Ford CEO Takes A Dig At Tesla While Teasing Own Self-Driving Tech

Ford Motor Co. F CEO Jim Farley took a dig at Tesla Inc. TSLA and its CEO Elon Musk while trumpeting his own company’s self-driving technology.

What Happened: Farley tweeted on Wednesday about Ford’s hands-free highway driving technology, saying, “BlueCruise! We tested it in the real world, so our customers don’t have to.”

Farley took aim at Elon Musk-led Tesla as the electric vehicle maker has rolled out its self-driving technology to customers in development stages, as first noted by CNBC.

Ford said in a statement that the 2021 Ford F-150 and the 2021 Mustang Mach-E battery electric vehicle can receive BlueCruise later this year through over-the-air software update, after more than 500,000 miles of development testing. 

The feature, said to be Ford's answer to Tesla’s Autopilot, allows a driver to operate truly hands-free on prequalified sections of divided highways called Hands-Free Blue Zones.

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Why It Matters: Tesla’s Full Self Driving (FSD) beta is a software package that is being used by a small set of public testers. The FSD beta was previously expanded to about 2,000 owners, but Musk said in March that Tesla is revoking access to the feature to drivers who did not pay sufficient attention to the road.

Reuters reported in March that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA has opened 27 investigations into crashes of Tesla vehicles, 23 of which remain active. Federal investigators are looking into whether Tesla’s driver assistance technology contributed to the crashes.

Last week, Elon Musk tweeted Version 9, the next big update to the software, will be ready soon. Musk said this version will be all vision-based, and not even include radar in the sensor suite used for self-driving. Currently, Tesla's self-driving software uses a combination of camera and radar data to make driving decisions.

See also: How to Buy Ford Stock

Price Action: Ford shares closed 0.3% higher on Wednesday at $12.24, while Tesla shares closed almost 4% lower at $732.23.

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