Sandy has praised the Mach-E for its motor design and other aspects of the car, here he tests out BlueCruise which is Ford's driver assistance package. I won't spoil it watch to find out his impressions.

 

I feel Ford and GM took a much more measured and practical approach to driver assistance for highway only....this is a real engineering solution that works.

Tesla on the other hand really tried to do something near impossible with today's technology attempting full autonomy under all driving conditions

 

What I don't understand is why people are paying $10k extra for the promise of Tesla delivering software that may work years down the road.

Technology, sensors, etc. will change and get better every year and those that paid $10k will be out of luck. Yes they may get updated software to a point, but they won't get updated features without new hardware.

 

Elon's stated that its not the sensors or cameras that are preventing FSD to reach full autonomy but the actual software. They haven't even utilized the full potential of the current camera and sensor systems...their issue has always been that AI is very very difficult. The one piece of hardware that will probably need upgrading will be the actual AI chip thats in current cars...HW 3 and 4 may not be good enough but those systems have an upgrade path vs. the integrated camera and sensors. With that said, they will probably have a completely new Model 3 and Y before FSD is fully complete and who knows what their policies will be at that point (whether FSD is transferable, etc. etc.)

 

I know, but I don't believe it. Better cameras, cheaper cameras, new firmware, new sensor break throughs, car to car comms, etc. will come out. Especially with 5G a lot more tech will come out that older cars will not be able to use. Elon is trying to predict the future, a future that is static, I don't believe it. If iit were true Microsoft Windows would still be running on 286 processors.

 

This thread is about Ford's system, any comments on that? I'll be very interested to see if Ford takes what Sandy said under advisement.

 

BlueCruise is a beginning. Pretty weak, but Ford is starting somewhere.
As a programmer, I can tell you hardware is seldom the issue. It's all about the code and the data is runs on.

 

Well it works until there's a slight bend in the road. Excuse me - a "sharp curve" on an interstate

 

Seems like a fine starting point, even if it's not very robust yet. It would be nice if it could at least handle highway curves, but if someone is using it for commuting everyday they'll learn pretty quickly where it is likely to disengage.

On the Mach-E it's included in all but the base trim I believe, so it's hard to really complain about how it performs.

 

Does it really perform any better than other cars with advanced lane keep assist? I'd say it performs worse if it's disengaging in turns.

 

The main feature is that they've put work into the camera that monitors the driver, so as long as it thinks you're paying attention to the road it will let you go hands free.

As far as capability, you're correct that it isn't particularly impressive compared to what else is out there for highway use.

 

I highly salute the driver camera. There have proven to be far too many idiots who will go to great lengths to bypass driver assist safety controls.
There was even a pair of rubber (?) grips on Amazon you could put on the steering wheel to override a "hands on" safety control.

I am 100% against hands free driving for any current driver assist system.