Dive Brief:
- Ford customers will receive a 90-day free trial of its BlueCruise hands-free highway driving feature on select vehicles, with the option to pay for a monthly or annual subscription after the trial ends, the company said Monday.
- BlueCruise hardware will be standard on more vehicles, and customers can activate it anytime. Previously, Ford customers had to pay upfront to have the hardware installed.
- Ford plans to install BlueCruise on 500,000 model year 2024 vehicles in North America, including electric and gas-powered models.
Dive Insight:
As more software-based and connected vehicles that support over-the-air updates hit the market, subscription plans allowing customers to unlock vehicle features are emerging as a new business model to generate new and recurring revenue streams for automakers.
Customers can purchase a Ford vehicle with BlueCruise preactivated for three years for $2,100. They can also bundle the cost into their vehicle financing. Ford customers that don't want to pay for three years of BlueCruise upfront can purchase an annual plan for $800, while monthly plans are $75, with no minimum commitment.
BlueCruise hardware will come preinstalled on the 2024 F-150 Lightning, Ford F-150 and Ford Expedition, and some 2024 Lincoln models, including the Navigator and Nautilus and select trims of the Corsair.
“We believe in this technology and how it can help transform the highway driving experience and want to give more customers the opportunity to try it and provide flexibility for them to activate it when they want to use it,” said Ashley Lambrix, head of commercial acceleration for Ford Model e.
Ford rolled out BlueCruise 1.2 earlier this year. It will offer a new version for the 2021-2023 Mustang Mach-E vehicles equipped with BlueCruise hardware. The improvements include better navigation through curves and narrow lanes, which reduces the number of driver interventions, according to Ford.
BlueCruise supports over-the-air software updates, so its capabilities will improve over time as Ford collects additional customer vehicle data. The automaker has a dedicated in-house team of engineers working to improve BlueCruise using large-scale data collected from customers who have agreed to share their vehicle data with Ford. Incremental improvements will be delivered via OTA vehicle software updates.
Ford’s BlueCruise autonomous driving feature is similar to Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot, which supports automatic lane changes to pass slower-moving vehicles. However, Tesla customers must pay an additional $6,000 at purchase to add Enhanced Autopilot to their vehicles.
