Of all the contentious subjects in the car industry right now, the most contentious is probably subscriptions. Since people are already balancing subscription services everywhere else, it’s not a fun thing to discover in your car, too. They represent a potential revenue generator for car companies, so they’re continuing to investigate the idea. A new take on them comes to us from Ford with a patent that could make subscriptions less onerous, even if it doesn’t solve the main issues.
Your Subscription Wouldn’t Be Restricted To One Car
What distinguishes Ford’s subscription idea is that it won’t be tied to a car, but rather to an account. So, in the same way that you can login to Netflix on compatible devices anywhere in the world, you could effectively do the same with a car. If you rent a Ford or Lincoln that has subscription-locked features, say, a new version of BlueCruise, you would be able to access that feature using your existing account.
It would also even allow for simultaneous logins across multiple cars, just like a service such as Netflix allows for a few multiple devices. If you own two or three Ford models, you would only have to pay the one subscription fee for all of them. Ford even suggests sharing your account with close family or friends. Odds are this would still be limited by however many vehicles Ford permits at a time, but it’s still a nice thought.
Even more interesting is how Ford suggests this idea of moving your subscription across multiple cars could even work across totally different automakers. Taking the idea of BlueCruise, you could potentially use the same subscription in a rental GM vehicle to access Super Cruise functions. This, of course, would require some impressive collaboration between brands, and probably a willingness to share user data. Considering how difficult it was for automakers to land on standardized charge ports, or even the on-going difficulties getting Android and Apple products to cooperate with things like messaging, that might be easier said than done.
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This article originally appeared on CarBuzz and is republished here with permission.
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