- General Motors was the first company to offer a hands-off driving assistant, beating Ford to the punch.
- Yet Ford has quickly surpassed GM in terms of how many hands-free capable vehicles are on the roads.
- A lot of this comes down to how widely available each company makes its technology.
General Motors beat Ford to the punch, offering a hands-free driving assistant years before the Blue Oval could match that capability. First to market doesn’t mean first place, though, as Ford proved Wednesday. The company announced that it has 675,000 BlueCruise-enabled vehicles on the road today. That’s nearly double the number of cars Super Cruise-capable cars GM has on the road: 360,000.
Frankly, this comes as no surprise to me. Having sampled both systems, I find GM’s implementation of hands-free driver assistance to be smoother, more confidence-inspiring and better overall. But there’s a reason I don’t have it on my Chevy Blazer EV.
Like with most GM products, you have to pay up for expensive trims, option packages or both to get Super Cruise. Ford, on the other hand, provides all of the hardware for BlueCruise on every Mustang Mach-E, and makes the tech widely available on many high-volume products like the F-150 pickup.
Photo by: Chevrolet
A Chevy Silverado EV with Super Cruise.
GM, on the other hand, had a much more tepid start. It originally only offered the technology on the Cadillac CT6. That was a big, expensive Cadillac sedan in a market that didn’t want big sedans, didn’t want expensive sedans and certainly didn’t want Cadillac sedans. It then offered it on the Chevy Bolt, a perplexing decision given that this technology shines on long highway drives, something the compact, slow-charging Bolt was never great at.
The General has started to rectify this. Super Cruise is now available on the Chevy Silverado, Tahoe, Traverse, Equinox EV, Blazer and more. It’s also available on some Cadillac, Buick and GMC models. But it usually requires a substantial upfront commitment, and in my experience, many cars stocked on dealer lots don’t have the option box checked. Even if you do get it, you’ll have to pay monthly after the first three years.
Photo by: Ford
Every Mustang Mach-E comes with BlueCruise hardware. That’s a huge deal, as it’s one of the best-selling EVs on sale.
Ford has a different strategy. Customers can pay upfront for a long-term license to use BlueCruise. Or they can pay for it monthly. But since the hardware is included on many products anyway, it’s no wonder that Ford has far more BlueCruise “enabled” vehicles on the road, even if their subscriptions aren’t active. Given that Ford offers only a 90-day trial and GM includes Super Cruise for three years, I’d wager that GM has more actively enrolled drivers at any given time.
Still, it shows one of Ford’s strengths. While many companies will try out new technologies on a small basis, Ford is bold about rolling things out to a wide variety of customers. GM’s cautious approach means that despite beating everyone to market by years, it doesn’t seem to be widely perceived as a leader in hands-free driver assistance. Many buyers aren’t going to spend $3,000 on something they’ve never heard of, but if they get a 90-day trial on their Mach-E anyway, that may convert them.
For these companies, though, what really matters is how many people are willing to pay it. Based on GM’s last report, things are looking good for Super Cruise.
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