The all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E GT SUV is displayed at the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los … [+]
The 2024 Mustang Mach-E GT offers — aside from outrageous speed — an upside surprise with Ford’s BlueCruise semi-autonomous driver assist technology.
As quick background, I tend to focus on ADAS, or Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, on my EV test drives. In this review, I will focus on the 2024 Mustang Mach-E GT’s ADAS. I just finished test driving the Ford electric SUV in the Mojave desert where I could put BlueCruise through its paces. (Recent testing I’ve done also includes General Motors Super Cruise Gen 2 and Tesla’s latest Full Self Driving update).
BlueCruise part 1: BlueCruise is primarily designed as a hands-free driver assist technology for major highways. So, in Los Angeles on highways mapped by BlueCruise such as 5, 405, 118, 101, and 10, the car will drive itself without your hands on the steering wheel: adaptive cruise control does the braking and acceleration and BlueCruise does the steering. This worked very well for me on Interstate 5 and Highway 14, handling most of the highway driving, aided by the automatic lane change.
Bluecruise part 2: Interstate 5 and Highway 14 north will take you to the Mojave Desert, where I had plenty of opportunity to test Bluecruise in off-highway mode.The off-highway mode is crucial because it means that you can rely on BlueCruise to work on lesser roads — which aren’t mapped — like the ruler-edge-straight two-lane routes that crisscross the Mojave desert. Essentially, this mode is a lane-centering technology (not unlike what is offered on the Toyota Bz4x and Subaru Solterra — which I’ve also tested). But a very good one. In this case, it did an able job of driving the car for me on unmapped Mojave roads. (For a more detailed look at the off-highway mode see the video below.) This mode is a major differentiator between BlueCruise and General Motors Super Cruise Gen 2. While GM’s Super Cruise Gen 2 offers a much larger map than Super Cruise Gen 1, it does not offer a lane-centering technology for lesser roads where Super Cruise doesn’t work. Think of lane-centering as ADAS without mapping. The beauty of lane-centering is that it can be used virtually anywhere.
The upshot: I was very impressed with BlueCruise as it offers both mapped and unmapped ADAS. While BlueCruise is not Tesla FSD, it offers a high level of semi-autonomous driver assistance at prices below FSD. BlueCruise comes with three months of complimentary service and monthly rates thereafter are $75 versus $99 for FSD. (Update: correction — Tesla FSD is $99 per month not $199 as originally stated.)
What else: (1) Speed: the Mach-E GT is incredibly fast and does 0-60 even faster than the Lucid Air Pure, which I test drove a few months ago. (2) Range: it has decent range for a high-performance EV at 270 miles and delivers fast CCS charge times. (3) It’s an SUV: another thing that surprised me was that it is a true SUV — not a sedan like the traditional Mustang. That means lots of room. (4) High quality: Very well screwed together. (5) OTA updates: Ford is committed to OTA updates. That means it’s committed to improving BlueCruise, which is something that competing legacy carmakers are not always consistent about with their ADAS technologies.
Ford Mustang Mach-E GT in Lancaster, Calif. in the Mojave Desert.
