Lincoln's hands-free driver-assistance tech will be called ActiveGlide

In addition to teasing its first fully electric vehicle and previewing its next-gen cabin tech on Wednesday, luxury automaker Lincoln announced that hands-free highway driving will be coming to its suite of advanced driver assistance systems. Say hello to Lincoln ActiveGlide. Aside from Lincoln-specific branding, ActiveGlide is, of course, the same technology that parent company Ford announced earlier this year as BlueCruise. We'll let you decide which name is the goofier of the pair. 

Both driver-assistance technologies use a combination of camera and radar systems to enable hands-free steering assist on prequalified sections of divided highways called Hands-Free Blue Zones. While active, the system will automatically steer to keep the vehicle between the painted lane lines and automatically brake and accelerate to maintain a preset distance behind a leading car. Ford tells us that it will have pre-mapped more than 100,000 miles of Blue Zones in the United States and Canada when the technology launches.

Hands-free doesn't mean you can use ActiveGlide eyes-free, however; this isn't an autonomous technology, rather it's classified as SAE Level 2 aid and still requires the driver's attention. Like Ford BlueCruise and General Motors' Super Cruise system -- most recently showcased on the Cadillac Escalade and Chevrolet Bolt EUV -- driver monitoring technology will watch the pilot's face to make sure they're awake, alert and watching the road.

Lincoln hasn't mentioned when we can expect to actively glide the hands-free highways, but the announcement's timing seems to indicate that the most likely first candidate will be the yet unnamed fully electric model arriving next year. We expect more details will emerge as the 2022 launch window approaches.