For customers still unsure whether they’re ready to make the switch to an all-electric vehicle, Ford is sweetening the pot.
Today, the company launched a new initiative called the “Ford Power Promise,” in which it will provide a suite of benefits to customers who buy or lease a new EV. And chief among them is a complimentary home charger for all new customers, as well as the costs of standard installation.
The charger that’s being offered is the company’s Ford Charge Station Pro, a $1,310 Level 2 charger that comes with a standard CCS1 connector. Ford declined to put a monetary value on the installation but said it would cover costs up to 60 amps of power and 80 feet of wire run. Customers who need to upgrade their home electrical panel before the installation, however, will need to cover those costs themselves.
You said “every car”, so I’ll assume you do mean every car, which is very much untrue. My 2016 Hyundai Tucson is a very much dumb car. It has a radio, CD player and Bluetooth. And that’s what I want essentially. I don’t want anything to do with those that are connected to the internet and get OTA updates. I’ll never buy those for as long as I can find the other ones. Cars like mine do exit and will continue existing, as a “low trim” model, which is why what I always get anyway.
I think you’re in for a rude awakening on your next car purchase. The low trim models are prime targets for data harvesting because they can make money off your data on the backend since you didn’t splurge for all the high-markup gizmos at the time of purchase. It’s just like smart phones and TVs, the less you pay up front, the more they find other means to make money off you.
How can a dashboard that has absolutely nothing “smart” about it collect my data? It’s only a radio that has Bluetooth, how’s that going to collect data and send it to the manufacturer?
The dashboard has nothing to do with data collection. That happens internally with various chips and ecu. The data being sent to the company servers don’t care about your dashboard, that’s handled by a different chip that has 3g/4g connectivity. In fact, you can buy a fancy tool that plugs into your obd II port on one end and a laptop in the other see real time data about how various systems are performing and what’s happening based on your driving.
