterday's failure.

 

[Gullwingdmc]

This is a prefect summary of the behavior that I'm seeing. Yesterday hands-free stopped working for about 100 miles of divided highway that it has previously worked on (quite well) just a few days before. This isn't just a curve or a merge or some other temporary condition where it asks you to take control. This was 100'ish miles of continuous hands-on Bluecruise where it never once switched to hands-free. No error messages, no feedback indicating a problem. Interestingly, it DID tell me to watch the road when I stared at the cluster for too long, so it appears the "eye nanny" was operational. Last time this happened, hands-free just magically started working the next day, however I haven't haven't had a chance to test it since yesterday's failure.

Ya that sounds like what’s happened to me. Good to know it’s not just my car.

Out of curiosity, did your car come with blue cruise or get it as an update. I thought this was just something that happened to 2021s that got it as an update, but then it happened to my husbands Job 2 2021 on our drive down to Provincetown.

 

[awp0]

Ya that sounds like what’s happened to me. Good to know it’s not just my car.

Out of curiosity, did your car come with blue cruise or get it as an update. I thought this was just something that happened to 2021s that got it as an update, but then it happened to my husbands Job 2 2021 on our drive down to Provincetown.

Mine is a 2022 Prem AWD ER. I drove it off the lot about 7 weeks ago.

I'm really conflicted about scheduling a service appointment for this. On one hand I feel strongly that it's a feature that I paid for, it was part of my purchasing decision, and I should expect it to work. On the other hand I have relatively little confidence that the dealership can/will fix it.

 

[Gullwingdmc]

Mine is a 2022 Prem AWD ER. I drove it off the lot about 7 weeks ago.

I'm really conflicted about scheduling a service appointment for this. On one hand I feel strongly that it's a feature that I paid for, it was part of my purchasing decision, and I should expect it to work. On the other hand I have relatively little confidence that the dealership can/will fix it.

You could try, but I HIGHLY doubt the dealer would be able to do anything. Thy would just take it for a test drive and report that it worked fine for them, that is if they even know what blue cruise hands free looks like. Most don’t.

My current guess is it’s a problem with the map data. Every other part of the system works fine when this happens. Like you said, the eye tracking is working, clearly the system and camera that monitor the road is working because lane keeping still works. The GPS seems to know exactly where the car is, unless the built in nav uses a different GPS signal than BlueCruise does. The only other variable is the map data. Maybe for some reason the connection to the map data stops working, so it can’t validate that it’s on a hands free road and therefore doesn’t go hands free.

Thoughts @Ford Motor Company?

 

[awp0]

You could try, but I HIGHLY doubt the dealer would be able to do anything. Thy would just take it for a test drive and report that it worked fine for them, that is if they even know what blue cruise hands free looks like. Most don’t.

My current guess is it’s a problem with the map data. Every other part of the system works fine when this happens. Like you said, the eye tracking is working, clearly the system and camera that monitor the road is working because lane keeping still works. The GPS seems to know exactly where the car is, unless the built in nav uses a different GPS signal than BlueCruise does. The only other variable is the map data. Maybe for some reason the connection to the map data stops working, so it can’t validate that it’s on a hands free road and therefore doesn’t go hands free.

Thoughts @Ford Motor Company?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. I wondered about the map data and the GPS (though as you mentioned, my GPS location looks fine in both Carplay and factory nav). I also wondered if there's some kind of licensing validation that might be broken. Like a server issue, network issue, or some nonsense like that. This car can be so frustrating. It can be so much fun until I'm instantly brought down to earth by a software issue like this.

 

[Gullwingdmc]

I also wondered if there's some kind of licensing validation that might be broken.

Ya that’s a good point. It could be an authorization check.
Where you pay for a year at a time I would think it would only need to check once and know it’s good until X date, but who knows how they implemented it.

 

[SnBGC]

Yeah I have that happen occasionally too. That seems to be a different problem.

For me when I have it not work, it never works, for the whole drive. You know how when you turn blue cruise on the screen goes blue and you get the blue pop up box on the instrument cluster saying “blue cruise is active watch the road…”?
For me, when I see the pop up come up and it’s white, because the screen never went blue, I know it’s probably not going to work for that drive.

This is a prefect summary of the behavior that I'm seeing. Yesterday hands-free stopped working for about 100 miles of divided highway that it has previously worked on (quite well) just a few days before. This isn't just a curve or a merge or some other temporary condition where it asks you to take control. This was 100'ish miles of continuous hands-on Bluecruise where it never once switched to hands-free. No error messages, no feedback indicating a problem. Interestingly, it DID tell me to watch the road when I stared at the cluster for too long, so it appears the "eye nanny" was operational. Last time this happened, hands-free just magically started working the next day, however I haven't haven't had a chance to test it since yesterday's failure.

Ya that sounds like what’s happened to me. Good to know it’s not just my car.

Out of curiosity, did your car come with blue cruise or get it as an update. I thought this was just something that happened to 2021s that got it as an update, but then it happened to my husbands Job 2 2021 on our drive down to Provincetown.

I am not a software expert, but it almost sounds like the software doesn't always load properly. I wonder if BCHF loads at every key cycle or of it is the kinda thing that once loaded then it is ready anytime the car is powered up?

 

[Gullwingdmc]

I am not a software expert, but it almost sounds like the software doesn't always load properly. I wonder if BCHF loads at every key cycle or of it is the kinda thing that once loaded then it is ready anytime the car is powered up?

That’s a possibility. What module runs BlueCruise? I wish there was a way to reboot more than just SYNC.

 

[SnBGC]

That’s a possibility. What module runs BlueCruise? I wish there was a way to reboot more than just SYNC.

The IPC appears to be the most critical module. Without that working correctly then nothing else matters. That was the piece that prohibited BC from working on my car for about 4 months.

 

[awp0]

Well, hands-free Bluecruise worked fine today (after Thursday's failure). I did two 50-mile drives with long stretches of hands-free and it behaved normally. I'm happy to have it back, but there's definitely an annoying reliability problem that I'm not sure how to debug.

 

[Gullwingdmc]

I had a hands on drive today. First one in a few weeks, but it would not go hands free. Worked fine for 2 drives this morning, then this afternoon, nope.

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