Day 4: Owning a Mach E

MailGuy

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Wow!! This car is smart. Darren Palmer wasn't kidding when he said the car learns about you. This is so much more than remembering and ordering MRU slabs on the main screen. In the morning the profile page quick action list has as the first action "Text <insert son's name>". It has already learned that I start my day off responding to my son's overnight texts. In the afternoon it has a completely different set of actions of equal relevance and accuracy. Driving assistance, flawless so far. This is car tech done right. Every interaction is well thought out and planned whether it's controlling driving dynamics, or just setting up the experience. Not obtrusive at all. The first car where I'm actually enjoying the intelligence on my behalf. And it's opt-in, something I truly value.

@JamieGeek was right. The differences in the driving modes are noticeable. I'm enjoying Whisper a lot. Regen and steering really do change in noticeable ways. I just have to remember that' the case.

As a techy, I'm generally skeptical of systems that want to know me or do things on my behalf. I'm running with free abandon at the moment. It's just that good and fun. I may even reverse course with PaaK after setting it up on my wife's phone. Hoping Ford has the privacy thing down ;).
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SteelMach

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Your steering effort changes? I've been driving in Unbridled and the steering still feels Lincoln-esque, extremely overboosted and feather light. Pretty disappointing.

I had a screaming match with SYNC nav yesterday, so I'm not aligned on this "smart tech" Mach-E at all yet.
 

JellyBelly

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Wow!! This car is smart. Darren Palmer wasn't kidding when he said the car learns about you. This is so much more than remembering and ordering MRU slabs on the main screen. In the morning the profile page quick action list has as the first action "Text <insert son's name>". It has already learned that I start my day off responding to my son's overnight texts. In the afternoon it has a completely different set of actions of equal relevance and accuracy. Driving assistance, flawless so far. This is car tech done right. Every interaction is well thought out and planned whether it's controlling driving dynamics, or just setting up the experience. Not obtrusive at all. The first car where I'm actually enjoying the intelligence on my behalf. And it's opt-in, something I truly value.

@JamieGeek was right. The differences in the driving modes are noticeable. I'm enjoying Whisper a lot. Regen and steering really do change in noticeable ways. I just have to remember that' the case.

As a techy, I'm generally skeptical of systems that want to know me or do things on my behalf. I'm running with free abandon at the moment. It's just that good and fun. I may even reverse course with PaaK after setting it up on my wife's phone. Hoping Ford has the privacy thing down ;).
Thats great.

I view the Mach E experience as three buckets :

1- Driving dynamics - seems to be great and receiving very good reviews from most
2 - Technology - Unstable or not consistent; Hit or Miss and variable performance; needs continuous updates and support to make it work for all and work well - see this as ongoing activity
3 - Battery Charging reliability - TBD - some buyers not having any issues but some with issues - hopefully becomes reliable with OTA or component fixes soon
 

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Wow!! This car is smart. Darren Palmer wasn't kidding when he said the car learns about you. This is so much more than remembering and ordering MRU slabs on the main screen. In the morning the profile page quick action list has as the first action "Text <insert son's name>". It has already learned that I start my day off responding to my son's overnight texts. In the afternoon it has a completely different set of actions of equal relevance and accuracy. Driving assistance, flawless so far. This is car tech done right. Every interaction is well thought out and planned whether it's controlling driving dynamics, or just setting up the experience. Not obtrusive at all. The first car where I'm actually enjoying the intelligence on my behalf. And it's opt-in, something I truly value.

@JamieGeek was right. The differences in the driving modes are noticeable. I'm enjoying Whisper a lot. Regen and steering really do change in noticeable ways. I just have to remember that' the case.

As a techy, I'm generally skeptical of systems that want to know me or do things on my behalf. I'm running with free abandon at the moment. It's just that good and fun. I may even reverse course with PaaK after setting it up on my wife's phone. Hoping Ford has the privacy thing down ;).
Unfortunately, Ford execs have been touting selling driver info as an additional source of revenue to analysts. This is what made me especially unhappy that they have aligned with Google. As someone who values privacy, uses Apple, uses DuckDuckGo, avoids Google, never used Facebook, or its other apps, etc. I eliminated Volvo as an EV because they use Google for their entertainment, screens, etc. Little did I know that just before I am to take delivery, Ford announces they are doing the same thing.

However, at a certain point, you get defeated, and this is one of those times. I am really disappointed in Ford selling us out. But, I am not going to refuse my order because of it. Until some kind of privacy becomes law, I am not sure there is anywhere one can turn to be assured of privacy.
 
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MailGuy

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Unfortunately, Ford execs have been touting selling driver info as an additional source of revenue to analysts. This is what made me especially unhappy that they have aligned with Google. As someone who values privacy, uses Apple, uses DuckDuckGo, avoids Google, never used Facebook, or its other apps, etc. I eliminated Volvo as an EV because they use Google for their entertainment, screens, etc. Little did I know that just before I am to take delivery, Ford announces they are doing the same thing.

However, at a certain point, you get defeated, and this is one of those times. I am really disappointed in Ford selling us out. But, I am not going to refuse my order because of it. Until some kind of privacy becomes law, I am not sure there is anywhere one can turn to be assured of privacy.
I was equally unhappy with the announcement of alignment with Google. I'm hoping that is for future cars only but cautiously pessimistic. I too value my privacy, which is why I'm surprised that I'm happy thus far and embracing this. I eschew Google, Facebook and others for this very reason and begrudgingly switched to an iPhone when the Windows phone finally became too painful. I imagine many of us have seen what happens and can generally detect when our data goes beyond what we accept as acceptable terms of use. The minute I detect that from my car, all of the profiles are getting deleted and my car will just become a car again.
 


nixietube

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You can go into the Connectivity menu to opt out of some of the data gathering but some of it they have purposely tethered to services, so opting out means you can't do basic things like starting the car remotely. It's transparently a way for them to mine your driving habits and the laws (like CCPA and GDPR) haven't been updated to deal with this situation yet. The way laws work, someone has to use and abuse a loophole before it gets fixed.

Now one step even worse, they have Ford Insure. This is their insurance that _monitors your driving_ in order to 'tailor' an insurance rate that matches your liability.
Ford: This car goes 0-60 in 4.8 seconds!
Also Ford: Let us give you an insurance rate that matches your reckless driving habits. o_O
 

1pt21Gigawatts

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Unfortunately, Ford execs have been touting selling driver info as an additional source of revenue to analysts. This is what made me especially unhappy that they have aligned with Google. As someone who values privacy, uses Apple, uses DuckDuckGo, avoids Google, never used Facebook, or its other apps, etc. I eliminated Volvo as an EV because they use Google for their entertainment, screens, etc. Little did I know that just before I am to take delivery, Ford announces they are doing the same thing.

However, at a certain point, you get defeated, and this is one of those times. I am really disappointed in Ford selling us out. But, I am not going to refuse my order because of it. Until some kind of privacy becomes law, I am not sure there is anywhere one can turn to be assured of privacy.
could always yank the modem cable. I'm doing it. Plug it in for OTA for an hour every couple months. Might even make it a switch
 
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MailGuy

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Your steering effort changes? I've been driving in Unbridled and the steering still feels Lincoln-esque, extremely overboosted and feather light. Pretty disappointing.

I had a screaming match with SYNC nav yesterday, so I'm not aligned on this "smart tech" Mach-E at all yet.
Yes, Whisper definitely requires less pressure and seems to require a bit more of a crank for the same turning radius. Switching from Whisper while driving, I definitely feel it tighten up a bit.
 
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MailGuy

MailGuy

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yes, Google doesn't sell your data as far as I know. They just give relevant ads based on your usage. I am happy to give my data to google if they can customize and improve services.
The day I start seeing Ads or MarketPlace marketing in my Mach E is the day it gets traded. I'm in the opposite camp. I'll pay to be forgotten and not tracked. Which, eh hem, I've already done.
 

Jimrpa

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Unfortunately, Ford execs have been touting selling driver info as an additional source of revenue to analysts.
Sources please? When the vehicle was announced and in some of the early stuff, they made a point of touting privacy and during the Sync 4A webinar, the guy who was the lead of the Sync 4A team specifically called out Bill Ford having a specific interest in ensuring that they were protecting customer privacy. This will be a big issue for me.
 

Jimrpa

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yes, Google doesn't sell your data as far as I know. They just give relevant ads based on your usage. I am happy to give my data to google if they can customize and improve services.
Google has never made any representation that any data they sell could be combined with other data to derive specific information about individuals, no matter how anonymized any given data set is. In fact, Google has never made representations that they won't sell your data (to the best of my knowledge).
Other companies are able to improve services without commoditizing their users.
 

Thor2j

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I was equally unhappy with the announcement of alignment with Google. I'm hoping that is for future cars only but cautiously pessimistic. I too value my privacy, which is why I'm surprised that I'm happy thus far and embracing this. I eschew Google, Facebook and others for this very reason and begrudgingly switched to an iPhone when the Windows phone finally became too painful. I imagine many of us have seen what happens and can generally detect when our data goes beyond what we accept as acceptable terms of use. The minute I detect that from my car, all of the profiles are getting deleted and my car will just become a car again.
You must not of payed attention to Apple and the siri issues not very long ago. It's really not much better.
 
 




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