Technological gadgets are taking an increasingly important place in vehicles over the years. Whether it is autonomous driving or driver assistance, they are all now part of the automotive landscape. Moreover, Ford introduced a system more than 10 years ago that allows the driver to parallel park his vehicle, automatically. However, according to certain data collected by Ford, very few people would use this feature, which could push the American manufacturer to remove it from its offering.
A gadget rendered useless?
Launched more than a decade ago, the automated parallel parking feature was a point of pride at Ford. This was a feature which was no longer only reserved for luxury vehicles, but which could also be found on board a Ford Focus, for example. However, with the arrival of connected vehicle technology, the American manufacturer is able to collect various data on the use of vehicles by their owner.
This allowed Ford to notice that the automated parallel parking feature was almost not used by people whose vehicles were equipped with it. So much so that the manufacturer is considering abandoning this functionality which seems rather useless. At least that’s what Kumar Galhotra, chief operating officer at Ford, reportedly said during a conference call with analysts, according to Automotive News.
Savings in sight
The fact that people don’t typically use the automated parallel parking feature is one of the reasons Ford cited for its planned discontinuation. However, Ford’s director of operations also said that removing this feature from vehicles would deliver large-scale savings. In fact, the latter claimed that this function cost $60 per vehicle. This amount may seem ridiculously low on a $50,000 vehicle. On the other hand, if we transpose this figure to a global scale, this represents savings of around $10 million per year for the American manufacturer.
For the moment, according to the information collected, only this functionality would be abandoned. However, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other gadgets or functions in Ford vehicles that aren’t used disappear soon. It remains to be seen which ones!
