BlueCruise 1.4 - What do you think?

[daveross1212]

Mine does not do that. If I turn on my blinker while it isn't in Hands-Free it uses the old functionality where it disables the lane keeping so I can change lanes.

That's interesting - so if you were in hands-free, use the accelerator to speed up past 80 mph (and out of hands-free), BC lane change no longer works? I'm definitely seeing that it does.

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[LightningJB]

Do people actually pay 50 per month for Blue Cruise?

 

[TheBigBezo]

Bluecruise 1.4 is nice but it's not perfect. I just finished a 2,400 mile trip and I sent plenty of feedback to Ford regarding things they need to work on:

1. Signal to change lanes sits for a second or two before going and I found that led to confusion with other drivers on multiple occasions. Likewise, there were times it never moved lanes despite indicating. I personally think it shouldn't indicate until it's ready to move, if it's in the 'preparing to change lanes' phase, I think the indicator should be off.
2. The auto-brake into turns is a bit of a mess. Some turns it didn't slow at all and I let the truck send it deep just to see if it would (it did) and then on other turns it thinks there's a bend to slow for when it was not required at all. It genuinely made me mad when out of nowhere the truck starts braking and I take over and notice it thinks there's a bend (highlighted speed limit sign on dash). The timing is all over the place too, some bends it brakes way too early, some are timed well, and others it never slows. When it does slow early, it's prone to begin feeding in throttle well before the apex. Plus, the throttle behavior feels really choppy in turns with BC on and felt like it was unsettling the truck.
3. The mapping feels like it is worse than 1.0 for speeds. My truck on multiple occasions thought the highway speed dropped to 45mph without a single sign being present which makes me think it's the internal mapping that's wrong. Again, few things annoy me more as a driver than when the truck unexpectedly slows because I don't want to be rear-ended.

I sent all of the above to Ford with roads and mile markers to hopefully facilitate exploration, if Ford looks at the voice feedbacks at all. Aside from that, 1.4 does a substantially better time going without disconnects. For massive portions of my drive it felt like I was on actual autopilot, the truck maintained speed and followed the interstate. I averaged something like 700 miles a day last week and having the truck reducing workload felt great.

 

[Mmiketa]

That's interesting - so if you were in hands-free, use the accelerator to speed up past 80 mph (and out of hands-free), BC lane change no longer works? I'm definitely seeing that it does.

No, I was on a road that did not have BC at all so it was using adaptive. In my state there are very few places we can go over 80 since until recently hitting 80 anywhere in the state was an immediate reckless driving ticket. We can now go up to 85 before that, but still not happening often. I didn't even know hands free turns off over 80 MPH.

 

[ds03]

We have a 2023 Lariat ER. Still on BC 1.0. Would really like 1.4 (and have it on our Mach-e). Bought our Lightning in November 2023, so may be late in year build.

 

[Tommy Holt]

I cannot stand the constant reminders to keep hands on wheel (my hands are on the wheel). BC isn’t that great for me but I would love to have just plain cruise control (speed) without the stupid hands on wheel warning. I drive often on state highways that don’t have BC. It’s a huge annoyance to me … I’d rather drive the truck than have to deal with that.
I’m also in agreement with those of you that dislike the slowing in curves. It’s very disruptive to me and drivers behind me. A simple solution for me would be to have Ford include options to turn these annoyances off.

 

[Timeless Epoch]

I cannot stand the constant reminders to keep hands on wheel (my hands are on the wheel). BC isn’t that great for me but I would love to have just plain cruise control (speed) without the stupid hands on wheel warning. I drive often on state highways that don’t have BC. It’s a huge annoyance to me … I’d rather drive the truck than have to deal with that.
I’m also in agreement with those of you that dislike the slowing in curves. It’s very disruptive to me and drivers behind me. A simple solution for me would be to have Ford include options to turn these annoyances off.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your point, but if the system is requiring your hands on the wheel, it is not in Blue Cruise mode.

 

[Tommy Holt]

Blue Cruise is just cruise control. It is extremely unreliable for me. Comes on but periodically shuts off when passing exit lanes or just for no reason at all. When it is on and working, it still annoys me with the newly added curve slowing (which, IMO, is greatly exaggerated). I just wish it was customizable. User customization would make sense to me. So many other controls on the truck can be user tweaked. For example; I can turn off the speed sign recognition but I can’t do anything about the keep hands on wheel warning. When BC goes off randomly (as it does for me) it just becomes regular cruise control.
That is my point.

 

[MountainAlive]

I agree with most of the comments here. My truck at highway speeds does not seem to slow when a tight curve is approaching. I don’t use the speed limit sign setting to manage speed so I don’t know if that is why. But the one thing 1.4 did fix for me was how it handles suddenly stopped highway traffic ahead. I encounter this daily on my commute. One minute I’m doing 70mph and then up ahead about a 1/2 mile I can see everyone has come to a complete stop. Previously the truck would just barrel onward towards this stopped traffic at 70mph and I would wait to see when it would realize but every time I had to slam on the brakes before it got ugly. But with 1.4 it seems to be using the camera vision more to be able to see farther than the radar can. And now it’s way less stressful for me to just keep BC on during my commute.

 

[Vulnox]

Blue Cruise is just cruise control. It is extremely unreliable for me. Comes on but periodically shuts off when passing exit lanes or just for no reason at all. When it is on and working, it still annoys me with the newly added curve slowing (which, IMO, is greatly exaggerated). I just wish it was customizable. User customization would make sense to me. So many other controls on the truck can be user tweaked. For example; I can turn off the speed sign recognition but I can’t do anything about the keep hands on wheel warning. When BC goes off randomly (as it does for me) it just becomes regular cruise control.
That is my point.

If you have a keep hands on wheel warning, it's not BlueCruise. Being able to turn that off would be insane as people would take their hands off the wheel even in non-BC situations and open Ford to lawsuits.

 

[Vulnox]

I like BC 1.4 on our Lightning, but generally like the BC 1.5, or whatever it is on our 2025 Mach-e. It does the auto lane changes when approaching a slower vehicle and seems even more confident than our Lightning with 1.4 does.

That said, I think BC has come a long way since the 1.0/1.2 days and am eager to do some longer trips in both vehicles.

The slowing for curves and that I agree I wish was adjustable, but I always have my foot near the accelerator and that anyway and you can accelerate without it disengaging BC, so I just give it a nudge if it's doing the slow down during a time where there's traffic behind me. If there isn't traffic, I don't worry about it as slowing down a few MPH for a few seconds isn't worth stressing over.

I agree with some others that the most annoying part is when you hit the stalk to change lanes, and it says preparing to change lanes, but just doesn't. I had that happen yesterday and the road on both sides of me was wide open. No vehicles approaching quickly from behind or anything. I am fine with it signaling when it does, I wish more people actually used their signal as an advisory to others of what is going to happen instead of the numbskulls that hit their signal while they are actively changing lanes.

But when it signals for 5 seconds and does nothing, and then when I try to manually change lines it fights me with lane keep, that's pretty annoying. Thankfully it's a rare occurrence.

 

[Tommy Holt]

If you have a keep hands on wheel warning, it's not BlueCruise. Being able to turn that off would be insane as people would take their hands off the wheel even in non-BC situations and open Ford to lawsuits.

 

[Tommy Holt]

No offense intended, but it is Blue Cruise. When you turn it on and you see the Blue Cruise info on your dash, you are in Blue Cruise. When it randomly turns itself off and back on while driving you are reverting to regular cruise control.

I drive quite a lot on highways that have BC mapped but I also drive quite a bit on those that are not BC mapped. The fact that BC goes on and off at random on the mapped freeways is, of course, annoying (cheers to those of you that don't have to deal with that). But on 75 MPH highways that are not mapped for Blue Cruise, I would love to count on regular cruise control (yes, it's the same control button) to work. We have all had regular cruise control in our vehicles for many years without the necessity to include a reminder to keep our hands on the wheel. It is not insane to want to be able to toggle that off. The majority of other vehicles on the road can use their cruise controls without that annoyance; I would like the same. That was my point ... and yes, I'm aware of the cheats developed by some of us like putting ankle weights around the steering wheel; not my thing.

 

[jefrank]

No offense intended, but it is Blue Cruise. When you turn it on and you see the Blue Cruise info on your dash, you are in Blue Cruise. When it randomly turns itself off and back on while driving you are reverting to regular cruise control.

I drive quite a lot on highways that have BC mapped but I also drive quite a bit on those that are not BC mapped. The fact that BC goes on and off at random on the mapped freeways is, of course, annoying (cheers to those of you that don't have to deal with that). But on 75 MPH highways that are not mapped for Blue Cruise, I would love to count on regular cruise control (yes, it's the same control button) to work. We have all had regular cruise control in our vehicles for many years without the necessity to include a reminder to keep our hands on the wheel. It is not insane to want to be able to toggle that off. The majority of other vehicles on the road can use their cruise controls without that annoyance; I would like the same. That was my point ... and yes, I'm aware of the cheats developed by some of us like putting ankle weights around the steering wheel; not my thing.

Turn off lane centering and you'll have regular adaptive-speed cruise control

 

[Vulnox]

No offense intended, but it is Blue Cruise. When you turn it on and you see the Blue Cruise info on your dash, you are in Blue Cruise. When it randomly turns itself off and back on while driving you are reverting to regular cruise control.

I drive quite a lot on highways that have BC mapped but I also drive quite a bit on those that are not BC mapped. The fact that BC goes on and off at random on the mapped freeways is, of course, annoying (cheers to those of you that don't have to deal with that). But on 75 MPH highways that are not mapped for Blue Cruise, I would love to count on regular cruise control (yes, it's the same control button) to work. We have all had regular cruise control in our vehicles for many years without the necessity to include a reminder to keep our hands on the wheel. It is not insane to want to be able to toggle that off. The majority of other vehicles on the road can use their cruise controls without that annoyance; I would like the same. That was my point ... and yes, I'm aware of the cheats developed by some of us like putting ankle weights around the steering wheel; not my thing.

Not offended, I am trying to clarify since people often say it's bluecruise just when it's lane centering, as you seemed to do. If it tells you to put hands on the wheel, at any point, even on a mapped road, then BlueCruise is not active, even if it's enabled. It's wild anyone would think otherwise since BlueCruise is simply just hands-free lane centering and adaptive cruise, even on Ford's own site.

Especially since many people claim to have used regular cruise control for years, you would think they would understand the difference between active and enabled. I can turn on cruise control (it's enabled) but not set a speed, or if I had a speed set, cancel it. Cruise Control is still enabled, but it's not active, until I set a new speed or hit resume.

BC is the same. It can say BC is enabled, but if the "Hands Free" icon goes away, then it's not longer active.

If you don't want the reminder and actually want regular cruise control, hit the button on the steering wheel to turn off lane centering. You won't get alerts to keep your hands on the wheel.

Ford has to do it with lane centering because if in a construction zone or something where they might have lane shifting the car could incorrectly follow the old lines instead of the lane shift lines during construction and cause an accident.

So being able to turn off that reminder would be incredibly dumb. If you want to just have cruise, turn off lane centering. Don't expect Ford, of all companies, to open themselves up to legal issues when some idiot drives without touching the wheel and gets into an accident and blames Ford. It's bad enough there are people using exercise strap weights to try and fool vehicles into being "hands-free" by making it think someone is holding the wheel.

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