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

[azerik]

Glad I got this slightly crappy free year. I'd be HELLA pissed to pay $75 a month for it.

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[timbop]

I think we have a 21st century acronym for FORD:
F*ing
Overly
Ridiculous
Dues

 

[azerik]

If I had a tWitter account I'd take to openly flaming them. But I can't be arsed to pay a subscription for my opinion to be 'valid' as well.

 

[Kabish]

Ya, it's not worth that much except maybe for road warriors. Even then though, EV's really aren't in a place where a road warrior would really find value to full electric cars.

I do use BC, but really only during non rush hour times when the roads are mostly empty. Trying to use BC during rush hour is not realistic. Even if they added the lane change option I would not find that much value in it. It's a cool feature, but there is no way it's worth that much. I have a feeling they are trying to do a money grab at the point of sale.

People who bought the car with the previous price should be grandfathered in. As someone else said, if they are upgrading the hardware in our cars, which I high doubt they will, then the price should not change for us.

 

[scoopman]

Hey at least they're not planning to try and charge for CarPlay, or seat heating, or for some software EV mapping experience that the automaker developed itself, instead of letting you use CarPlay. They didn't set the price via a Tweet or Twitter poll -- so I guess could be worse.... ?

But I agree, this is laughable pricing probably set by some Ford group that wants to bring in revenue to justify its feature.

it just seems to me like Ford should focus on making a better product instead of trying to figure out how much they can charge for features that don't have much value.

Then they could charge more to purchase the car, and perhaps even spend less in recall repairs.

 

[The Black Horse]

I got a standard 2021 and paid extra for the tech and convenience package. So i paid extra to have bluecruise in my car. Maybe its because i have bluecruise 1.0 but this thing isn't worth anywhere near those prices.

I would be mad or annoyed, but i've been done with Ford and the fiasco this car has been in my life for some time now.

 

[JohnFoxeSheets]

 

[azerik]

Even I can't smoke enough to justify it. lol.

 

[steve.panse]

Level 2 ADAS isn’t worth anywhere near that. Let me take a nap or work on the laptop while driving and I’d consider paying up, but Bluecruise in its current form isn’t worth much…I’ll take standard adaptive cruise, thank you very much.

 

[MG101]

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Ford really does believe software subscriptions are the path forward and Farley said as much in the Q1 earnings call.

James D. Farley President, Chief Executive Officer, Director & President-Model E, Ford Motor Co.

Model e is our Center of Excellence for technology, including software. A good example of that is BlueCruise, which continues to be a hit with our customers. Consumer Reports rated it the Top Advanced Hands-Free Driver Assist System on the market in the US, and that was just Version 1.0. Our latest release, which we're OTAing to customers is Version 1.2. It automatically changes lanes with the tap of a turn signal and it delivers a much more natural driving experience hands-free.

James D. Farley President, Chief Executive Officer, Director & President-Model E, Ford Motor Co.

...
The best new brands are offering integrated digital, retail, lifestyle, and experience that are software-defined. This is firmly in our sights for our second-generation EVs.

This software as a differentiator plus a radically different cost structure and the ability to attract – attach value added software and services gives us confidence we can compete and win in unit, revenue, profit, and vehicle share while delivering appropriate returns, and Ford Pro is already there.

John Murphy Analyst, BofA Securities, Inc. Q

And, Jim, if I could follow-up just on the pricing discussion. There seems to be a change in the philosophy of the way that people are thinking about this particularly that new large competitor that is cutting price, and that you can cut price on the front-end and not make a lot of money on the hardware but you can make a whole lot of money on the software and services on the back-end so you're not so worried about profit on the front-end. You think you can make it up on the back-end.
As you think about your business evolving over time, do you think in five years' time plus that you're going to be sort of selling the vehicle as a hardware and making all the money on the back-end? I mean, how should we think about sort of the balance of how the money is earned on vehicles going forward?

James D. Farley President, Chief Executive Officer, Director & President-Model E, Ford Motor Co.

Well, that business model, I mean, outside of maybe Tesla, that business model is {ph} alive and well (00:37:44) at Ford right now in Pro. So when I answer your question, please understand that we are operating that kind of business where our after sales and software is now large 30-plus percent attach rates, and I would say the answer is I am not giving any relief to my vehicle teams for software sales or any kind of margin advantage.

Those products have to get to 8% on their own, and we see the software and especially for Pro, the physical after sales, those attach rates, some charging equipment that we're seeing 30-plus percent attach rates, that's plus business for us. That's an annuity we want to create and we do not want to commoditize our products. That is not our strategy. Maybe someone else's, but not ours. And that's coming from a company that is already doing, like we could do that now with Pro, but we are not going to do that.

 

[NJDevFan30]

it just seems to me like Ford should focus on making a better product instead of trying to figure out how much they can charge for features that don't have much value.

Ding, ding, ding! The cadence and quality of PowerUps has been laughable IMO. Ford seems to be way over their head and until they demonstrate meaningful improvement the subscription model will fail and only drive away customers.

 

[AKgrampy]

Hard top GT with no BC - lovin it!

 

[bp99]

Ding, ding, ding! The cadence and quality of PowerUps has been laughable IMO. Ford seems to be way over their head and until they demonstrate meaningful improvement the subscription model will fail and only drive away customers.

Part of the problem is they didn't think through the system requirements for PowerUps. They fitted the MME with minimal, outdated hardware. There's only so much they can do within the constraints. As they cheaped out on that hardware (the infotainment system in particular), they can't spread out software development costs to future car models because there's no way they can continue shipping that hardware.

They want Tesla's margins, but they aren't distributing common systems across an entire fleet. They're not specing future proofing in to hardware. They're still running the same as always with duplicated/overlapping development across models. They created dead end platforms for both the MME and Lightning.

 

[azerik]

Dont forget they have to pay for the 25:1 dev margins somehow.
Or hire devs that are worth a grain of salt. Just thinking out loud here.

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