Ford is looking to find $2 billion in savings, and one of the ways it will attempt to achieve this goal is by culling features from new vehicles. First up on the chopping block? Active Park Assist, a way to guide a car into a parallel or perpendicular parking spot that required very little driver skill but much patience for anyone waiting behind the car using it.
The way you use it in a Ford is fairly simple. You press a button, flick on your indicator so the system knows which side of the car you’re looking for a spot on, then stop when it detects a spot. From there, pop it into neutral, cover the brake because this is a semi-autonomous system, hold the button, and it should attempt to guide the car into a parking spot. It can also help in getting something massive like an Expedition out of a tight parallel parking spot, operating much the same to exit a spot as it does to enter one.
Bloomberg reports that Ford COO Kumar Galhotra spoke at an investor conference about using connected car data to decide which features to cull, specifically citing Active Park Assist.
So one example is an auto-park feature that lets the customer parallel park automatically. Very, very few people are using it so we can remove that feature. It’s about $60 per vehicle.
While we don’t have data on how many customers use Active Park Assist, the claim of infrequent use seems plausible from what we’ve seen in press cars. The last time I used Active Park Assist, it didn’t actually work. By that, I mean that the car didn’t exactly end up in a spot per se, but instead halfway between two spots, which isn’t excellent. Add in the slow movements of the vehicle while using Active Park Assist, and it’s generally just easier to park the damn car yourself.
It’s astonishing to think that all the hardware and software needed to guide an F-150 into a parallel parking spot at the press of a button costs just $60 or so per car. You can’t even get a copy of Gran Turismo 5 for the PS5 for that money, although once you amortize that $60 per car across millions of vehicles sold per year, the costs add up. Galhotra reportedly claimed savings of $10 Million per year just by ditching this feature, as part of a larger push to find $2 Billion per year in savings across Ford.
So, will any of these cost reductions from feature cuts actually be passed onto the consumer? Given the language of “savings” used, don’t hold your breath. This is about Ford trying to find efficiencies, and one method for that is decontenting. On the one hand, fewer features for the same money may mean less stuff that can possibly break. On the other, it may mean getting less for your money.
(Photo credits: Ford)
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Interesting, we’ll see more ADAS getting dump in the future?
We can dream.
I’ve owned two Escapes with this feature. On the 2013, it was a great party trick and was super-useful for parallel-parking on the driver’s side. On the 2019 we have now, I don’t think I’ve used it once. Can’t imagine many people will miss it.
I had a boss who traded in on a Fusion Hybrid with the system the first year it was available, I think he maybe used it 3 times at most, and then only to show it off to people rather than for practical necessity. We once spent like an hour after lunch driving around town aimlessly so he could find a good spot to demonstrate it.
He’s also the guy who got one of the first iPods in 2001, enthusiastically showed it off to everyone in earshot, but only loaded two songs onto it before shoving it into a drawer and never using it again
*Looking at the 5.5th gen iPod next to me that I’m listening to*
Does this mean I’m going to suddenly have a hankering for parallel park assist in 2045?
Speaking as a veteran of parking in Europe’s ludicrously tight streets and parking garages and who can stuff a Suburban into a fairly tight spot my attitude about parking assist is, quite predictably, “get off my lawn”. It’s just another stupid nanny device to have break. I think it’s a pretty smart decision by Ford, although the proposal made by another commenter about killing it for Ford and using it exclusively on Lincolns could make sense..
Personally I think this is one of those features they should make standard on Lincolns and leave off of Fords. Ford needs to do a better job of running Lincoln like an actual luxury brand with meaningful differences between their Ford counterparts.
Maybe they should look into creating a new mid price brand to take over that price segment and allow Lincoln to push further upscale?
Yeah… and maybe name it after one of the planets… like Venus!
Or, maybe a Ford family member, like Benson
That system worked great in my 2018 Flex and I never thought it was that slow, but that’s just me I guess.
Uh-oh, hope they don’t start going back to the Tesla route, already don’t like the Mach-e for putting a bunch of things in the screen, they don’t need to head that way with all the cars.
I had a rental car with this feature, thought I’d try it out in front of the restaurant where I was grabbing dinner. Not only did it take absolutely forever, it ended up sticking into the road at about a 30 degree angle with the other side nowhere near the curb. Was nice and embarrassing when I stepped out (after reparking my damn self) and realized most of the seats in the bar were overlooking the street, meaning half the place just saw “me” do a horrendous parking job on what was a very large, easy spot.
Good riddance.
I tried it in a rental Ford once. For some odd reason it decided to floor it in reverse even though there was a car very clearly existing. Never used it after that.
This is what you get when they try to save money by hiring programmers that don’t actually know how to parallel park…
I have one of these systems from another manufacturer and I tried it out exactly once. You have to first find and enable it, accept a message from the lawyers, drive past a space to let it measure, push a button, change gears, push a button, back in, push more buttons, change gears again. It took 10x longer than just parking the car myself and at the end it left the car more than 2 feet from the curb.
After all the cars that had lined up waiting for me were finally able to get past, I pulled it out quickly and re-parked it myself closer to the curb in about 5 seconds. Not because I’m some kind of parking ninja, but simply because I already have the basic fucking skills to operate a motor vehicle.
“Not because I’m some kind of parking ninja,”
OBVIOUSLY you’re just being modest…
Haha you’re right. I actually majored in parking in college, then went on to become a five-time North American parking champion.
I had it in a 2014 Cadillac and I liked it. I know how to parallel but it was nice for tight spots. It worked well and was definitely faster than someone who doesn’t know how to parallel.
I’ve never owned a car with such a feature…and have never encountered a situation where I wished I did. I rarely parallel park these days, and I admit I’m probably not the greatest at it–I usually end up leaving a little extra space between my car and the curb. Even so, no big deal. I just reposition if I have to. I know my mom’s X5 has it though. Even with her neck and back problems that make it hard for her to turn her head, she’s never used it. I’ve never met anyone who has mentioned using such a feature on their car. For the most part it seems like a gimmick–it sounds cool and all, but there’s not a lot of situations where people actually use it in the real world.
I think of the Tesla (and others, probably) and its feature that will pull it into or out of a tight space for you. Thing is, I have never parked anywhere so tight I couldn’t get into or out of my car. Not even in my old two door GTI, with its long doors. Maybe other people encounter such situations, but I never have.
I don’t park in spaces that tight because if I can’t get out of my own car then the person I’m parking next to can’t get into theirs. It seems pretty rude, and besides – it’s likely to earn you a door ding or paint scratches from the rivets on somebody’s jeans trying to squeeze through.
“The savings will be passed on to you, the shareholders, as dividends.”
A small consolation to any Ford stock holders, F is less than half the value it was in Jan 2022. The dividend is like 10cents per stock.
Maybe they will invest it in R&D?
If I had my morning coffee, I think I would’ve done a spit take. Besides it’s like 7, 8 weeks from April 1st if you’re going to say anything like that. R&D…heh.
Now if it could do a powered 180 degree J-turn from the other side of the street while sliding perfectly into a parallel spot… Well, that I would pay for.
The Elwood parking assist
My wife’s Escape has this for both straight-in parking and parallel parking. We played with the parallel bit when we first got it just so we knew how to use it by setting up our other cars on the street and trying it out. Never have tried the straight-in bit. Haven’t used either since that first day and have forgotten how to use it.
Now, about that $60 – will it be deducted from the MSRP? Hahahhahahahhahhahahaaa!!!
Not at all, the MSRP doesn’t change and Ford gains $60 of profit on the sale.
If you had been able to pay for the feature by itself, I’m sure that Ford would have charged you at least $500.
They already cut enough corners! This is going to be great. Of course, if much of the wussy safety shit wasn’t mandated and they ditched that and touchscreens, I’d buy another Ford.
Conspicuously absent from all press releases and news is the amount Ford spend on recalls in the past 12 months. I’d wager getting their recall rate down even by half would likely take care of about half their savings goal. Of course this is pure speculation, but it really does seem like Ford announces a 6-figure vehicle recall at least monthly, and always with hardware issues that can’t possibly be cheap to fix.
THIS
These parking assist systems were WAY up on the list of things we could do, but nobody asked whether we should.
Especially parallel parking. The one thing 90% of drivers seek to avoid doesn’t mean that the car should do it. It means it shouldn’t be on your driver’s exam.
Not on the exam in Florida!
“…It means it shouldn’t be on your driver’s exam.”
You should see the numbers of people near me who park with a wheel up on the curb.
Our driver’s exams in the US are so basic anyway – they should be more stringent, not less.
It’s kinda the same here… but I’d rather them test for the things that are actually safety related. Like driving in lanes correctly. Spending 1/4 of the time a test takes on parallel parking is just wasted time.
“Spending 1/4 of the time a test takes on parallel parking is just wasted time.”
I believe that establishing that an individual can safely handle their vehicle without causing property or human damage is important – whether it’s moving in traffic, moving through a narrow gap such as in an alley or between oncoming traffic and a double-parked truck, maneuvering in a busy downtown with pedestrians, or placing it in between two parked cars and a curb.
So let’s make the test longer and more stringent (like other countries do) rather than dumb it down even more than it already is.
I agree! Parallel parking doesn’t do that.
This is the way modern tech operates. Create a solution to a problem that nobody really has or has such a low barrier that everyone ignores it, and market it incessantly until big corporations pick up on it because they think it’ll keep them relevant in the public eye. See also Internet Of Things appliances, Bluetooth enabled “smart” lightbulbs, and dedicated voice assistants.
I have the parking system in my Ram 1500 (it came bundled with the better radio, adaptive cruise, surround view camera and a few other things). I can confirm that I’ve used this feature less than once per year. It works really well for the actual parking (it will do parallel parking or back into a perpendicular spot), but the real difficulty is that it doesn’t look for parking lines. Instead you have to find a space between two cars. If you are in a parking lot that is that full, usually it’s a fight to get a spot and you don’t have time to select it, flip the indicator, and let the system maybe find the spot. If it’s a parking spot with a lot of spaces, I usually park further away from everyone, since it’s a big vehicle and I take up most of the spot.
So overall, it’s very unused on my truck.
My 6MT SS has a parallel park system, and it’s hard to imagine a bigger waste than a parking system that does nothing besides turn the wheel for you.
That’s the part that people struggle with. I mean, it’s a waste for me and anyone that can actually parallel park, but if you’ve ever taught anyone how to do it, you’d know the steering bit is the trickiest bit.
For sure, but at least with an auto you can just take your foot off the brake and let the car creep while it steers itself in. You’re still actively driving a manual transmission.
Incidentally, I wonder what the percentage of people who can drive a manual but can’t parallel park is. I can’t imagine it’s very high.
WTF!? How does that work? Do you have to work the clutch, gas and brake while the car tries to steer?
Yup.
Yes.
On the one hand, I’m glad your MT car isn’t decontented, but on the other, what a strange and (sounds) awkward choice to include…
And the system is slow. Generally, anyone who is uncomfortable parallel parking will be able to avoid it in all but the most pressing musical parking spaces situation, where the system would be too slow to use and you end up in a Seinfeld episode where someone pulls in nose first to take the spot.
I have this. I used it once when doing the test drive, haven’t touched it since.
The Hyundai /Tesla version that you can do remotely would be better for really tight spots. This you have to hold a button from the driver’s seat the whole time.
I’m all for Ford cutting costs, that being said saving $60 per car won’t save you from dealer markups.
Also there are a ton of other things Ford should cut from their cars.
Ford isn’t doing this to be able to sell you a cheaper car. They are doing it to increase their profitability. So don’t expect this $60 to get passed on to the dealer, and even if it did–like you said–it wouldn’t get passed on from them to you.
I understand, but with inflation, and obscenely high costs of living Ford will eventually have to start passing the cost savings on to the consumer or move out of the consumer market entirely and just make commercial and low volume performance vehicles.
In what category is Ford’s pricing out of line with any other manufacturer?
They’re not, that’s the point, cars are too damn expensive.
At this point all the other systems they throw on new cars use the same sensors, so I’m not sure how much there actually is to save. Toyota had it too on the top Prius v as well, not sure about other models but seems like they never saw fit to continue it. I remember it was considered such a gee-whiz thing at the time, but now that goes to summon and smart parking assist features.
Any time I tried to use one of these systems in a controlled environment it seemed to not work either, or maybe the conditions weren’t “real” enough, so to actually get comfortable with it I guess you have to use it in the wild which is a lot of trust to place in the system.
I’m willing to bet that 80% of the people who have this on their car have no idea it’s even there.
And that 80% of them never actually park their vehicle in a spot that’s not in a lot or a garage…
I’ll bet it’s higher than that. And of the ones that do know, they don’t use it.
If you actually know how to drive/park, you don’t need this…can we also get rid of all the unnecessary junk too? Like all the million screens and nannies
Imagine how much they’d save if they used double DIN radios and three dial HVAC controls.
Yeah, I love a simple setup…also thought it was the stupidest thing ever to get rid of the single or double DIN standard
I am totally down with removing gimmicky features that work poorly IF it results in more reliable cheaper cars.
But it won’t be cheaper in this case. Ford is passing the savings onto themselves. But it might be more reliable. Then again, if you never use it, who cares how reliable it is?
fair point on reliability-it does still bug me when things dont’ work even if rarely used and arguably hurts resale value but you do make a good point it’s hard to argue that this system being crappy really effects overall reliability.
I do think there’s an argument that a manufacturer building simpler cars could put more money and time into quality and execution if they spent less on gimmicky options. Sadly in the real world I don’t think this is what will happen and they would just pocket the savings as you suggest.
Decontent the F350 by removing lowbeam headlights as everybody seems to drive with the highs on
All Fords are that way
hahaha
Might as well remove all the headlights because people seem to think that factory headlights are so inferior that they need to install one of those LED light bars instead to blind people too.
Or just move to Florida, because here, DRL’s are considered headlights, and if you attempt to notify the person that they indeed don’t have any headlights on by flashing your highs, you’re just regarded as an aggressive asshole and get flipped the bird, which you can clearly see because their dash is so damn bright because it’s in daytime mode that it illuminates the entire cabin.
I dont know if its a Ford thing but recently I noticed newer Ford vehicles, their headlights are so bright and aligned pointing too high. Not on GM, their are the opposite, they point too low lol
When your headlamps are 4′ off the ground – there are no low beams.
Plot twist: They already did and nobody noticed.
In related news, BMW removed turn signals in 2017.