Don’t get run over!

[RKinWA]

Sorry to see you go Todd. I think you were the first person to welcome me into the fold, and I appreciated that. I have bought 23 vehicles since 1999 and some were real dogs, some so bad I will never go back to that manufacturer again (Dodge), some so good I wish they had the vehicles I liked so I never had to leave them (KIA). I have also had many issues with certain dealerships. I have been very lucky so far with my Ford experience, but I can absolutely see the possibility of it going wrong very quickly with their lack of loaners, lack of available appointments, lack of trained EV techs, etc. All it would take is 30 days in the shop to change my mind forever, and as you pointed out, the plummet in trade-in values have pretty much locked me in for a while, so I knock on faux wood it doesn't happen.

Thank you for all your contributions to IMHO one of the best auto forums around, and I hope you will pop in occasionally to let us know if the grass is still green.

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[DevSecOps]

I don’t however quite understand why one would do this - going to another first generation car made by a not-so-mainstream car maker that the same company that makes the MME has invested in.

To each their own, but for me it's about the support and making me feel like I'm a valued customer. Another HUGE part for me is the technology. I'm willing to take risks, I just want to know that the company I take the risk with is just as invested in helping me.

If you ever get a Tesla or Rivian you'll notice the difference in how the people treat you. Calling support for either company gets you connected to someone, almost immediately, who genuinely cares and spends time trying to diagnose issues with you. They are responsive and polite. I went to get a recall performed on the Rivian for low AC charge 2 weeks ago and got there an hour before they opened. A guy came up to my truck and said, come into the waiting room and led me in through a side door, offered me coffee etc. As they get bigger they might very well change, but they actually make me feel like I'm valued as a customer.

Honestly the Ford dealerships, at least those in my area, are garbage. My local Audi dealership always made me feel the same way Tesla and Rivian do. They knew my name the minute I pulled up, they remembered my conversations and travels from the last time I was there. The Ford dealerships that I have interacted with don't care about ensuring I have a rental vehicle or a loaner, they don't care to call me and keep me in the loop, they don't care to prioritize a vehicle that's completely broken. I brought my vehicle to them with the loud bang issue and they documented it as being something the service advisor personally observed and then turned around and billed me 1 hour of labor because they "couldn't replicate" it later in the service bay. I'm fine paying for work performed, but I'm not happy when I feel screwed over.

So, in summary, I like trying new things so long as I feel like someone is there to have my back. I led a software team for a couple years and we had customers try beta versions. We always took great care of those people, because they helped us build a better product. They weren't just customers, they were partners.

 

[luckie]

I haven't been here at the forum from the get-go, just since early 2022, but have read many of your posts. You write extremely clearly and comprehensively. Anytime I saw DevSecOps was the author, for *that* post, I would take a moment and slowly carefully read it, bookmark it, heck often save a pdf of it.

You will be missed, greatly.

Glad to hear you have a Rivian. Sure that will be another fun adventure, hopefully with fewer negative experiences. And I'm certain the Rivian forums will benefit from your participation.

 

[DevSecOps]

And I'm certain the Rivian forums will benefit from your participation.

They're a little too pretentious for my liking over there. Some of them referring to themselves in the third person... It's kinda strange. I contribute, but not in the same way. The innovation with accessories that people show off over there is quite astounding. I get mind blown by how creative people are on that forum. This weekend I'm actually going to tear apart the front end of the truck and wire in a 12v for a pump to a water tank that I'm putting in there.

 

[BigMach-E]

You know, Todd, we have butted heads a few times here. However, I am sad to see you go. You have been very helpful, and I really respect you and the contributions you made here. Ford took some chances, some good, some really bad with this car. Some choices that Ford and its dealership network have earned them converts to the brand, and some that have been “First and last Ford”. I still love the car, I don’t want any other. Will I buy another MME when the time comes? Not sure, honestly. This is my second MME, and considering the resale value has dropped off so hard, I think I am going to keep it well past paying off my balance on my loan, provided it’s still functional. This is what all of us who are early adopters have had to deal with, possibly a lot of time in the shop for a brand new car. Not all of us have, but there were clearly some fatal flaws in the engineering of the car.

 

[KevinS]

Godspeed, Todd, and enjoy the hell out of your Rivian.

 

[DevSecOps]

Godspeed, Todd, and enjoy the hell out of your Rivian.

I'm still loving my $160, 13 lbs buckwheat pillow thanks to you! Take care!

 

[stealthytolkien]

To each their own, but for me it's about the support and making me feel like I'm a valued customer. Another HUGE part for me is the technology. I'm willing to take risks, I just want to know that the company I take the risk with is just as invested in helping me.

If you ever get a Tesla or Rivian you'll notice the difference in how the people treat you. Calling support for either company gets you connected to someone, almost immediately, who genuinely cares and spends time trying to diagnose issues with you. They are responsive and polite. I went to get a recall performed on the Rivian for low AC charge 2 weeks ago and got there an hour before they opened. A guy came up to my truck and said, come into the waiting room and led me in through a side door, offered me coffee etc. As they get bigger they might very well change, but they actually make me feel like I'm valued as a customer.

Honestly the Ford dealerships, at least those in my area, are garbage. My local Audi dealership always made me feel the same way Tesla and Rivian do. They knew my name the minute I pulled up, they remembered my conversations and travels from the last time I was there. The Ford dealerships that I have interacted with don't care about ensuring I have a rental vehicle or a loaner, they don't care to call me and keep me in the loop, they don't care to prioritize a vehicle that's completely broken. I brought my vehicle to them with the loud bang issue and they documented it as being something the service advisor personally observed and then turned around and billed me 1 hour of labor because they "couldn't replicate" it later in the service bay. I'm fine paying for work performed, but I'm not happy when I feel screwed over.

So, in summary, I like trying new things so long as I feel like someone is there to have my back. I led a software team for a couple years and we had customers try beta versions. We always took great care of those people, because they helped us build a better product. They weren't just customers, they were partners.

In principle yes. But none of us are partners to these organizations. They might give us the false sense of being one. But we are all cash cows to them. Nothing more. That’s just my opinion.

But perception is reality. So, if Rivian (at least while they’re gaining traction), are treating you like a partner, then that’s great. Live that dream while you can.

Ford service always scares me. Especially EV. But so far, Ford HQ and local SC have been nothing short of outstanding for me service wise. Fingers crossed. I don’t have much hopes though as I’m sure this was an exception than norm. lol.

On the other hand, Tesla service center had started to treat me as “just another customer that we need to find an excuse to get out of servicing his car the right way” and started to provide lame excuses especially around not being able to reproduce issues I reported. Same with Audi. Just some college grands staffed up at their SC who barely know their service manuals let alone having an automobile engineering acumen, at least in my town.

Anyway, you’ve certainly piqued my interest in Rivian. My wife isn’t going to be happy. Weirdly enough R1s while higher has less second row leg room than MME and same front row leg room as MME GTPE. I’m so surprised. Almost instantaneously a reject from my side given we are a super tall household. But I need to check it out. The car looks huge. Maybe all the space goes to the trunk and not the cabin.

 

[rhougey]

The day has come (about 1 month ago) that I’m no longer a MachE owner. I have sold my GTPE!

I would first like to say that I have enjoyed meeting so many wonderful people on this forum and it was great to be able to share whatever little nuggets I could. In my 25ish years driving and going through 13 new cars, I’ve never before participated in a forum. The anticipation to get behind the wheel of the MachE was up there. I had been eyeballing the MME for over a year (before it was released), but patiently waited for the day that I could pre-order the GTPE. My pre-order kept getting delayed so I searched high and low from West Coast to East Coast until I found one at MSRP in Hialeah, Florida. I called the dealership, gave them a credit card and had it shipped to California in less than a week.

I joined the forums because the car confused me. There were so many things that I just couldn’t figure out. There were questions about why Ford did some of the things they did. I had rattles and weird noises that I couldn’t isolate. The forum became a place where I encountered others who had like issues and that brought some level of comfort that I wasn’t alone in the things I was finding.

All those little things and the amazing thread by @mpshizzle on how to update with FDRS spurred something in me that turned the car into a project. The forum was just gas on the fire and it quickly became my second home. I had a blast with the MachE and it was such a fun vehicle both driving it and tearing it apart!

So, what happened?

There was a time when my optimism and love for the car turn into something a bit more jaded. That first started with the HVBJB failures. I knew that Ford had to do something and I really thought that they would do what was right from the beginning and replace them. The software “not-a-fix” almost felt like a personal attack. Like many before me, I knew that I would have failure one day and I wasn’t mad that it happened, but I felt let down because I was over 100 miles from home with no options (my story is here). Ford wouldn’t get me a rental and the dealership said, sorry nothing we can do either. If it wasn’t for family driving over 3 hours to get me, I would have had to walk to a hotel. That response, for a car that was almost brand new still, was very upsetting.

The software bugs started getting to me and the terrible UI design choices made me want to roll back updates, which isn’t possible. The issues that I had didn’t stop there. In my 2 years of ownership, the car was in service for more than 100 days. I know that the majority of people don’t/won’t have as many issues as I had, but it eventually got me to a point where I just couldn’t trust the car or Ford to make me whole on my purchase. Admittedly, the majority of the time the car was in for repairs was due to the dealership and not Ford directly. That doesn’t excuse the fact however because the dealerships are an extension of Ford. There are some amazing people who work at Ford and I am grateful for all they attempted to do, continue to do and help that they provide to the community.

The forums started to become a place where I wrestled with defending owners vs defending Ford and their dealership network. I’ve always felt that I should defend the people who are on the forum and not the car, but so many Ford fanboys made that difficult and over time it’s gotten a lot worse. Every slightly negative post is now met with excuses, comments that it doesn’t apply to them and therefore shouldn’t matter to anyone or any number of other deflecting strategies. Additionally, it seems like 10% of threads are now over exagerated attacks on other vehicles and people that have nothing to do with the MachE. I'm not a fan of echo chambers and based on my own personal experiences most of the attacks are completely unwarranted and based on false or very misleading information. I encourage people to ask for truth and try things on your own before making such wild and innacurate judgements.

Silently, behind the scenes, I worked with a lot of people to help get the new HVBJB replacement recall in place, but I burnt a lot, if not all, of my bridges in the process. I achieved what I set out to do based on what I thought was right for all MME owners, and with that, I can move on.

What issues still existed?

The biggest remaining issues for me when I sold the car were the following:

• Drive mode not available
• Gust profile bugs
• Phone calls messing up/static
• Unable to disable motion sensors at power down
• Release notes still suck
• Trunk opening on its own
• Charging bugs where it randomly stops
• PaaK that still sucks 2 years later
• Performance of the GTPE (Ford says they might give people a paid option to allow more torque)

And, in the end, I had more issues creeping up on me. In the morning the car sounded like an old man moaning at the turn of the steering wheel. The shoulder bolsters that I had replaced for crackling are at it again. Lastly, updates are still getting borked by Ford. It only appears that, as they gave us more features, they gave us more bugs.

What did you move on to?

Most everyone here knows that I moved on to a Rivian R1T but if you don’t here’s a thread comparing the two. Rivian makes an amazing vehicle and I’m happy that I found something which I consider to be far superior to the MME in almost every regard that matters to me. So many members here have moved on from the MME to a Rivian. Thank you to all of them who helped me make the decision to switch as well. I also now have a Tesla M3P and there’s a post here about that as well. Thanks to @heisnuts for inspiring me to go with the M3P, helping me understand the vehicle and providing me with your referral code.

What did you do with the MachE?

In a nutshell, I ended up selling the car and, whoa, was it a shocker! Here’s the offers that I ended up getting for a GTPE, 2 years old with 45k miles on it:

• Ford Dealership #1 – 27k
• Ford Dealership #2 – 29k
• CarMax – 23k
• Carvana – 31k
• Driveway – 32k
• Car Gurus - 19k

Many other dealerships and online car buying sites said; “Sorry we won’t buy the MachE”. Both dealerships that made offers told me that they can’t sell their current inventory. They both had over 45 MachE’s on the lot. I never considered the MachE to be an investment, but damn I didn’t think it would tank in value the way it has. A lot of members here try to make this out as an EV problem, but it’s not. It’s definitely a Ford problem.

Charging etiquette:

This is my latest crusade! Please learn charging etiquette for the sake of all EV owners. We have to be in this together and the level of ignorance or selfishness at charging stations needs to get resolved. Here’s a brief list for those who don’t know them:

• Use a charger commensurate with the capability of your vehicle if possible. Do not use one that will supply more power than your vehicle will accept if possible.
• Avoid parking next to someone who is charging, especially on shared units. EA shared units will have verbiage on them saying they are shared. It’s always in order of right to left 1 is shared with 2, 3 is shared with 4, etc. Other chargers label them, normally in a letter number combination. For example, 1A is shared with 1B and possibly 1C, whereas 2A is shared with 2B and possibly 2C.
• Avoid charging above 80% SOC if you don’t need it
• Don’t park in charging spots if you aren’t charging
• Unplug when you are done charging and move your car. Someone else might need it. Yes, this applies to hotels as well.
• Don’t use chargers as princes parking. If you don’t need the charge and you connect to a charger just because you want princess parking, you’re rude. Someone might need that charge who is commuting/traveling.
• Don’t use local DCFC just because it’s free unless you need to. DCFC is designed for commuters and using it just for the sake of sucking up free electrons only blocks someone who needs it to get on with their family travels.
• Please report broken charging units to the charging company. Don't contribute to the problem, help resolve it!

In Closing:

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the forums and helped me over the years. Some of the best times were when we had a new “how-to” every week. Those were the days! The excitement of testing new updates to find out what we got was also a blast!

I’m also thankful for the opportunity to help many members, especially in the rough patch of the HVBJB fiasco. I've met many friends from all corners of NA based on those tumultuous times.

All that being said, I truly hope that Ford continues to improve the MachE for all owners. If that means they need to fail to be great, so be it. If they make it, I hope they eventually learn from their mistakes and commit more resources to modern technologies and advancements rather than being stuck in their old ways.

Like many others that have moved on, I’m sure I’ll stop in from time to time. For me, the benefit of being on the forum was to learn from others and help those in need. Without the car and based on the influx of those who just can’t stand anything I post, neither of those are possible like they were before, so therefore I won’t be around as much (I’m sure Rick will be elated).

If anyone ever needs help flashing their MachE in the Sacramento area, send me a DM, I’d be more than happy to help. If anyone in the area gets stranded drop a DM and if I’m around I’ll go get you. If anyone ever goes to a gaming convention (I attend most of the big ones) and wants to grab some coffee, let me know. If anyone here attends OpenWorld or any other big tech conference, let me know. I often speak on stage at some of the large tech conferences. If anyone has a question, @ me or DM me (I have notifications on), I’m always willing to help or share my opinions, as polarizing as they might be.

Don’t get run over and enjoy your MachE!

-Todd

Thank you, Todd for all the assistance you have provided to me here on the forum. For the record, I can't remember anything you ever said that I disagreed with. You have however felt like a friend and a neighbor, even though we never met.

Rich

 

[Thunderanger]

Thanks for all your help and sage advice. Best of luck with the Riv and Tesla.

 

[Exordium01]

Thanks for the informative post!

Out of curiosity to the people who complain about Ford software, what makes and models are you coming from. I migrated from the Toyota/Subaru ecosystems and in comparison to the Denso platforms, Ford’s software and hardware is magic. My impression of Honda is that it is similar to Toyota and of Hyundai/Kia that it is somewhere closer to Ford’s software (better in some respects and worse in others, primarily more responsive and less feature rich). I don’t have any experience with the German brands.

 

[DevSecOps]

Thanks for the informative post!

Out of curiosity to the people who complain about Ford software, what makes and models are you coming from. I migrated from the Toyota/Subaru ecosystems and in comparison to the Denso platforms, Ford’s software and hardware is magic. My impression of Honda is that it is similar and of Hyundai/Kia that it is somewhere closer to Ford’s software (better in some respects and worse in others). I don’t have any experience with the German brands.

I'll give you my opinion. I had mostly Audi's and the MMI in those was fairly basic, but it always worked and never had bugs. You set it up and it just worked.

The biggest difference is when you go from Ford to Tesla or Rivian. That's where Ford starts to look really bad. It's like using a computer from the 90s vs one from today as far as performance is concerned. Ford's UI is slow, the stock icons are horrid and not even correct for what they are supposed to represent. It feels cluttered and designed by people who are stuck in the 90's. There's just this intuitive, minimalist feel with both Tesla and Rivian (I prefer the Rivian system over Tesla). It makes me feel like I'm looking at a dashboard that I want to look at.

All of that is subjective for sure and I admit that I buy software, in part on it's UI design. I can't stand looking at screens that don't appeal to me. That's a personal pet peeve and not everyone cares. Because design is subjective you see people who love it and you see people who hate it. I would also say that if you never experienced the speed of some of the other brands systems then you would never know what your missing. Lastly, all companies have bugs in their software. Other companies fix them in short order, Ford... well they can take years (talking about you - alarm sensor button).

 

[Exordium01]

I'll give you my opinion. I had mostly Audi's and the MMI in those was fairly basic, but it always worked and never had bugs. You set it up and it just worked.

The biggest difference is when you go from Ford to Tesla or Rivian. That's where Ford starts to look really bad. It's like using a computer from the 90s vs one from today as far as performance is concerned. Ford's UI is slow, the stock icons are horrid and not even correct for what they are supposed to represent. It feels cluttered and designed by people who are stuck in the 90's. There's just this intuitive, minimalist feel with both Tesla and Rivian (I prefer the Rivian system over Tesla). It makes me feel like I'm looking at a dashboard that I want to look at.

All of that is subjective for sure and I admit that I buy software, in part on it's UI design. I can't stand looking at screens that don't appeal to me. That's a personal pet peeve and not everyone cares. Because design is subjective you see people who love it and you see people who hate it. I would also say that if you never experienced the speed of some of the other brands systems then you would never know what your missing. Lastly, all companies have bugs in their software. Other companies fix them in short order, Ford... well they can take years (talking about you - alarm sensor button).

That’s all fair criticism. Whatever you do, don’t buy a Toyota. Ford’s interface is positively snappy and modern in comparison. I can’t say I’m a huge fan, but CarPlay performance is adequate. If the MME supported the newest version of CarPlay that exposed deeper controls like HVAC settings, I’d be willing to forgive any other shortcomings.

 

[CesarG]

Sad to see you go but I understand it completely. It’s been an absolute pleasure reading your posts and I would lie if I said I didn’t agree with your POV 99% of the time.

I too ended up buying a tesla model 3 P after the GTPE disappointed me from a performance standpoint. I kept the GTPE but it became my wife’s daily vehicle and she’s happy with it so there’s that. Will probably keep it until it reaches the end of its battery warranty for the exact reason you pointed; the vehicle depreciation is horrible.

best of luck with the rivian!

 

[DevSecOps]

Whatever you do, don’t buy a Toyota

I don't plan on it mostly because I can't stand that their vehicles look the same as they did 30 years ago.

I'm extremely picky about design and I like minimalism. I'm glad to hear that you're happy with the performance and design of the UI.

Enjoy the MachE! You got the best trim btw

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