Do Our Cars Have External Motion Sensors?

[Jimrpa]

I’ve noticed an odd behavior ever since I’ve had my car: I have a very narrow garage. When I go into my garage, my car will make several loud clicking sounds (similar to the door locks, but NOT the door locks) as I’m moving around it). My phone is not with me. It’s sitting far away, in my house. My Apple Watch is on me, but I never use the completely useless Apple Watch FordPass app (maybe if it had a remote frunk release, but I digress ). So, I have no idea why my car reacts to me when I go by it.
Related question: This is going to sound REALLY odd, but on one or two occasions, when I’ve passed OTHER Mustang Mach Es (with my phone), THER approach lighting (parking lamps and pony lamps at night) have come on. Has anyone else seen that?

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[HuntingPudel]

Is the watch app installed on your watch? The cars do not have external motion sensors. My car sometimes makes noises while it’s charging and I don’t have a valid key with me.

 

[SprManKalEl]

Not sure what to say about the question you’re asking but I can say that I use the Apple Watch app almost everyday. I use it to start my car on my way out of the office. I park in a garage and it is nice to have that 2-4 minutes of climate control going. The Watch app doesn’t even have a frunk pop for cars that do have the remote frunk feature.

 

[bshaw]

Related question: This is going to sound REALLY odd, but on one or two occasions, when I’ve passed OTHER Mustang Mach Es (with my phone), THER approach lighting (parking lamps and pony lamps at night) have come on. Has anyone else seen that?

This would be a really tragic design flaw if this were at all possible with Paak. I suppose the other MachE would have to internally detect that a Ford Paak device is nearby, however I would expect it to not react visually in any way to the presence of a different owner's Paak device.

 

[Logal727]

I’ve noticed an odd behavior ever since I’ve had my car: I have a very narrow garage. When I go into my garage, my car will make several loud clicking sounds (similar to the door locks, but NOT the door locks) as I’m moving around it). My phone is not with me. It’s sitting far away, in my house. My Apple Watch is on me, but I never use the completely useless Apple Watch FordPass app (maybe if it had a remote frunk release, but I digress ). So, I have no idea why my car reacts to me when I go by it.
Related question: This is going to sound REALLY odd, but on one or two occasions, when I’ve passed OTHER Mustang Mach Es (with my phone), THER approach lighting (parking lamps and pony lamps at night) have come on. Has anyone else seen that?

Pretty sure there is some sort of motion sensor on the outside, if you go to the motion sensor settings on the car, it's even illustrated as being able to detect around the outside of the car. It doesn't control the welcome lighting though, that may have just been coincidence if the owner had their phone or fob nearby. There's no way for an unpaired phone to wake up an unpaired vehicle over BT, it's just not how it works. Also, the watch is totally reliant on the phone app, it doesn't do it's own connection to the car.

 

[Mach-Lee]

No, no external passive motion sensor. There is a movement sensor if the car is rocked.

 

[Jimrpa]

Is the watch app installed on your watch? The cars do not have external motion sensors. My car sometimes makes noises while it’s charging and I don’t have a valid key with me.

Yes, the app is on my watch, but I don’t use it. This behavior occurs when the car is not connected to the charger. Theoretically, the car should be sitting there quietly minding its own business?

 

[Jimrpa]

Pretty sure there is some sort of motion sensor on the outside, if you go to the motion sensor settings on the car, it's even illustrated as being able to detect around the outside of the car. It doesn't control the welcome lighting though, that may have just been coincidence if the owner had their phone or fob nearby. There's no way for an unpaired phone to wake up an unpaired vehicle over BT, it's just not how it works. Also, the watch is totally reliant on the phone app, it doesn't do it's own connection to the car.

Yeah, wrt BT, that’s what I thought. I’m not sure what’s going on. Maybe the owner did happen to be nearby in those cases. It was an open parking lot (same one in both cases) and I didn’t see anyone nearby. Oh well. As for the Watch, I’m ruling that out ad the culprit for causing my car to react when I go past it in the garage. That’s another puzzle.

 

[Jimrpa]

No, no external passive motion sensor. There is a movement sensor if the car is rocked.

I’m not touching my car 1 just walking closely by it.

 

[HuntingPudel]

Try deleting the watch app. Not sure what it’s doing in the background, and if you don’t use it deleting it won’t harm your watch.

 

[Jimrpa]

Try deleting the watch app. Not sure what it’s doing in the background, and if you don’t use it deleting it won’t harm your watch.

I’ll give it a shot.

 

[fangfow]

I've noticed the same with my car; making clicking noises while walking around it (with or without phone)...
As far as motion sensing, the car's radar/sonar sensors can possibly be used for outside motion detection since they have accuracy up to a few inches, so not a farfetched theory.

 

[HuntingPudel]

I've noticed the same with my car; making clicking noises while walking around it (with or without phone)...
As far as motion sensing, the car's radar/sonar sensors can possibly be used for outside motion detection since they have accuracy up to a few inches, so not a farfetched theory.

But their modules have no power when the car is shut down.

 

[Jimrpa]

But their modules have no power when the car is shut down.

So, that brings up ANOTHER interesting question: just how “shut down” are our cars when they’re “shut down”? Clearly, they’re not REALLY shut down because they have to receive updates (including the all important remote frunk release update ). Also, they have to keep the alarms, occupancy/motion sensors, and so on going. So I’m not convinced they’re ever really “shut down” until the 12V system dies. I’ve always wondered what it means when you get into the car and the Sync screen is displaying “system powered off to save battery” (or something to that effect) with a progress bar?

 

[Mach-Lee]

So I have a couple ideas. If you’re walking around the car and a key fob is in range (e.g. 30’) inside the house, you could be disrupting the radio signal between the fob and the car, causing a wake trigger. The RFA is constantly monitoring the RSSI of the fobs in range, a sudden increase in RSSI (such as walking away after blocking the signal) could cause a wake trigger.

Second reason could be if the Mach-E’s are being polled by an app or widget. This will cause the car to wake up and click. There are lots of issues with app polling still ongoing.

In a parking lot, you might notice some motors or clicks at 5-10 minutes after leaving as things shut down.

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