Ford customers will now be able to activate BlueCruise when they buy a vehicle for $2,100 for three years or after a free 90-day trial for $800/year or $75/month. On select Lincoln trims, the first four years of BlueCruise will be included in the purchase price, after which customers can subscribe.
Ford believes it is «investing in enabling this hardware standard from the factory and giving customers the flexibility to choose when and how to activate &mdash ; this is the right approach, — said Ashley Lambricks, head of Model e commercial acceleration at Ford.
The company predicts that this change will bring BlueCruise equipment to 500,000 2024 Ford and Lincoln vehicles in North America.
Ford — is not the only company betting on software and subscription revenue. Tesla Motors offers its «Full Self-Driving» feature as a subscription, and General Motors said it could generate $25 billion in annual subscription revenue by 2030.
Talking to reporters on Monday, Peter Stern, Ford's new president of integrated services, said, that he is not bothered by consumer backlash against being charged for software features.
Features like BlueCruise are particularly beneficial to subscription fees because they are new, and automakers can continually improve driver assistance technologies as of how more vehicles are collecting data, said Alex Oyler, director of SBD Automotive, North America. Standardizing equipment across all vehicle ranges is also a cost-cutting measure, he says.
SBD Automotive predicts that more than 50 percent of new vehicle sales by 2026 will include Level 2 autonomous driving systems like BlueCruise.
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