Ford today unveiled BlueCruise, its new hands-free highway driving feature set to debut later this year to equipped 2021 F-150 and Mustang Mach-E vehicles later in 2021.
BlueCruise looks to compete against Tesla’s Autopilot and GM’s Super Cruise when it comes to highway-only driving. The feature lets you remove your hands from the steering wheel in a “Hands-Free Blue Zone” (over 100,000 miles of North American roads), while cameras will scan a driver’s eyes to check if their eyes are still on the road.
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Ford said they tested the feature on a 110,000 mile road trip across the U.S. and Canada (37 states; 5 provinces) over 62 days, in all types of weather. Only vehicles equipped with the Ford Co-Pilot360 Active 2.0 Prep Package will get BlueCruise in an over-the-air software update later this year.
“There are highway intricacies and driving conditions that you simply cannot replicate in a lab,” said Hau Thai-Tang, Ford chief product platform and operations officer, in a statement. “Sending these vehicles out for real-world driving experience is just one of many ways we ensured that BlueCruise technology offers confidence and convenience for drivers all across the continent.”
Ford says it is targeting to sell more than 100,000 vehicles equipped with BlueCruise in the first year, based on its projections.
Now, again this BlueCruise feature is limited to select highways like GM’s Super Cruise, whereas Tesla’s Autopilot with Full Self-Driving, particularly the latter’s beta, can handle self-driving on city streets, which traditional automakers have no answer for yet.
