Ford is slashing each the month-to-month and annual value of its hands-free driver-assistance characteristic, BlueCruise, for brand new and present homeowners in response to “buyer and vendor” suggestions, the corporate tells TechCrunch.
The automaker introduced Tuesday that it’ll now cost $49.99 per 30 days or $495 yearly for BlueCruise, which permits drivers to take their palms off the wheel on pre-mapped highways throughout the United States. That’s down from the earlier pricing of $75 per 30 days or $800 per yr.
Ford can also be now providing what it’s calling a “one-time buy” possibility for BlueCruise. Buyers can buy BlueCruise for $2,495 when ordering a brand new automobile and Ford guarantees to maintain it energetic for not less than seven years. The firm says that homeowners received’t should pay one other cent after the seven years “if the service is out there.” Owners can’t switch their BlueCruise subscription to a different automobile.
The value drop comes as BlueCruise is at the moment the topic of a federal investigation after two deadly crashes occurred earlier this yr the place the characteristic was energetic. A driver in a kind of crashes was lately charged with DUI murder.
Announced in 2021, BlueCruise makes use of a camera-based driver-monitoring system to test if drivers are watching the street whereas the system is energetic. The firm declined to share what share of householders have activated the characteristic. Ford’s change to BlueCruise pricing additionally comes sooner or later after the corporate introduced it’s providing a complimentary dwelling charger and protecting set up in a bid to spice up adoption of its electrical autos.
