Ford Motor Co. is expanding the availability of its hands-free highway driving system by making BlueCruise hardware standard on several model year 2024 vehicles, giving customers the option to activate the system at any time rather than having to decide at the point of purchase.
The move, detailed Monday by the Dearborn automaker, will give customers who purchase certain 2024 vehicles the option to activate BlueCruise at purchase, annually or monthly. There is also the option for a free trial of the system. Before, customers had to decide at the time of purchase whether they wanted the BlueCruise hardware installed on their vehicle.
Ford plans to install the hardware as a standard feature on some 500,000 vehicles for numerous 2024 Ford and Lincoln models, including the Mustang Mach-E (on which it had already included BlueCruise hardware standard), the F-150 Lightning, the F-150, and the Ford Expedition.
Customers purchasing those vehicles will have the following options:
• Order or purchase a vehicle with BlueCruise already activated for three years. The purchase, priced at $2,100, can be rolled into the vehicle financing.
• Try out BlueCruise during a free trial that is available for 90 days from the vehicle purchase.
Customers who do not opt to activate BlueCruise at the time of purchase have the option to activate the system on an annual or monthly basis at any time. There is no minimum-length commitment, meaning customers have the option to activate BlueCruise for a month at a time if they choose. An annual plan costs $800; monthly plans cost $75.
Customers who don’t activate BlueCruise at all still will have access to adaptive cruise control.
Ford also is making BlueCruise hardware standard on the 2024 Lincoln Navigator, Lincoln Nautilus and select trims of the Lincoln Corsair. Based on the trim level, Navigator and Nautilus buyers will receive either four years of BlueCruise access included at purchase or a 90-day free trial with the option to choose the annual or monthly plan. Corsair trims with BlueCruise hardware installed will receive four years of access included at purchase, according to Ford.
“BlueCruise is an experience-it-to-believe-it technology, and people are amazed at how BlueCruise can help make driving less stressful and more enjoyable — especially in traffic or on long drives,” Ashley Lambrix, head of commercial acceleration at Ford Model e, said in a statement. “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.”
In announcing the move, the company pointed to a recent S&P Global Mobility study that found that consumers are more willing to activate connected-car services that they feel adds value to their experience if they have the chance to try the services out first.
Ford reported that BlueCruise users have driven more than 100 million miles and that some 225,000 Ford and Lincoln vehicles currently are equipped with the hardware globally.The automaker rolled out BlueCruise 1.2 earlier this year and is slated to release BlueCruise 1.3 soon, first to 2021-2023 Mustang Mach-Es equipped with the hardware.
BlueCruise requires a Connected Service Plan, a FordPass or Lincoln Way app and modem activation.
jgrzelewski@detroitnews.com