The skies over New York and New Jersey get vibrant and intense nearly every evening. During a recent drive to upstate New York, the clouds scattered like brushstrokes and sunlight filtered through the gaps, creating a striking mix of cyan and soft yellows. I had plenty of time to take in the view.
While the sky put on a show, the Ford Mustang Mach-E Rally that I was driving made micro-adjustments to the steering, gently accelerating and braking on its own with the flow of the traffic. My hands rested on my knees and my eyes were pinned to the road ahead. I breathed a little easier and my heartbeat was a little slower than it usually is in dense suburban traffic.
Automakers have offered driver assistance features like lane centering assist and adaptive cruise control for years, but they are now increasingly bundled into more advanced packages. The Mustang Mach-E I drove recently was equipped with BlueCruise, an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) equivalent to Tesla's Autopilot and General Motors’ Super Cruise.
According to Ford, BlueCruise allows “hands-free highway driving” on 130,000 miles of North American roads. This includes 97% of controlled access highways or what Ford calls “Hands-Free Blue Zones.” It’s available on the Mustang Mach-E, F-150 and F-150 Lightning, Expedition, Explorer and the Lincoln Navigator, Nautilus and Corsair.
BlueCruise is a Level 2 driver assistance system, which by definition means driver supervision is a must at all times. If the car crashes, it's still your problem. No hands-free, unsupervised, zero-liability systems are available to the public yet.
Sure, Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot is hands-free and eyes-off on limited California roads. Tesla has said that unsupervised Full-Self Driving will come to California and Texas by the end of next year. But ADAS and the more advanced systems like FSD are mired in controversies, legal hurdles and safety issues. Tesla Autopilot and Ford BlueCruise are both facing multiple investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) over fatal accidents.
Automakers are betting big on these systems. But so far they've made big promises but somewhat under-delivered. When you read terms like “hands-free,” (or self-driving) don’t get carried away.
So, is BlueCruise any good? And how does it compare to Level 2 systems offered by GM and Tesla? Let’s dive right in.
(Full Disclosure: Ford loaned me a 2024 Mustang Mach-E Rally in New York City for one week with a full charge.)
How Does It Work?
At a high level, BlueCruise is like most other driver assistance systems. It blends adaptive cruise control with lane-centering, taking control of the vehicle's steering, acceleration and braking in certain favorable conditions, like in clear weather with visible road signage and lane markings. It only works on roads that have been scanned to create high-fidelity maps for semi-autonomous driving.
BlueCruise is there to assist while you do the driving. It may look like it's "driving," but it is always under your full supervision. It’s not a license for complacency and definitely not a green signal for you to check your phone or engage in other distracting activities. It will track your attention and make sure your eyes stay on the road.
To activate BlueCruise, lane centering has to be turned on. You can do that either by pressing a dedicated button on the left side of the steering or by toggling it from the center screen.
When BlueCruise is available, the car will let you know when it enters a Blue Zone—any pre-mapped highway which the system is compatible with—by showing a message on the gauge cluster.
Then you press the cruise control button on the steering and the driver’s display turns blue. A hands-free symbol indicates you can sit back and supervise. The Mach-E’s five cameras and five radars then take over, monitoring the environment around you while you’re expected to do the same.
A Highway Stress Buster
BlueCruise works phenomenally in slow-moving highway traffic and on vast stretches of the highway.
Ford’s adaptive cruise control offers four distance settings, letting you choose how closely to trail the car ahead. The smoothest BlueCruise experience came from setting adaptive cruise control to the farthest distance. The extra distance gives the vehicle’s sensors a bit more time to react to sudden moves from erratic drivers.
On my drive out of the city during peak rush hour, when cars were cutting lanes unannounced, BlueCruise reacted by braking or by going off the throttle. When I set cruise control to follow at the closest distance, though, BlueCruise responded too late for my comfort—not a setting I’d recommend.
BlueCruise can also switch lanes, but unlike GM’s Super Cruise, the current version (1.3) doesn’t do that automatically. You have to pull the turn signal to command the change. Then the car will handle the actual lane changing by itself once it finds an opening.
It changes lanes smoothly when the roads are empty, but in traffic, it’s extra cautious. I preferred handling lane changes myself on the busy roads around where I live. Automatic lane changes will be available on the next version of BlueCruise. Ford says it'll roll out to the Mach-E in early 2025.
I also appreciated the lane-centering assist—it keeps the car centered without ping-ponging around too much. Ford’s driver monitoring is also on point: A driver-facing infrared camera placed behind the steering wheel tracks your eye gaze and head position.
If it senses distraction, it flashes a warning on the gauge cluster with a mild audio alert. It can be a bit overzealous. Even a quick two-second glance at the right exterior mirror triggered a buzz. But it only takes a split-second for things to go wrong on the road. So I’d take a vigilant, even intrusive, monitoring system over one that’s too relaxed any day.
When BlueCruise identifies an unresponsive driver, it flashes a red warning on the driver's display and activates audio alerts. It slows the vehicle down to 5-6 miles per hour, continuing in the same lane without fully stopping or calling for assistance—an approach Consumer Reports said is not the smartest.
By comparison, Tesla Autopilot, GM Super Cruise, and Mercedes Drive Pilot all bring the car to a complete stop and turn on the hazard lights. GM and Mercedes go further, automatically dialing for help, whereas Tesla only initiates a call if the airbags deploy.
The Porsche Macan Electric has the most comprehensive emergency response system. It sets off audio-visual alerts, pumps the brakes and yanks the seatbelts (presumably to jolt a dozed-off driver), honks, turns on hazard lights, switches on all interior lighting, unlocks all doors and comes to a halt before calling for help.
Meanwhile, Tesla Autopilot doesn’t really allow you to take your hands off the wheel. You have to continue applying force to the steering. If you don’t, it issues warnings and disables Autopilot after a few strikes. Tesla "Full Self-Driving" is more advanced and allows you to take your hands off the wheel, but that’s an $8,000 hole in your pocket. It's also over-confident, and while Tesla allows you to use it on city streets there are countless examples of that being a bad idea.
When I tested standard Autopilot on a Model 3, the car's automatic steering system felt combative. You have to wrestle control back from the steering, which forces Autopilot to disengage. You have to switch it back on yourself.
By comparison, BlueCruise lets you take the wheel anytime with barely any resistance, making it easy to adjust your lane position if you aren’t comfortable with what the system is doing. And BlueCruise stays on when you make steering adjustments, seamlessly resuming control when you’re done. (It disengages when you tap the brakes.)
Room For Improvement
BlueCruise felt more confident during the daytime than at night, requiring fewer disengagements when it had plenty of light to work with.
Its lane-keeping was somewhat of a mixed bag. The highways outside New York City are littered with unmarked patchwork, and while the system breezed over some unmarked sections without issue, other times, it wobbled left-right, struggling as if it couldn’t quite compute the disappearing lane markings.
Merging lanes posed another challenge. In tighter sections, when wider highways narrowed down, it got a little jittery, even driving over the solid white line once. But taking over is always easy; you can reposition the car without disengaging the system.
Verdict
So, what's the point of a hands-free system that you must constantly supervise? You might as well do the driving yourself, right? Constant micro-adjustments to steering, braking and acceleration can wear you down on long highway stretches. But letting your car handle the boring stuff lets you keep an eye out and jump in only when needed.
I realized that when you use it as intended—with 100% supervision—BlueCruise can make you a more efficient driver, allowing you to cover longer distances with fewer stops. It reduces driver fatigue and makes road trips easier. Even Consumer Reports has rated BlueCruise the highest among driver assistance systems, ahead of GM Super Cruise and way ahead of Tesla Autopilot.
Though automakers aggressively market these systems, their value depends on your driving habits. For a true road-tripper logging thousands of miles a month, the $2,500 one-time charge for BlueCruise could be a game-changer, potentially reducing fatigue on those tediously long drives. But if you’re more of an occasional road-tripper like me, shelling out that amount may not make sense—the standard suite of driver assistance features like adaptive cruise control and lane-centering would likely cover your needs.
Ford offers some flexibility here. You can try BlueCruise with a complimentary 90-day trial. If it wins you over, there’s an annual subscription option for $495. Plus, Ford will likely continue improving the system over time. But the real challenge lies in ensuring drivers are trained to use it correctly. These systems will only be as good as the driver education backing them—without it, they risk doing more harm than good.
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