Ford’s hands-off driving tech available by subscription

Ford shared on Monday that it’s heading deeper into the software game by making its hands-free driving hardware — BlueCruise — standard in many of its future vehicles. In other words, the Detroit automaker’s Tesla-ification continues. 

Excluding the Mustang Mach-E, Ford had previously only given folks the option to buy the hands-off driving feature ahead of time, with the purchase of a new vehicle.

Moving forward, Ford says it will include the requisite hands-free tech into “500,000 vehicles for the 2024 model year in North America across Ford and Lincoln,” including the F-150 Lightning, Ford F-150 and Ford Expedition.

The upside is that car buyers won’t need to decide ahead of time if they want to try out BlueCruise. That could prove handy for used-car shoppers, who might want to shell out for features that previous owner wasn’t interested in. The downside is this feature ain’t cheap.

If you pay for access upfront with a new vehicle, Ford says it’ll charge you “$2,100 for three years at time of order.” Otherwise, the company will offer free trials before charging $800 per year or $75 per month. The offering sounds a whole lot like Tesla’s driver-assist subscriptions.

Still, while Ford is late to the game, its subscription is at least a bit cheaper.