Ford BlueCruise First Impressions | Talking Cars #342

[Music] hey welcome back i'm keith barry i'm mike monosolo and i'm jake fisher and this is talking cars we're going to be talking about um a car that we rented from ford less about the car more about a really interesting feature that's that's on it that's going to be on a lot more fords uh going forward which we just actually heard at uh from some news out of ces from intel and ford this week that the system called blue cruise uh it's an active driving assistance feature it's kind of similar to tesla's autopilot kind of similar to uh gm supercruise and we got to try it we got to try it on a 22 ford mach e gt um which uh we rented from ford but we're also going to be getting it on our own um maki which we own uh as an over-the-air update so we'll be able to do even more tests but it's an important enough debut that that we wanted to spend some time talking about it because these systems these active driving assistance systems they they can they can control some steering they can control braking they can control acceleration these are really becoming common across various vehicles and with them so are um driver monitoring systems so jake maybe you can you're the expert in this can you kind of talk us through blue crews it's watching us it's driving for us what's it what's what's it what is what is it doing well this is this is this is the problem right these are the most misunderstood systems like there there can be right i mean people understand what their headlights do and even automatic emergency braking we get it well it automatically breaks in emergency situations we get that these are the most misunderstood systems totally and these are i mean you explained it right you know these systems can do some steering and speed control and all this stuff at the same time but what's the point um there there was a a terrific jalopnik article where they talked about like what's the point of this and it's almost like having someone wash the dishes and you're standing behind to make sure that they wash the dishes right and if they do it wrong you have to take over really quick i mean that's kind of the situation it's not a self-driving car you have to pay attention and take over if you need it my favorite example is chuck greene who works at mit now but who worked on super cruise describes it as you're no longer stacking shelves at the grocery store you're the manager of the guy who stacked shops at the grocery store and i just i love that yes i love that yes you are responsible you are still the driver you the person behind the wheel are still the driver still responsible for everything that's going on but you're overseeing something that's doing some of the controls the steering the the speed control now um now this ford blue crude system is really kind of interesting because i think there's kind of a fork in the road here and when you use i mean look there's marketing and how they advertise it and they talk about is the another hands-free system which means you think like oh it's driving the ads are everywhere they say hands-free driving hands-free driving from ford right so i mean the problem is is that when you use this system it is not really going towards autonomous driving this is a system that for the most part you need to have your hands on the wheel there's only a few sections there's certain areas if it's a straight road on a divided highway that you could you can take your hands off the wheel you don't need to um it actually kind of helps you center in the road and makes driving more stress free but you do have to pay attention even if your hands are on the wheel so it's more of a driving assistance system the real must have to drive to really understand you know what is good for and what it's good for are things like the parts of driving i don't want to drive you know the really long boring sections on that four hour trip or the stop and go traffic these are syste you know where really helps now we've actually driven this uh we've all three of us have spent some time behind the wheel so i think that there's some there's some there's some opportunities to to kind of share what we saw so monty you've you've driven cars with all of these systems uh but you've you you spent some time you you figured out blue crews so to speak what uh what would you think yeah i don't know if i figured it out but so i actually drove it on two different occasions and and that was actually very enlightening uh i i did the driving yesterday for uh the b-roll that you'll probably be seeing in the background and um i think it's all about expectations right if you go into this jake talked about the marketing ford calls it that says this feature allows a driver to operate truly hands-free on pre-qualified sections of divided highways called hands-free blue zones right so it's expectations for its marketing also the name it's called blue cruise well what does that sound like it sounds like super cruise and what is super cruise we know super cruise is gm's hands-free highway driving system right so i think when you go into it with that expectation which i did um i thought it was going to act a little different than it did which is that there was more times when it said to me keep hands on steering wheel than i was expecting to be totally honest with you but the reason why i'm so glad i drove it the second day was because i drove it on the same highway but a completely different stretch of highway so the first time i drove it i drove it on a section of highway that had a fair amount of curvy sections and so every once in a while they would tell me uh keep hands on steering wheel but i didn't actually know why and that's one of my sort of issues with i wish it would say keep hands on steering wheel sharp curves ahead but it just tells you this and you're not sure why it's telling you that and again i'm expecting i can pretty much just kick back and yes pay attention but you know kind of relax my arms and hands then when i drove it on a different section of that highway uh it like was never telling me to put my hands on the wheel and it's because i think it was much straighter uh what happens though is there are these times when you activate the system which is one of the things i love about it it's super easy to activate you hit the cruise control button and it's on and and we can also get into the fact that you can give driver collaboration i know jake is big on that and you can meaning you can add steering without the system immediately shutting off which is what supercruise does and tesla autopilot does they turn off and then you have to you know it's not like it's a big deal but you have to reactivate the system this one if you got to make a lane change you do the lane change or if you just have to maybe avoid a pothole you can do that the system doesn't turn off as soon as you know you're straight again it tells you the blue the blue cruise thing comes back on with hands-free tells you hands-free and you can let your hands back off but there were times where i wanted it to re-engage i thought it should do uh hands-free either i turned it on and the cruise control came on but the steering the hands-free part didn't come on for 10 seconds 30 seconds sometimes a couple of minutes mostly it's because it was in a slightly curvy section but i wish it would tell you because you don't know am i doing something wrong am i not centered enough in the middle of the road so i really think it's so much about expectations what is the owner what does the buyer think i could see people being a little turned off about you know why is it why is it keep telling me to put my hands on the wheel but i also see where jake is coming from it's gonna help you in those boring sections when it's going straight and when it when you're in a curvier section it's it's actually can handle it's not saying it's not turning off it's just saying you have to have your hands on the wheel correct jake yeah look look mike you nailed it it's about expectations and going into this i think we all had the wrong expectations hands-free system and you get in this expectation it's like hey let's see how much you could do let's see how long i could go with my hands off the wheel well that's a game that's not actually helping you drive when you shift the expectations and saying it's not a hands-free system it's a system that you put your hands on the wheel and you look where you're going and there are some sections when it's boring that you could take your hands off the wheel if you wanted to once you switch that expectations now it's a whole different experience what what i i'm upset about with it though is that it is that is quite the literal and figurative handoffs is those transitions where it says put your hands on the wheel put your hands off the wheels simon says etc it it it what i don't like about that is is that i don't immediately know whether it's telling me to put my hands on the wheel because the car is no longer going to steer for itself or because it just wants my hands there it's just a little you know it was a little backup and and as someone who is prone to be a little bit of a nervous driver with anyone else behind the wheel and i'm not quite sure uh how it operates and how it's making decisions going into you know a curve at 75 miles an hour is not when i want to find out if do i need to steer or not is the car steering for me so i i think that that that that messaging on that screen has to be you know driver controlled or put hands you know put hands on wheel just in a way that that that shows that the car is still gonna do the work because i lost that confidence every time it told me to put the hands on the wheel well let me let me let me kind of take it one step further i almost feel like this is a terrific system that is explained poorly because if your takeaway when it says hands-free is you're supposed to take your hands off the wheel i think they have failed because no car should be telling you to take your hands off the wheel it is one thing to say you could have your hands off the wheel and it's not gonna go give you a nanny if your hands aren't you know i mean again if you're doing something whatever but the way i've driven this car is even when it says i could take my hands off the wheel i kept my hands on the wheel there's no reason to take my hands off the wheel because again like if you drive a tesla or something and you have your hands on the wheel or you drive supercruise if you have your hands on the wheel you might accidentally turn the thing off there's no danger of this you could keep your hands on the wheel even on the hands off the wheel is a loud state and it's actually an enjoyable driving experience because you could sit there and say okay i want to be in this side of the road or i want to give some extra room to that truck and it's just the way it's marketing and it's and and here's the final kind of piece of this that i think is the biggest takeaway if you're looking for a self-driving car or you're looking for something that's going to be able to do all these things autonomously or by itself you're going to be very unhappy with the system that's not what this is about at all because of this this possible confusion we spoke to ford uh about a customer's understanding of blue crews its capabilities and and how it communicates that uh while actively using a system and uh they told us they choose very carefully what to show drivers uh in terms of messaging on the instrument cluster but they also acknowledge that they've been listening to feedback from customers and are looking at a future enhancement to the system uh and to further help their customers understand the nuances of blue crews ford says they are developing how-to videos uh on the system as well yeah so i mean here's here's a number about 50 of new cars now offer systems like this that can steer they could follow the road they could do speed control very few of them almost none of them have a good way of keeping you engaged while it's doing that because it's hard to pay attention this now we've talked about super crews and there's a reason why we say supercruise the best system is because it helps keep you engaged it lets you know if your eyes are drifting off that road yeah infrared cameras that are in this car there's that camera the infrared camera right behind the steering wheel and and we we tried it out on it i mean it's not intrusive it's not like you know you're changing the radio and it's going to go to set off the alarms but if you do if you do you know when we we tried this on our track we've got lines on our track and closed area and it's there's safety standing by and if you go and you look at your phone or do something else it's going to alert you um until you it's going to tell you look on the road if you cover up those cam the camera um immediately it'll it'll let you know it'll alert you and if you don't it's like under five seconds that it gives you and if you think about it if you're driving on the highway five seconds is a long time yeah and i think that's the problem like if you so it's about four seconds if you make it much shorter than that now it might be uh giving you notices all the time right so they do they do have to walk that fine line of if jake said it's not intrusive which it's not if you make it like three seconds two three seconds well now it's going to be telling you all the time look at the road look at the road you know what i mean like right even if you were just changing the radio station or or checking your mirrors i mean we should all be checking our side mirrors and our rear view mirror you know uh quite often so so what it does is i mean it has the potential of actually making driver safety have making driving safer and that is different from some of these other systems which are a nice convenience if you're using the system and it is monitoring making sure you're not you know getting your emails or facebook or whatever the heck it is it can make driving safety safer and it is pretty clever i will say this i mean again we haven't fully tested it but what i have noticed is that with um supercruise you can go if you're not looking and you look quickly and look back down it you could do that quick enough and it'll actually okay it's like okay you looked you just looked well that's not enough if you just look for a second you can't actually figure out what's going on if you do this with this system you can look quickly up and look back down it's gonna alert you right away so we want you to look once you engage figure out what's going on the cars around you this is this is really the next step the other interesting thing about it is if you don't respond say you you've fallen asleep say you're on a really boring drive and the car is is trying to do some work for you and you just you know you you close your eyes and you're asleep um what the car will do after an escalating series of warnings is it'll kind of tap the brakes a little bit so it'll it'll jolt you and um it's it is alarming um i i experienced that intentionally i you know on on our track you know covered over the camera and uh and drove with it and you know it was beep beep beep beep beep beep beep and then all of a sudden it felt like someone you know shook me uh and and it would i imagine i i wasn't asleep but i imagine if i was uh that would be a hard one to test it's like it's smacking you it's like wake up come on come on we've seen things like this before nissan does this too if your hands are off the wheel but what you're talking about is a situation where you may fall asleep your hands might be still be resting on the wheel and other cars will not do this even if your hands are on the wheel it'll still do that so you can fall asleep hands wrestling on the wheel it's going to alert you it's going to try to wake you up and if not the driver yeah the driver monitoring system on this is is is i mean i can't wait until we can do some you know true evaluations with it when we get our own when we get this this system in an over-the-air update on our own vehicle when they wake our car up to get blue crews because the driver monitoring system seems to be uh real good but as i mean as far i want to go back to that original point you made jake what is the benefit of this over just say adaptive cruise control and and lane keeping assistance um which which doesn't give which lesser versions of it which don't take over and encourage the driver to become complacent so so first of all you nailed it keith what what is the benefit of this over adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assistance nothing because that's what it is yeah that is combines those two all these systems are just those and you know what i mean we have surveys we ask people do you like or adaptive cruise control people say yes do you like these systems yes we do not have people say i like it because i could use my phone that's not the point of it the point is i get more stressed out monitoring a car than i get driving the darn thing you mean am i am i different am i built different keith you mean you get more stressed out by the alerts that happen every once in a while telling you to do this or do that is that what you're talking about no i get more stressed up coming up you know across a you know next to a line of of of tractor trailers on 95 and and thinking you know is that is that is that truck gonna merge without looking so the difference is here is about collaborative driving so if you're going in saying i'm gonna watch what it's doing and i hope it's okay with those trucks that is stressful if you could say i'm driving along and it's helping me when i need it but i could pick every any lane i want that's a different experience so i think it's just you know to each their own but it's like it can be helpful in those when the trucks aren't there when the trucks are there you take control and don't wait for it to tell you to put your hands on the wheel it's about working with the system to make driving easier so it's going to take time and and us to adjust and understand these systems yeah i'm with you on stop and go i guess maybe i'll just have to uh spend a little more time with that collaborative driving so uh there's more online about some of these other systems we've tested and as soon as our own maki gets its software update isn't that cool that you can get a feature sent to your car these days and this isn't just ford or tesla this is so many manufacturers are doing this um as soon as ours gets that we're gonna do some real tests on it with jake and kelly and jensen at the track and and have some uh some more harder data on it so i think that that covers it i think about blue cruise for now um but if you want to be on talking cars you can send us a question a video question at talking cars at icloud.com it doesn't have to be a video question but we really like video questions uh here's one right now hey guys i'm bill from st louis my wife and i have a 2015 subaru forester with low mileage on it and we've loved this car ever since we got it the problem is that we unfortunately have to get rid of it we have a two-year-old child and we're expecting twins in april which means that we have to upgrade to a larger car my question for you is what would you recommend we look into it doesn't matter if it's new or used we just need your input thanks all right bill from st louis you love your forrester you've got twins on the way you're open to literally anything this is a great question um let's see monty what do you think so uh you know he said he liked his forester a lot so my initial thought was okay well step up to the next bigger thing in the super lineup the ascent but uh i personally don't like the way the ascent handles it's uh kind of has vague steering just really doesn't it's not that great of a handling vehicle and the reliability wasn't good for 2019 and 2020 uh and only average for 2021 so i would probably steer clear of that you can't really go wrong with the kia telluride or hyundai palace palisade if you can find them i mean they have great power trains um and you know really nicely done interiors with lots of features but let's just say bill you know likes driving for the sake of driving i might steer him you know toward a uh collaborative steering jake um yeah i might serum toward a mazda cx-9 because this is a three-row suv that handles pretty well among three-year-old suvs and has a really nice turbo four-cylinder engine and uh pretty darn good reliability for the last three years so i i might steer them that way that's um that's some that's some good collaborative steering jake what do you think i'm going to tell everyone why mike's wrong and so this is just this is why i wanted to go after jake yeah we're going to start having a segment where jake's where jake just says this is why mike's wrong it's going to be this is why it's wrong it's it's my whole show actually yeah um so so here's the thing um consumer reports is one of the few places that our entire way of of existing isn't selling cars and that's why you'll hear us say things like don't buy a car and i'm going to tell tell you don't buy a car keep your forester and the way you could do this is you'd have three car seats across the forester is not a small vehicle and actually if you look at our our child seat um recommendations you'll see see things like the the kiko key fit this is a very narrow um child seat you can put three across in the forester there's still plenty of room back there and and here's the thing to keep in mind right now is like one of the worst times ever to buy a car so don't feel like you have to go rush out i mean my mike you were right i mean the kia telluride is a terrific car but you know what you don't want to wait four months and pay over sticker right now to get that vehicle so i would say hold on to your forester you can make it work um the kids will fit yeah and i agree with jake uh but he's gonna take the easy way out first it's a first but no but i i have to say you wouldn't be asking us this i don't think bill would be asking us this question if there weren't a new car in that family's future so i'm i'm going to assume that there was something about you know that there has been a family decision that you know kids come with a lot of stuff these days i guess so it's you know so you it it might it might not all fit who knows maybe there's a dog maybe there's whatever maybe they're just bored of the forester um but i say don't fear the minivan there's an incredible crop of new minivans out there right now um i personally i i think if you if you had a subaru forester you probably liked the fact it was all-wheel drive um there is an all-wheel drive hybrid toyota sienna now out there um and it's you know something you should you should at least check out and again the tell your ride and the palisade are such great vehicles but when you look at our articles online that say you know the cars that are the worst values right now and this gets updated every couple of weeks it's always we haven't had to change the picture on the top of that article for like a year because it's you know 10 over msrp 15 over msrp uh and you know that's that's the problem with buying that car that everyone else wants so yeah if you have to buy a new car yeah maybe look at some look at some of the the kind of the oddballs look at a minivan which isn't as you know it's it's not as in demand right now so no matter where those three kids are sitting good luck to you bill and to the rest of your family and if you have a question for us send it to talking cars at icloud.com it's about all the time we have so thank you so much for talking cars with us this week we'll talk again soon [Music]

2022-01-17 11:08

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