Ford Launches Cool Off-Road App Only for Its Owners

Like a petulant kid who won’t stock their toys, Ford has released a useful smartphone app filled with crowd-sourced and professionally curated tools specified arsenic way maps for off-road journeys – but the lone ones who tin usage it are Bronco owners.

Talk astir walling disconnected your garden. Or off-road trail, successful this case

Look, we’re not being salty due to the fact that we don’t clasp the keys to a caller Bronco. Rather, your writer would similar to constituent retired determination are different apps of this benignant which are unfastened to everyone. Take the Polaris RideCommand app, for instance. One needn’t person their sanction connected the ownership papers of a Sportsman ATV oregon RZR side-by-side to usage that app’s tools. Simply downloading the app onto one’s instrumentality permits the usage of way maps, waypoint system, oregon navigation kit. Connecting with different riding buddies to signifier a radical thrust oregon simply for information purposes is nary occupation astatine each – adjacent if immoderate users are connected a Can-Am oregon Kawasaki.

If you deliberation the app is each portion of Polaris’ selling efforts, you’re precisely right. This writer tin talk of astatine slightest 2 customers who traded successful competing products connected a caller Polaris aft utilizing the app for a spell; possibly not because of the app specifically – but you tin stake it helped. Ingraining a marque into the psyche of a customer, being apical of caput and each that faff, is Marketing 101. I conjecture Ford thinks differently, which is simply a shame due to the fact that the Bronco Trail App really looks good, offering up the likes of curated way maps, points of interest, outer imagery, and escapade tracking. Yes, yes – concerns astir privateness and OEMs harvesting your data; tinfoil hats are disposable successful the cupboard implicit the fridge, okay?

Surely the techies astatine Ford could unfastened up those wide tools to non-Bronco owners, leaving cogwheel similar tyre unit monitoring, speed, and pitch/roll readouts arsenic exclusive contented for those wheeling a Bronco. There’s thing incorrect with placing immoderate of the tools down a paywall, giving users an inducement to swap their Rubicon for a Sasquatch. Seems similar basal selling to us, but possibly that’s wherefore we constitute astir cars alternatively of moving the companies.

In the involvement of science, we did effort downloading this caller app onto a device, adjacent going truthful acold arsenic to adding a Bronco to our relationship utilizing a VIN grabbed from a trader listing. No dice. Until the app is really paired with the rig, it seems yer outta luck.

The Bronco Trail App is disposable successful some the Apple App Store and Google Play. Just plaything by a Ford trader and concern a caller 4x4 first, alright?

[Images: Ford, Author]

Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything other that gets to the information astir cars archetypal by   subscribing to our newsletter.