Last week, Ford Motor Co. announced Apple Maps will be directly integrated into the company’s new Universal Electric Vehicle Platform (UEV) through Apple’s MapKit for Automotive SDK.
Beautiful and Easy to Use
The integration will deliver “a beautiful and easy-to-use navigation experience” directly to the vehicle’s displays. Drivers will get turn-by-turn instructions with natural language, real-time traffic and incident reports, intuitive search, and routing options. Apple’s MapKit for Automotive SDK allows for maps, location services and points of interest to be directly integrated into the system. It also allows for intelligent electric vehicle routing and battery preconditioning, which is already part of Apple Maps for EV drivers.
The Future of BlueCruise
The integration will also help with Ford’s development of the next generation of BlueCruise, its hands-free driving experience. Ford believes the self-driving experience should be attainable at an affordable price point, which it hopes to achieve with its upcoming $30,000 midsize EV.
The development of Ford’s self-driving technology is led by Ford subsidiary Latitude AI. The self-driving capabilities found in future Fords are derived from real-world driving data. Since Ford and Latitude both design the hardware and software, this self-driving technology should be easy to expand across the Ford lineup.
Intuitive, Capable Driving
“We’re proud to embed Apple Maps’ navigation and mapping technology directly into our Universal Electric Vehicle Platform, giving customers the ultimate navigation experience alongside our Ford app, a full suite of software, and next-generation BlueCruise, all enabled by a new zonal architecture. Apple Maps has delivered a world-class product, and we’re honored to be among the first to embed it directly into a vehicle, helping define intuitive, capable driving,” says Ford CEO Jim Farley in a release.
According to ElectroIQ, over 80% of new cars in the U.S. support CarPlay integration and 23% of new car buyers consider CarPlay a “must-have feature.” It’s estimated that between 82 million and 110 million people in the U.S. used Apple Maps as of 2024. With so many car buyers being Apple Maps users, the choice to integrate Maps could be a popular one for Ford.
