Intelligent Cruise Control and Lane Keeping experience on a 2500 mile trip

[dweller]

It seems like there’s an assumption that BlueCruise is going to be the same as Co-Pilot Assist but now hands free. There’s more to BlueCruise, though. Co-Pilot Assist overall is a pretty “dumb” system. There’s obviously a lot of tech but in reality all it can do to navigate is follow lines. BlueCruise will actually follow routes, so it should know where it’s supposed to go rather than following a line. It should make a big difference. Wish I could have afforded BlueCruise, I think it’ll be neat. 502a was just right outside my budget.

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[xtraman122]

It seems like there’s an assumption that BlueCruise is going to be the same as Co-Pilot Assist but now hands free. There’s more to BlueCruise, though. Co-Pilot Assist overall is a pretty “dumb” system. There’s obviously a lot of tech but in reality all it can do to navigate is follow lines. BlueCruise will actually follow routes, so it should know where it’s supposed to go rather than following a line. It should make a big difference. Wish I could have afforded BlueCruise, I think it’ll be neat. 502a was just right outside my budget.

Where have you heard that BlueCruise will follow routes and make turns? All I’ve seen is hands free “cruising”. Given the only roads it can even be activated on are mapped portions of straight-line highway, that wouldn’t match up really with being able to follow a route.

 

[EF150man]

So we just took a trip from San Diego to Colorado to drop my daughter off in Denver for college. Was approximately 2500 mile roundtrip (Thanks to the i70 being closed on the way out due to a landslide and closed on the way back due to flash floods). I was the only driver (Not letting the wife or daughter drive the truck yet lol) so needed to use cruise so I didn't kill my leg and back over that long of a drive. Ran about 1800 of the 2500 miles under Intelligent Cruise (Wish I had the beta for Blue Cruise...) and found it overall to be a very good system. It handled most driving situations well but it also leaves me thinking we are still a ways away from autonomous driving (or even hands free Blue Cruise). Here are the main issues I had:

1 - It does not consistently handle off-ramps well. It see's the line on the outside of the lane going off to the right and doesn't know which line to follow and half the time it ends lane keeping because it doesn't know what to do.
2 - Same thing goes for poorly marked lane lines. System cant handle it and ends lane keeping.
3 - Same thing for construction areas where lane lines have been moved but the old ones are still partially visible.
4 - It is not graceful when it slows down due to cars going slower then your set speed in front of you. It can be very jerky.
5 - Having to give it a nudge on the wheel so it knows your there still. My wife's VW has a touch sensitive wheel so as long as your touching it your fine.

Now I know that these seem like fairly obvious situations where lane keeping will have issues, but that's the point. When we go to Blue Cruise and the system hits those type of roads you better be ready to grab the wheel quick or your going to have major issues. Seems like we have a lot of major programming to go to be ready for all of these situations. Hopefully they capture the issues and use it to make the driving cloud smarter. Still saved my leg and back so I'm happy overall with it.

Thanks for posting this. I was just going to post something very very similar after a long trip I took. All of your points are exactly correct but the system is still wonderful and I am glad I have it. Of course it’s not going to be perfect but if it works effectively to keep people in the game of driving, but I think it achieves its goal.

 

[DavidB]

I have similar experience. I find that I have a light touch on the steering wheel, so I have to constantly bump the wheel to keep lane keeping active. Ford should have a user defined sensitivity adjustment for this. Also, the braking for upcoming traffic slowdown is delayed too long for my comfort and I generally need to apply the brakes sooner than Ford braking suggests. My wife's outback does this job very well. I rarely have to touch the brakes in traffic. I drove many times from Central Florida to Atlanta, on the interstate, and only had to touch my brakes 2 or 3 times, the entire 7 hours. Once again a user defined sensitivity setting for this would be best. Something more defined than the car length adjustment.

 

[F-150 Prius]

Agree about intelligent cruise. Not ready in current setup. Had to turn mine off. very Unsafe when you have it set to say 6 over in a 70 zone and it see’s a 55 somewhere way off the road (such as a exit) and it slams on breaks to slow to 61 from 76 With traffic flying up your …!

Mine will decide it sees a 60 zone in a 65 (when co-pilot is set to +7, so 72mph +/-) and it decels like lifting your foot off the accelerator, which induces re-gen braking, but not "slams" … though I do grumble and reflexively push down the accelerator and press "SET +" to get back to 72. I haven't figured out what "60" it sees. I suspect it has some erroneous gps lock and thinks on my adjacent ramp; it happens on the freeway shortly after an underpass … not that the underpass is more than 45 … so … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[F-150 Prius]

It seems like there’s an assumption that BlueCruise is going to be the same as Co-Pilot Assist but now hands free. There’s more to BlueCruise, though. Co-Pilot Assist overall is a pretty “dumb” system. There’s obviously a lot of tech but in reality all it can do to navigate is follow lines. BlueCruise will actually follow routes, so it should know where it’s supposed to go rather than following a line. It should make a big difference. Wish I could have afforded BlueCruise, I think it’ll be neat. 502a was just right outside my budget.

I don't think I've seen Ford publish a feature set, but the technology in BlueCruise can drive "on-ramp to off-ramp" including lane changes. Whether it can sync into Nav and pick the off-ramp for you, I dunno. The high precision GPS data allows these systems to pick the correct lane in an intersection, to know where and how to take the pick-up/drop-off lane(s) at a hotel or public building, school, airport, etc. There's a laundry list of functionality to be implemented (e.g. reading "beacons" to know about an intersection, monitoring for emergency vehicle transponders, receiving over the air cellular data to know about situational conditions like road closed, etc.) How much of that Ford puts into the first few releases, I dunno. If Tesla is any measure, they will drop single features to keep the users amused rather than one big update then a year of bug fixes.

 

[F-150 Prius]

It just occurred to me that FORScan might be able to modify BlueCruise … : )

BlueCruise will be invaluable to me straight out of the box, just going handsfree without 15-30 second nags will be luxury for interstate freeway trips.

 

[gadiedrick]

After read'n through everyone's comments & the fact that I'll soon be 77 years old, I am not gonna let some computer chip drive my Powerboost F-150. We will continue to drive our vehicle & not concern ourselves with the adaptive cruise or the lane centering. I will continue to be technically challenged & respect those who willingly utilize all the terrific available technology @ their disposal. I don't need technology to tell that my fuel door is not closed. Happy trails to all & hope'n you n'joy your '21 F-150 as much as we do minus some of the options we've chosen to not utilize. 'Nuf said.

 

[Oxford_Powerboost]

I have similar experience. I find that I have a light touch on the steering wheel, so I have to constantly bump the wheel to keep lane keeping active. Ford should have a user defined sensitivity adjustment for this. Also, the braking for upcoming traffic slowdown is delayed too long for my comfort and I generally need to apply the brakes sooner than Ford braking suggests. My wife's outback does this job very well. I rarely have to touch the brakes in traffic. I drove many times from Central Florida to Atlanta, on the interstate, and only had to touch my brakes 2 or 3 times, the entire 7 hours. Once again a user defined sensitivity setting for this would be best. Something more defined than the car length adjustment.

My current car has something like that - it has an adaptive cruise reaction speed setting for “slow, normal, fast.” I find I like slow or normal. Otherwise it is always running up on people and braking late…in fairness that is how most people drive around here lol.
Maybe Ford could do an OTA update to give us something similar. It is a nice feature to have

 

[imnuts]

My opinion on the adaptive cruise, for normal following distance, I like the 2 bar setting. I find that starts slowing me down much sooner than I want for lane changes though, so I have been driving at the 1 bar distance. If traffic is actually stopped though, the reaction distance of 4 bars (max distance) is best. I'm sure the system will get improved with time, but it seems there's no one setting that works for everything for me.

 

[Dumore]

I had a long straight road with relatively wide lanes on a recent 1500 mile trip. Lane centering would oscillate the truck from one side of the lane to the other at a regular rate. In construction zones with tight lanes, it did really well at nailing the center of the lane. It still insisted on receiving an occasional jab to keep the warning from appearing. I found it easier to steer manually on the straight stretches.

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