Ford Co-pilot Active Assist reviews

[JJ_Tex]

Unfortunately due to a wreck (everyone is okay), we are down a car and I need to accelerate my buying of a truck to the next 30 days or so. That obviously takes the CT, Lightning, or any other EV off the table for this purchase.

I've been looking at Ford and am intrigued by their Active Assist 2.0. For driver assist packages, it appears to be a distant 2nd to Tesla but fairly solid at least for highway driving and a fairly inexpensive add at $600 for 3 years. Similar packages from GM and Toyota are not yet released.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the Active Assist 2.0? And yes, I already know that Tesla is way more technically advanced.

I'm eyeing a 2021 Ford F150 Hybrid Lariat package or higher, as long as it has the Active Assit 2.0 package. Any other thoughts on alternatives that would have good gas mileage and have a good technology package?

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[jhogan2424]

I was hoping someone would reply to this. I too am interested.

 

[Ogre]

I'm not sure what Active Assist is. Is that like a subset of "Blue Cruise"?

I do know Blue Cruise is only available on a few highways and no surface streets if that helps. Make sure you check the maps before you pull the trigger.

 

[jhogan2424]

The Ford active assist i believe is a beefed up collision avoidance system but I haven’t had the time to research to it yet. There is something like a first gen and a 2.0 I think. I ran across it briefly when looking at fords a couple months ago.

 

[JJ_Tex]

My understanding is that it is all called Ford Copilot 360 Assist 2.0. That package has the basics you would expect like adaptive cruise control, speed sign recognition, evasive steering/braking, and lane centering.

Then they have the similarly named Ford Copilot 360 Active Assist 2.0 prep package, which includes the driver camera and other hardware to allows you to use additional features like BlueCruise (hands free self driving, but on a limited number of highways currently) and Active Park Assist (self parking for parallel and perpendicular spots).

There just is not a lot of information out about it, and I think I know more than the guys at the dealer since I had to educate one about the "Active" part that I wanted.

Between low inventories and inflated prices, this is a terrible time to be truck shopping, but I'm trying to make the best of it.

 

[Ogre]

Here I thought Tesla's driver assist offerings and terminology was confusing.

It may not be a great time to buy a truck, but it was a very good time to sell mine.

 

[Crissa]

Yeah, when anyone complains about Tesla I blink and wonder, 'have you even looked at the others?'

-Crissa

 

[rr6013]

Unfortunately due to a wreck
<Snip>

JJ, it’s time to get a return of the pickup lost, not a token of future losing — lease one.

It is uncanny valley(Ford Copilot 360 Active Assist 2.0 BlueCruise etc…). Tesla’s Autopilot and FSD are at the bleeding edge of automation / robotics and have been on it longer; as naming conventions clarify.

The industry is in shock(Porsche), surprised(F) and delusional(T) even as to how to transition much less what. Tesla’s slogging through its production delay due to construction, process and environmental blocking that the others haven’t even factored yet.

Global warming didn’t just catch us out, it was in uncanny valley — well — no longer! Imperative it’s time to act with what we have, do what we can with time remaining before it all wildfires, all monsoons , all drought all-the-time.

Elon got global warming; lofted Cybertruck capable of fueling from sun rays anywhere, launched Starlink connectivity everywhere and built Starship, a ready ride somewhere fast - now a national security development set piece.

Who knows? Lease thru the uncanny valley. Elon’s grand design is emerging over everyone. Hold on to that ticket!

 

[JJ_Tex]

Hold on to that ticket!

Thanks. Leasing doesn't work that well with us since we stagger our cars so we only have 1 car payment at any given time (pay for it for 4 years, drive it for another 4 while my wife gets a new car).

I'm certainly not giving up my spot in line for the CT, and I'm still eagerly watching the morning video updates of the Austin factory. Its just that my next purchase will unfortunately not be a CT like I originally hoped.

 

[JJ_Tex]

As a quick update, I just bought my F150 Platinum hybrid with the technology package I wanted. I missed out on the pre-release of Ford Blue Cruise, but have all of the hardware in the truck ready for it to become live.

I also just got back from vacation, where we rented a model Y so I got to compare the features on the Tesla and F150 within a week of each other. Both are fun to drive and have a lot of cool technology features that will continue to improve and mature.

IMO, the adaptive cruise and lane-keeping on both cars were impressive, but there is still work to do. My biggest complaint on both the Ford and Tesla was that the lane-keeping assist does not react well when the roads change from 1 lane to multiple lanes. As the road transitioned to 2 lanes from 1, the systems tried to keep you in the center of the transition lane then jerks you into a lane when the 2 lane stripes pick up. A human obviously would handle that situation better and start to pick a lane before you are within the lane markings.

I also had an issue with the Tesla sensing a car next to me coming into my lane when the car was actually centered in their lane and stopped at a stop light. On the screen their stopped car was shown as coming into my lane and then dancing all over the screen, which caused unnecessary braking and swerving. Maybe it was a bad sensor on the Tesla and I'm sure the Ford will have its opportunities, but that was a bit concerning to have your car freak out like that in what should have been a normal and easy approach to a stoplight. It almost caused me to get rear-ended by the guy behind me since the Tesla stopped me abruptly and ~4 car lengths shorter than expected.

The Tesla beat the Ford in recognizing sharp turns and slowing down to accommodate. Both slowed down, but the Tesla sensed those turns much sooner than the Ford and therefore it was a much smoother slow down ahead of the turn.

The Tesla also had better technology, but not as big of a gap as I was expecting. I am expecting a much bigger gap in Bluecruise vs FSD, since the Ford is limited to pre-programmed highways. I'll post an update when I actually get the software update and get a chance to use Blue Cruise.

Hopefully this helps future buyers of either Ford or Tesla.

 

[Ogre]

My biggest complaint on both the Ford and Tesla was that the lane-keeping assist does not react well when the roads change from 1 lane to multiple lanes.

I'm hoping when they release (if??) the next FSD version, it will improve Autopilot as well and smooth out some of these issues.

I am expecting a much bigger gap in Bluecruise vs FSD, since the Ford is limited to pre-programmed highways.

I almost never travel on the BlueCruise routes. Even where I do, there are big sweeping curves I suspect would skunk it up. It's hard for me to even consider this a feature when their own marketing suggests it's worthless to me.



Thanks for the mini review. Very interesting to hear.

 

[Crissa]

The lane-centering issue is fixed in the next update. The issue with over-avoiding near cars is fixed in the FSD update.

It sounds like the Tesla hadn't gotten the newest updates yet... the vision update should have dealt with those, Updates are doled out slowly across the fleet so there's no congestion at the servers and some users avoid letting them update frequently as well.

-Crissa

 

[JJ_Tex]

The lane-centering issue is fixed in the next update. The issue with over-avoiding near cars is fixed in the FSD update.

It sounds like the Tesla hadn't gotten the newest updates yet... the vision update should have dealt with those, Updates are doled out slowly across the fleet so there's no congestion at the servers and some users avoid letting them update frequently as well.

-Crissa

Good point. We were in BFE Montana, with limited cell phone services the entire trip. Not the best environment to receive over-the-air updates.

 

[Ogre]

The lane-centering issue is fixed in the next update.

This might be fixed in mine. I have it set to aggressive updates and I haven't noticed this lately. Hard to notice when something annoying fails to happen.

We were in BFE Montana, with limited cell phone services the entire trip. Not the best environment to receive over-the-air updates.

Make sure to join your car to your wifi network and keep it parked in wifi range. I believe it updates more aggressively over wifi.

 

[Crissa]

Yeah, but the rental agency might not be so judicious as to have a wifi for the cars.

-Crissa

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