A short Twitter video posted August 1 showing the head of Ford's European EV division, Martin Sander, driving a Ford Mustang Mach-E hands-free on the M25 raised hope anew. Could we really be on the cusp of ceding control of the dullest driving to our car?
The promise of autonomous driving has long been in the post as technology companies overhype the prospect of computers taking over in the near future.
The shifting chimera of the robotaxi, however, has been countered in recent months with the rise of ever-more clever versions of advanced driving systems that are accessible to far more than just a few riders in San Francisco.
The vision and radar-based technology meant to encourage safer driving by assisting our lane-keeping or keeping an eye on sharp braking from the vehicle ahead is now becoming clever enough to allow us to remove hands from the wheel, if not to stop paying attention.
The Mach-E driven by Sander on London's famously gummed-up orbital motorway uses a trial version of Ford’s hands-free Bluecruise, which Sander said in a reply to Autocar is planned for launch in Europe, including the UK, by summer next year.
Took a testdrive on the M25 outside London the other day. #Bluecruise was amazing. Coming to Europe next year. pic.twitter.com/XyEPoJqMjy
— Martin Sander (@MSander22) August 1, 2022
In the semi-official classification of autonomous driving, this is Level 2+, which is hands off the wheel but eyes on the road. That means the driver still has to pay attention, but we’re inching closer to Level 3, where the car can take over entirely in certain situations.
Level 2+ is essentially what Tesla operates under in the US and elsewhere outside Europe, although you wouldn’t know it from its Full Self-Driving label. However Ford’s Bluecruise and General Motors' rival Super Cruise have more safety systems in place, including an eye-tracker that makes sure you’re paying attention and a limit to the roads you can use it on.
Ford claims that 65,000 drivers are now using Bluecruise in the US, with 15,000 receiving it through over-the-air software updates.
Ford charges $600 (£500) for a three-year subscription to Bluecruise in the US, and we can expect similar here. The company has remained sceptical about some aspects of software subscription but not autonomous features.
“It feels like that's the first shippable software that we can send to a car that customers are really willing to pay a lot of money for,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told a conference hosted by Bernstein in June.
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