Tesla might have led the way with battery electric technology, but Ford isn’t going to take the fight lying down. With the release of the Mustang Mach-E, Ford’s CEO Jim Farley has decided to take a few swings at the pioneer. Farley’s hope is that consumers will see that Ford doesn’t approach testing the same way as Tesla. The automaker doesn’t plan to use customers the way that Tesla has for testing out driverless technology.
In a tweet from Farley, the point was made clear. It stated, “BlueCruise! We tested it in the real world, so our customers don’t have to.”
Clearly, this message was directed solely at Elon Musk and Tesla.
Back in October 2020, Tesla sent out an unfinished beta version of the newest driver-assistance system, marketed as FSD (Full Self-Driving). However, customers need to purchase the FSD option in order to access this beta version. Then, they are responsible for trying out all of the features so Tesla can work out all of the glitches before it is completely rolled out.
Originally, the FSD beta was delivered to 2,000 drivers. However, some of those drivers lost access because they weren’t paying attention to the road. On April 9, Musk released a new update on Twitter, saying, “Almost ready with FSD Beta V9.0. Step change improvement is massive, especially for weird corner cases & bad weather. Pure vision, no radar.”
One would think that FSD would be capable of operating Tesla cars in any normal driving situation, but that’s not the case. In fact, records have been released showing that Tesla reported to the DMV in California that “neither Autopilot nor FSD Capability is an autonomous system.”
Because of this, Tesla has come under a lot of scrutiny. The Full Self Driving name has been barred in Germany, along with the term Autopilot because it overstates the Tesla capabilities. We might even see the same thing happen in the United States down the road.
Additionally, there have been multiple crashes with the Tesla lineup. These accidents have caused the feds to investigate whether the driver-assist technologies might have either caused or contributed to the incidents. Even the NHTSA has opened multiple investigations into these crashes, with many remaining active today.
On the other hand, BlueCruise by Ford is a system that will be released later in the year for both the 2021 Mustang Mach-E and 2021 Ford F-150 models. The company has performed plenty of fine-tuning and over 500,000 miles of testing.
Just like Super Cruise offered by GM, the Ford system won’t have as many capabilities as the FSD system. However, Ford doesn’t require drivers to touch the steering wheel to “check-in.” Instead, the system uses cameras in the vehicle to monitor the driver’s attentiveness and eyes on the road.
Additionally, neither the GM nor Ford system has unlimited access to pre-mapped highways, whereas the Tesla FSD isn’t limited the same way. It should be interesting to see which system prevails and how many more swings are taken between these leading automakers.
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