Since its launch, Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free highway driving assist feature has grown exponentially, vastly expanding its reach in a short period of time. BlueCruise has also racked up its fair share of accolades over the years, even beating out all of its rivals and earning the status of Consumer Reports’ top-rated active driving assistance system (ADAS) not just once, but twice. However, another primary benefit of BlueCruise – along with connected vehicle features in general – is that it’s extremely profitable for Ford, which is a topic that CEO Jim Farley touched on during the automaker’s Q4 2023 earnings call with investors.
“We launched some awesome tech. BlueCruise just passed 150 million miles of hand-free use, but more importantly, the growth is up 25 percent quarter-over-quarter, and the gross margins for BlueCruise are at 70-plus percent,” Farley said. “The same for Ford Pro Intelligence. And boy, can Ford do work vehicles.”
That 70 percent figure is indeed eye-opening, underscoring the importance of connected vehicle tech in terms of growing FoMoCo’s profits moving forward. However, it does somewhat come at the expense of recent price increases that drew the ire of users, as Ford Authority reported last May. In fact, when BlueCruise originally became available, consumers had one option – purchase a three-year subscription for $600. Now, that same three-year subscription costs $2,100, or customers can pay $75 per month or $800 per year after their 90-day trial period is up.
Regardless, BlueCruise continues to attract more and more users, and is also being added to more and more vehicles – including, most recently, the 2024 Lincoln Navigator, 2024 Lincoln Nautilus, and the refreshed 2025 Lincoln Aviator. Ford also continues to update BlueCruise with new features, with version 1.3 utilizing data collected from user vehicles to help drivers stay engaged in hands-free mode longer, including around curves and narrow lanes – up to three times longer compared to version 1.2 and five times longer than version 1.0.
We’ll have more on BlueCruise soon, so be sure and subscribe to Ford Authority for continuous Ford news coverage.
Comments
When is Ford going to distribute BlueCruise version 1.3?
The same genius that program BC must code this site.
Of course it’s greatly profitable when you take peoples money and never deliver anything.
I agree Mike. I have BC in my 23 Lincoln Corsair GT and love it! There are some aspects that could get better, which is why I am anxiously awaiting v1.3 and future versions. I’ve said before that if I don’t get updates regularly (annually at a minimum), then I will not continue paying for this subscription. They should also be adding more roads like GM is doing with Super Cruise. It now covers 1 million miles of roads while Ford BC is still at 200,000. I’ll be jumping ship when GM has a PHEV Cadillac XT4 with Super Cruise.
More stuff to pay for !!!! I can keep my hands on the wheel !! How about let’s get my new aviator out of the shop for stupid recalls and parts for the heated seats that don’t work and telling me they have no idea when they can have the parts .
Go with Ford