Why does the ford app suck so badly?

[bensons]

So I got it set, finally, to the charge times and settings I want for everyday use. Tomorrow I'm going on a trip for a tournament and I want to charge more. I went into the app to start the charge earlier than normal and charge to 95%. Its been at least 30 min and the wheel of death is still spinning, and the car is not charging. Why is this so hard? I like the car but if I can't go where I need to its pretty useless. WTF? Is it really that hard to make an app that works? I'm going to have a hard time recommending this car if I cant drive it when and where i need to.

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[Snakebitten]

I'm about 4 months into my second year of ownership.
I charge every time I take the time to plug the L2 charger in. I used the app to set the normal charge target to 85% and unless circumstances call for a different charge target, I don't need to change anything.
When I do want to charge beyond 85% I simply adjust it using the app and it succeeds.

So while I understand your frustration, I don't think everyone with a Mach-E is experiencing your problem. Or put another way, I think you'll find that most folks aren't.

 

[Maquis]

Make the settings directly in the car.

 

[Gloff]

So I got it set, finally, to the charge times and settings I want for everyday use. Tomorrow I'm going on a trip for a tournament and I want to charge more. I went into the app to start the charge earlier than normal and charge to 95%. Its been at least 30 min and the wheel of death is still spinning, and the car is not charging. Why is this so hard? I like the car but if I can't go where I need to its pretty useless. WTF? Is it really that hard to make an app that works? I'm going to have a hard time recommending this car if I cant drive it when and where i need to.

Have you considered turning your phone off and back on again? As someone that has diagnosed many an electronic issue on all brands of cars, app problems are 99% of the time an issue that can be resolved by a power cycle. You could also log in and back out of the FordPass app, that is also potentially a solution. I've had that happen with FordPass and Tesla's app.

 

[superdave80]

My sig answers your question...

 

[curtisfinney]

Make the settings directly in the car.

I’ve never done this. I find the app to be buggy, but giving up is not the solution.

 

[silverelan]

It’s pure bananas that FordPass isn’t on CarPlay. What kind of car company won’t make their mobile app usable IN THE CAR?

 

[E90alex]

If it’s spinning it probably means its trying but can’t connect to the car. Either your phone has poor connectivity or the car or both.

Or there’s been a few posts on here where the modem is frozen and requires pulling the modem fuse or disconnecting the negative battery terminal to hard reset it.

 

[E90alex]

It’s pure bananas that FordPass isn’t on CarPlay. What kind of car company won’t make their mobile app usable IN THE CAR?

Why would you use the app in the car though CarPlay when you can just perform the functions of the app directly in the car??

 

[XGC75]

I work in a similar industry with similar challenges. One challenge is that your app lives in an ecosystem. You don't own and runs on hardware you don't own. You leverage their apis, their compute, their timing. You can't compare an app like this which depends on so many externalities to operate like a notes app which is self-contained or has better managed infrastructure from Apple or Google.

The second issue is the car itself is held to standards that mobile application systems don't manage well. For example, you need to communicate with the car in order to confirm the climate has been enabled, but the car needs to go into a low power State in order to preserve battery and electronics life/reliability. So the mobile app (or rather the Apple or Google API) needs to ping the car to wake it up out of sleep to go and perform some function. But the car takes longer to wake up and in between sending the request and waiting for the response, the Apple or Google server is timed out because they're trying to save costs on their end.

This is just one example and it doesn't preclude the fact that there are better architectures for Ford to employ that Tesla is ahead of the game on, but suffice it to say that this is extremely complicated and it takes a lot of man hours to get any one thing right. These businesses are a game of prioritization and it's clear the Ford is not prioritizing these functions.

 

[RoyHobbs]

It’s pure bananas that FordPass isn’t on CarPlay. What kind of car company won’t make their mobile app usable IN THE CAR?

Why? What is the use case for this? All the functions of FordPass are already available inside the car.

 

[silverelan]

Why would you use the app in the car though CarPlay when you can just perform the functions of the app directly in the car??

False. You don’t get app features you can otherwise get in the car. I can see the charge rate in the app but not in car’s native system.

 

[RoyHobbs]

False. You don’t get app features you can otherwise get in the car. I can see the charge rate in the app but not in car’s native system.

Ok, so one thing.

 

[silverelan]

Why? What is the use case for this? All the functions of FordPass are already available inside the car.

not true. There’s no way for me to see my car’s charge rate on its native software but that info is available in the app.

 

[silverelan]

Ok, so one thing.

This one thing is a pretty big deal and has been requested since the car came out.

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