This is amazing as part of the autopilot on Tesla. Normal traffic in town can be handled without doing anything. Even when you sit at a light for a while. As soon as the car in front of you gets going, it starts going. Also helps so you don't get honked at for not moving at a light
My understanding is that the normal Co-Pilot 360 features like adaptive cruise, lane centering, stop start traffic, blind spot monitoring etc, etc which I think are equivalent or better than standard AP are included on all Mach-E trim levels for free. The upgraded features to allow hands free driving, similar to what the future version of FSD could be, is what Ford is charging for. The hands free feature is not finalized with this release, it will be upgradable via OTA.
It would be nice for that to be clarified. The press release seems to state the opposite of that. Hopefully they do that before they start asking people to place orders.
That makes more sense than the Forbes article and is consistent with the original tech specs. The difference is that the CA Route 1, Premium, and First Edition come standard with the
I am a little miffed by this too, given that if it’s just a “small fee,” why not build it in as a goodwill gesture for early adopters who are about to commit to a car sight unseen. We are making a commitment to the technology with pricing and usability unknown. What if a customer upgrades for this hardware, only to find out it costs $5K and is a piece of junk? If it’s proven, go ahead and charge it as an upfront, disclosed price for future sales.
It gets updates still, it's just bare bones and cant even be ordered from the website.
It gets OTA updates. The SR Model 3 does not get AP, software capped range of 220 miles, and loses two speakers. Otherwise it’s the same car as the SR+.
Tesla isn't hands free, only Cadillac has that feature at this time, and its optional.
There was mentioning of bundles in the meeting but it was not clear what was included. I suspect we’ll find out by next week.
That's fair. I forget the 35k option exists for the Model 3 because it's not available on the website and there is almost zero reason to order it over a SR+ at this point.
Yes and no. It will drive for a period of time hands free. Then you just have to either touch the wheel or a button on the wheel. I personally just sit my hand the bottom of the wheel and it gives it enough resistance that i rarely get nagged. Not really any different than setting it on my leg. So while that's not "hands-free", its effectively no hand input from me.
As said I am not bothered with the self drive but for those that are a small fee is far to open, and saying less then tesla isn't really saying much $1 less than tesla is still less, 1/2 half is less but still a large chunk of change. Covid-19 no doubt threw a spanner in the works in relation to the roll out, but typically with car launches everyone knows upfront what you are supposed to be getting and associated costs, when it comes ship time is when you finally find out if everything went to plan.
I'm also confident that Ford's idea of a "small fee" probably doesn't match what most customers considers a "small fee"
