Ford’s upping its driver-assist feature game with its new BlueCruise Level 2 hands-free system. Predictably, the Blue Oval’s CEO, Jim Farley, is a bit proud of his company’s latest feat. In fact, he even tweeted out, the below:
Innocent enough, right? Well, not to all. Although the term “Tesla” was not included in Farley’s tweet, many felt the tweet threw shade at the electric automaker, including—it seems—Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk
In the associated video, Ford explains how it sent 10 BlueCruise-equipped vehicles (five Ford F-150s and five Ford Mustang Mach-Es) on a 110,000-mile real-world road test across 37 states and five Canadian provinces. The goal? To test the hands-free driver-assist system releasing the subscription service (currently set at $600 for three years) to the masses later this year.
The rub toward Tesla seems to come from Farley’s use of the term “our customers don’t have to” in his tweet. You see, Tesla is known to release “beta” versions of its software, such as that for its Autopilot and Full Self Driving features, to customers, which essentially turns these users into testers of a still incomplete software set. The goal for Tesla is to collect data from these “beta” software users in order to continually improve the product. This practice, however, has sparked a debate about whether Tesla is prioritizing progress over public safety.
So where does Musk fit into this shade-throwing CEO soiree? Although he did not directly reply to Jim Farley’s original tweet, Musk later tweeted out a video clip from the movie Tommy Boy, featuring Chris Farley and David Spade driving an out-of-control car on the highway, implying Ford’s BlueCruise is a bit chaotic. The tweet received a mixed response by users, with some finding humor in Musk’s decision to clap back at Farley with a scene from the classic comedy movie and others expressing distaste in the Tesla CEO using a Chris Farley clip given the late comedian is a relative of the current Ford CEO.
