Ford says its Active Drive Assist system will allow you to drive hands-free on more than 100,000 miles of divided highways in the United States and Canada.
Ford
Ford Motor followed Tesla in many ways with regard to the Mustang Mach-E, its new battery-powered electric vehicle, but CEO Jim Farley visited Twitter on Thursday to show that Ford does not look like Tesla when it comes to test driverless technology using customers like guinea pigs on public roads.
In a tweet about Ford’s upcoming hands-free driving system, Farley said, “BlueCruise! We’ve tested it in the real world, so our customers don’t have to.”
The message was a punch to Tesla and CEO Elon Musk.
In October 2020, Tesla launched a beta, or unfinished, version of its premium driver assistance system that the company sells as “Full Self-Driving” or FSD to customers.
Only a few customers who purchase the FSD option have access to the beta version to test the newer features that are added to the system before all bugs are resolved. The company revealed that it previously launched the beta FSD version to 2,000 drivers, but revoked the access of a number of drivers who allegedly did not pay proper attention to the road.
In his most recent update, via Twitter, Musk said on April 9 that Tesla is “almost ready with FSD Beta V9.0. The step change improvement is massive, especially for weird corner cases and bad weather. Pure vision, no radar. “
Despite its brand, the FSD system is not capable of controlling a Tesla vehicle in all normal driving circumstances. Tesla told the California DMV late last year, according to records obtained by CNBC and others, that “neither autopilot nor FSD capability is an autonomous system.”
Tesla faces criticism for the brand name Full Self Driving in the United States and a German court banned Tesla from using the terms Autopilot and Full Self-Driving in advertising because they exaggerated the capabilities of a Tesla vehicle.
Recently, there have also been several Teslas-related crashes, which has sparked federal investigations that will determine if driver assistance technology may have contributed to or caused the collisions. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said last month it had opened 27 investigations into Tesla vehicle accidents, of which 23 remain active, according to Reuters.
According to Ford, its BlueCruise system will be launched later this year on the 2021 Ford F-150 and 2021 Mustang Mach-E after more than 500,000 miles of development and tuning tests.
Ford’s system, like General Motors ’Super Cruise, promises less capacity than Tesla’s FSD system. But Ford will not require drivers to check in by touching the steering wheel. Instead, a camera-based system inside the vehicle controls the driver’s eyes and attention on the road.
The use of Ford and GM systems is also limited to certain previously mapped highways in the United States and Canada. Tesla does not restrict the use of autopilot and FSD or FSD beta in the same way.