It is not news that the holiday season brings many long drives, mostly for families to celebrate and enjoy the holidays together. At that time, we can expect many Ford users to use their BlueCruise to make the trip more relaxing for the driver. Ford gathers data about BlueCruise usage, and this blog from Benna Ford shares some of what they found.
First, one might think that the days before and after Thanksgiving or Christmas have the highest levels of BlueCruise usage. But in 2023, the most significant driving holiday weekend was actually Labor Day, followed by Thanksgiving and then Christmas. During last Thanksgiving, BlueCruise usage rose by 2.2% compared to non-holiday travel. While that may not seem like a large increase, the data also shows that BlueCruise usage was utilized for longer-distance trips. This indicates that while most BlueCruise owners often use the system for their daily commute, they trust this innovative hands-free system to take charge of their extended holiday driving when the holidays arrive. They also calculate that over 3 million miles were BlueCruise operated across the two weekends, bookending the Thanksgiving holiday. From Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day, the average usage was 13.9 miles. That represents 203 hours of relaxed driving.
Such data may seem to confirm the obvious, but Ford finds it useful. Most notably, it led the company to offer BlueCruise service for single-month periods in addition to single- or multi-year subscriptions. This allows those who might otherwise not see the need for the service in their regular daily routine to take advantage of BlueCruise for specific holidays or vacation trips.
It should be noted that all of this data is fully anonymous and is only collected from BlueCruise customers who have opted to share it with Ford.
In addition to collecting data about when BlueCruise is being used and for how long, it also shows where it is being used. In 2023, the states where it was used most are:
- California
- Texas
- Florida
- Michigan
- Ohio
- North Carolina
- New York
- Virginia
- Washington
- Arizona
They have also tracked that the most traveled highway with BlueCruise users last Thanksgiving was I-75 through Florida and Georgia. This is in contrast to the most used highway during non-holidays, I-96 in Michigan, which Ford suspects is the commuting of its own employees.
Each year, Ford offers BlueCruise on more model lines and trim levels of those lines, enabling relaxed cross-country driving to more and more drivers. If you have a BlueCruise-equipped vehicle but haven’t activated it, try it out for your next holiday or road trip. You can activate it directly from the FordPass smartphone app. If you don’t have BlueCruise but are interested in seeing it operate, visit Benna Ford and test drive It before your next long trip.
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