Ford is developing an AI assistant that will debut in the company\u2019s smartphone app, before expanding to its vehicles in 2027, the company announced Wednesday at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show. The company also teased a next-generation of its BlueCruise advanced driver assistance system that is both cheaper to make and more capable \u2014 ultimately leading to eyes-off driving in 2028.<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s announcement was one of the only ones to come from a major automaker at CES, marking a sharp turnaround from the late 2010s when they dominated the show. And it wasn\u2019t made at a flashy keynote event; rather, Ford discussed the news at a speaker session called \u201cGreat Minds\u201d that was meant to \u201cexplore the intersection of technology and humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ford says it digital assistant is hosted by Google Cloud and will be built using off-the-shelf LLMs, and the company is giving it deep access to vehicle-specific information. That means the assistant can answer high-level questions like \u201chow many bags of mulch can my truck bed support?\u201d But it also means owners will be able to ask for granular, real-time information like oil life. <\/p>\n
The company is rolling the assistant out to its newly revamped Ford app<\/a> in early 2026. A native, in-vehicle integration will come in 2027, though the company wouldn\u2019t specify which models it\u2019s prioritizing.<\/p>\n Ford didn\u2019t go into great detail about what the in-car experience will look like, but it\u2019s not hard to imagine the possibilities when looking at some of the more tech-forward automakers. <\/p>\n Just last month, Rivian showed off its own digital assistant sending and receiving text messages, handling complex navigation requests, and changing climate controls. Tesla has integrated Elon Musk\u2019s chatbot Grok in its vehicles, which customers have used to generate on-the-spot sightseeing tours. Some of those capabilities may eclipse what Ford has in mind, but the automaker also has a full year to hammer out the in-car integration.<\/p>\n The new BlueCruise system teased on Wednesday is 30% cheaper to build than the current technology, according to Ford. It will debut in 2027 on the first EV to be built on the company\u2019s low-cost \u201cUniversal Electric Vehicle\u201d platform, which is expected to be a mid-sized pickup.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco Ford is promising more with this next-generation BlueCruise system, including eyes-off driving in 2028. But it also claims the system will be capable of handling \u201cpoint-to-point autonomy,\u201d similar to what Tesla offers with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software. Rivian has also teased a point-to-point system coming later this year<\/a>. All of these systems require the drivers to be ready to take control of the car at any moment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ford is developing an AI assistant that will debut in the company\u2019s smartphone app, before expanding to its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,133514,118821,6210,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-222557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-bluecruise","12":"tag-ces-2026","13":"tag-ford","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n