Ford is discontinuing the electronic driving assistant, which no one uses anyway

Ford can save about $60 per car in production costs by eliminating an electronic system. A driving assistant that, according to the manufacturer, no one uses anyway.

We would like to see a study on how many electronic devices in the car are actually used by the driver. We assume that the number is disappointing.

Comments from Ford CEO

We spoke to Mercedes’ head of technology about it at the IAA in Munich, but he didn’t want to say anything about it. However, he admitted that the manufacturers know the numbers exactly.

This is also evident from comments from the Ford boss. During a conference, Kumar Galhotra said that almost no one uses Parking Assist and therefore the feature can be removed.

Semi-autonomous parallel parking

A car with parking assistant can parallel park itself and only requires a driver to keep their foot on the brake. In practice, we believe it is quicker and more convenient to simply park yourself.

10 million dollars annually

And apparently other drivers think so too. “Very, very few people use it [Park Assist]says Galhotra, “so we can safely remove the feature. That saves us $60 per car.”

That doesn’t sound like much, but on an annual basis it would save Ford about $10 million. Ford and Toyota were the first manufacturers with parking assistants. Almost all new cars have it these days.