When it’s not a competition about whose truck is better, Ford and Tesla keep things interesting with subtle remarks and social media jabs. This time, Ford took the lead, promoting their new hands-free driving in a way that reminds many of Tesla’s recent FSD controversy.
I won’t beat around the bush; if you remember, last October, Tesla gave access to 2,000 drivers to their FSD beta program. A beta that effectively lets drivers experience what it would be like to allow their car to see for itself, take turns autonomously, and navigate through extremely complex intersections.
Of course, not all beta testers took the matters seriously, keeping their eyes on the road and their hands on the wheel constantly. In fact, Tesla decided to revoke the access of some of the drivers, after they failed to comply with their stipulations:
Elon Musk’s addmission – that this move could have put some testers at risk – gave Ford’s CEO the perfect opening for this tweet:
If you think about it, Ford’s CEO basically justified their delayed launch of BlueCruise by wanting to do better by their users. Ford preferred to test their hands-free driving over 500,000 miles of driving before making it public.
Their team drove through 37 states and five Canadian provinces, crossing different surfaces, weather, and road conditions to ensure it’s safe and reliable enough. “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.”, reads an official statement from Ford.
While it lacks some of the features AutoPilot has, Ford did install a camera monitoring system that won’t require their drivers to touch the wheel from time to time.
The idea is to first deploy BlueCruise in Ford’s 2021 F-150 and electric Mustang Mach-E, before releasing it to more vehicles.
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