hey, I have a car!

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GoGoGadgetMachE

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I redid my charging setup to do 90% at home and have noticed that FordPass 3.25 seems better at the notifications. Not sure why the bottom banner showed two different banners at different times. But it is now showing "90%" where it should instead of "100%".
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! Screenshot_20210710-071152_FordPass
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! Screenshot_20210710-071209_FordPass
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! Screenshot_20210710-071256_FordPass
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! Screenshot_20210710-071115_Microsoft Launcher
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! Screenshot_20210710-074500_FordPass
 

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I was going to wait a long time before saying I had my car - like at least two weeks - but I slipped up and @generaltso caught it (I actually slipped up once before but caught it before anyone else and edited it out) so... here we are about 200 miles in on my Rapid Red First Edition with Extended Battery.

A lot of people have said things about their cars at this point and I don't want to repeat what folks have said. There were things I looked out for though and some things unique to me.

For home charging, I charged exactly once so far, to 100%, using my OpenEVSE at 40 amps. I confirmed it would do 48 amps just to see it do it, and then dropped it back down. (It's a 60 amp circuit so it was safe to do it; just didn't see the need to do it for an overnight normal charge.) The unit actually reported about 38.7 amps when set for 40 amps, for whatever reason.

I've gotten a mix of 2.4 mi/kWh to over 6 mi/kWh depending on the trip.

My electric bill is very simple - there's no time of day or peak or any of that nonsense, so I haven't touched charging times or anything.

My WiFi connected fine on my 5 Ghz dedicated smarthome network. It's an OpenWRT nightly snapshot from months ago (D-Link hardware only supported on nightlies) with a Pi-Hole DNS/DHCP server (so a dnsmasq fork)... so I can't speak to that not working since it worked fine, first try, no problem.

Now, I have a secret to confess. I've been very vocal that one key fob is fine... but all of you had me so scared, I bought a couple of spares from Car and Truck Remotes (so that I'd have three, since Fords usually let you self-program a third if you have two, not that we know how in this case yet) and had my dealer program them. They charged me $58 to program the pair. This was the best part of the dealer experience. But you know what? I have all three in Faraday bags. I've been PaaK 100% and although it has not been perfect, it's been solid enough. The antenna placement clearly has an impact. If I put my phone on the passenger seat, the car is unhappy, but on the charger or in my coat pocket (I never carry it in my pants pocket when sitting), it's happy.

FordPass chews up a lot of battery on my S20+ for sure but I generally charge daily anyway and the Qi charging works fine, and that's where I generally will have the phone in the car.

I'm still getting used to one-pedal driving but I'm sticking with it. It's absolutely the best way to control things smoothly - it's all about feathering the pedal. I traditionally tend to be a bit binary with my pedal use, even in my Fusion Energi, and it's taking time to learn 1PD.

Even without 1PD, the brakes are very engaging. I've seen complaints about them being "grabby" or whatever but that's not how I would describe it. I'd just say they are tuned to be more sensitive. If the Mach-E had customizable brakes like the ICE Mustangs do, I think a lot of folks would dial them back. If you're not used to it / expecting it, I can see why you'd say they were "bad", but that's not an objective thing - it's a subjective thing.

The #NotAMustang folks can kiss my ass. I've rented Mustangs for years and owned a 1995 GT Convertible. This is a Mustang. Four doors or two, CUV or not, it's a Mustang in spirit. And of course it reality, because Ford said so. ?

My girlfriend and I both have Chamberlain door openers, hers about 5 years old and mine about 6... mine is just before myQ shipped in the opener and hers is just as it started to ship, so whenever that switch happened. Anyway, both programmed immediately on HomeLink using the "press the unprogrammed button, see flash, press and hold button on normal remote close to it until flash changes speed" process - no touching the Learn button or anything. For whatever reason it works a lot better than in the Fusion which is surprising to me - I'd think it was the same hardware. ?‍♀

I mentioned the dealer experience before. Let me give my dates:
  • November 17, 2019 - reserved (within first 15 minutes)
  • July 13, 2020 - order accepted by dealer
  • January 4, 2021 - official build date
  • February 5, 2021 - official shipment date
  • February 17, 2021 - gave my dealer info from @hybrid2bev, told them I was doing Options (on paper and by email)
  • February 20, 2021 - one of many calls saying "hey can you do the online credit app for our finance person?"
  • March 11, 2021 - I finally fill out an online credit application, which I do the "soft" version of (no SS#)
  • March 16, 2021 (afternoon) - salesperson calls insisting I give my SS# to "confirm my credit". I give it but they apparently lose it. Not the only time they lose paperwork (see later)
  • March 17, 2021 (morning) - car arrived at dealer
  • March 18, 2021 (morning) - online checkout (see thread)
  • March 19, 2021 - dealer Internet salesperson writes saying "hey we see you asked about a Mach-E, they are all taken, sorry". I ignore it.
  • March 20, 2021 - dealer writes again "did you get our mail? please write back" - and I do and say "yeah I'm one of the people getting one of your Mach-Es, not sure what's going on"
  • March 24, 2021 (afternoon) - inspected for physical damage, did some paperwork
  • March 25, 2021 (afternoon) - final paperwork signing (few minutes including two sheets I had already signed the previous day that they apparently lost), took delivery, drove over 100 miles just because ?
  • March 26, 2021 (afternoon) - salesperson texts and says "is the car okay? Internet salespeople just told me that you came up as a lead on a Mach-E" and I wrote back and said "yeah probably because of the online credit app on your web site you insisted I do; I told them that"
Notice that week from delivery to inspection? That's because despite over a month of warning, my dealer still couldn't do Options. They blamed "software problems" and "Ford Credit problems". I know things I can't say here but I'll just say that they were somewhat honest and somewhat full of crap. Even when I picked up they were like "yeah Ford Credit has only 'half approved' this so we may have to call you back in a week" and I was like "okay dude whatever."

They also forgot to ask me for my down payment check. I had to remind them.

Anyway that whole part sucked. I chose the dealer I did because I bought four cars from them in the past and all went smoothly. The finance person on pickup was like "is this your first hybrid (sic)" and I said "no it's my fourth, including two I bought from you" and I literally meant "you" since he's the same guy that did the paperwork the last two times, 10 and 8 years ago. lol.

No wind noise, no dash hum, no Sync 4A crashes yet. Did have Bluetooth drop today for a short time, saying it couldn't connect to the phone - it was after I had sat parked in full Run mode for about 10 minutes. Don't know if that was related.

Saw one strange preset bug that I wonder is what some others have seen and just didn't realize it - it looked like some presets were "lost" but they actually were set right, just not shown right on the screen. In other words, the icon and name on the preset button were wrong, but the underlying preset was right.

A different bug I saw was SiriusXM 360L related, where a streaming-only channel I was able to select and preset (80s/90s Pop) but then later the station seemed to disappear. Very weird bug. (By the way, if there's a "broken" preset like this, it confuses the wheel controls a little when you hit that preset.) But adding the post-3-month plan to my account for the car (thanks for the $5 pointer, @generaltso!) lit up the extra streaming presets through like Road Trip Radio that I'm not used to having on a Ford with a Sirius tuner and that's nice, because stations like Road Trip Radio and Rock Bar rock. ?

I did play some USB media including some lossless but nothing to really really work the B&O system yet. Need to play some solid classical or something to really stress it properly.

I used Android Auto for about two minutes, just a long enough to see that it worked and go "yup, still don't care." ? Did it wirelessly; haven't done wired to the car yet at all.

Ford Owner site seems to think I still need to send the user profile to the car but it's changed its mind about how far into it I am. It was 75%, now it's 50%. The site also shows four vehicle health check issues. ?

I did buy an extended warranty from Lombard Ford because it was inexpensive enough and I will sleep better at night. It's likely money I will have "wasted" but my piece of mind has value and this would be a better "gambling loss" than a trip to Las Vegas. ?

Anyway there you go, whole nine yards. I think that's everything I wanted to hit.

oh and here's a picture with a rubber duck because for historical reasons all of my cars for at least 6 back have had a duck on the dash. This duck will probably be swapped with the duck in the Fusion (which is currently at the dealer having maintenance work and repair work done).

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! Screenshot_20210710-074500_FordPass
Excellent report and congratulations!
 
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Just sold my beloved Fusion to CarMax. It was time.

Now all in on the Mach-E. May FSM have mercy on my soul. ?
 
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Just sold my beloved Fusion to CarMax. It was time.

Now all in on the Mach-E. May FSM have mercy on my soul. ?
I've been checking every day and they never listed the Fusion. I have a strong feeling it was insta-sold, given the market, the condition of the car, etc. (I was really curious what they were going to list it for given what they paid me, but I guess I'll never know!)
 

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If it had 50k+ miles would've gone straight to their auction.....
 


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SyNRG

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oh that's interesting! good to know.....then your insta-sold hunch is prolly accurate
 
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I've been checking every day and they never listed the Fusion. I have a strong feeling it was insta-sold, given the market, the condition of the car, etc. (I was really curious what they were going to list it for given what they paid me, but I guess I'll never know!)
I have no idea what the hold up was but the car is finally listed as "coming soon" for about $17,000 so they are looking to make about $4000 on it (or about 30%).

I wonder how long it will be there for.
 

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well under (under 41,000 in fact). and I'm not sure that's accurate anyway given they have plenty of other Fusion Energis with above 50,000 miles for sale.
Used Ford Fusion Energi for Sale (carmax.com)

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! Screenshot_20210730-145705_FordPass
My 2014 Fusion Energi has 42K on it now, probably will have 44K on it when I get my GT-PE. Blue Book on it is stupid low, considering the car was $50K before taxes. I’m hoping to get 12K-14K when the MME comes in.
 
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I just noticed in the electronic manual that there are embedded video links.
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210814_114819
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210814_114915
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210814_114921
 

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I took my first road trip and wanted to write it up. I know other folks have written threads about their own road trips, many (all?) longer than mine, and I admit I haven't read all of them - but I think writing mine up in "my" thread is probably ok. ?

The trip was from Ohio to the Washington, D.C. area to meet with some coworkers in a social setting to "hang out" as it were, talk work stuff, talk personal stuff ... some of these folks are folks I've known for over a decade but thanks to COVID-19 I haven't seen some of them in over 18 months. At least one of them had ahead of time said they were really excited at the chance to see the "Electric Pony" (*) and I have a more time-critical trip to Chicago coming up later in the year, so this felt like a good "dry run" trip to get a feel for what my charging was like.

I started mid-day Thursday at 98% charge. I wanted to get to 100% but I was also moderating my power usage to try to best utilize my solar setup (**), so I ended up just getting to 98%, which was close enough to make me happy.

I had already set up the route in FordPass using the planner so the car had it in the navigation system (I just had to pick it). This is a good time to say that I worked very hard to try to do everything "native" and this is an example of that. The navigation said it would be about 7-8 hours; it ended up being about 9 because I spent more time at charging stops than the navigation asked for (more on that as I go through this).

The first charge stop was at the Electrify America at Sheetz in Belle Vernon, PA. I first tried a 350 kW station, and twice it came up at 31 kW. From reading other threads, I know that some of the older 350 kW stations have this issue, but I tried them anyway... Since I was trying to use Plug and Charge (again trying to be native), I didn't do anything in any apps... and a weird charge fault happened a couple of times. Eventually I just did the FordPass app to activate the charger before plugging in, which worked, but as I said, at 31 kW... after that happened twice, I moved down to the 150 kW station at the end that's a dual CCS/CHaDeMO and that one came up at over 120 kW and was solid at it until the usual 80% drop off; once that one was solid (Plug and Charge worked that time). I had e-mail to deal with plus did a restroom/food stop and by the time all of that was sorted, I was up to 82%. Other than my last stop on the whole trip, the charging stops were all "fast enough" with the other stuff going on that I wasn't really ever waiting on the charger. No other charger use while I was there.

I noticed that EA has a special bit of text for a Mach-E when doing P&C at least - it's clearly hardcoded, because I was one of the people that got the very early 250 kWh second bonus (so 500 total):

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210826_155017


Notice that the screen indicated "1-50 kW"; whatever the issue is with those chargers, part of it is that the charger decides we can't do above 50 kW. Very weird. Also, you can see that PA is currently a "per minute" state.

During this part of the trip, I got a traffic reroute, which I chose to take, because why wouldn't I want to save over 30 minutes?

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210826_133012


Anyway, the navigation system at this point was saying I could make it all the way to my Dulles-area hotel, with room to spare, but I wanted to have a healthy number when I got there, so I chose to stop twice more for charging (this is main part of why the trip took longer than the navigation said it would). The navigation's built-in "search for charger" capability worked great here - I set it to filter to only fast charge, etc. The nav will give the four closest locations and mark them on the map, with your route visible, so it's easy to see how "hard" they will be to get to... my next stop was the Sheetz in Bedford, PA, where I thought, "drive an EV, see the country!":

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210826_182225


Those rooms are beneath a no-tell motel. The open door leads to a tiny space (about door width, about 6 feet deep) with some miscellaneous crap in it.

At this location, I used a 150 kW charger - didn't even try a 350 kW unit.. Added 29% in 20 minutes to get to 81%.

This was the only stop on the whole trip where someone asked me about the car. Had a nice 15 minute chat, showed off the interior, etc. while it was charging (this kind of thing makes the time fly ?).

The last stop of the trip to there was at the EA station at the Walmart in Frederick, MD. These are far enough off to the side from the store that there's no real danger of ICEing, but the store was still walkable. I went in, bought some grocery type stuff, and got back to the car at 80%. 33% added in 21 minutes. (all of this is from my charge logs in the app, which do appear to be accurate). I ended up at the night's hotel at about 67%. This location was very pretty at night. ?

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210826_201034


Once in the area, I stayed the night at a local Hampton, then moved on Friday to the hotel everyone else was staying in (Only two drove in from out of town; others lived there or flew, and the other person drove in on Friday from Philadelphia).

Friday morning, I drove to the Sheetz at Sterling, VA, to go from 66% to 80% in 12 minutes. This was an uneventful stop, but I was picking some people up at IAD and had a couple of hours to kill, so I looked at PlugShare and found a J-1772 at a nearby Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza. This was a free 30A station; since it was only 30A, this was... slow. I added 9% in 1 hr 35 min, from 79% when arriving to 88% when leaving. I watched Bosch on Amazon Prime Video on my Surface Pro X tablet while charging. I then drove to the Semaconnect at Overlook in Reston to top off a little more - having to set up a new account in the app took a while, but eventually I was successful in adding 3% in 32 minutes (7.2 kW J-1772). This is where I experienced a Tesla ICEing out a charge space:

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210827_120005


That night, the group ate dinner at a restaurant in McLean, VA, which had a whole set of outlets and spaces for charging... this location is interestingly not on PlugShare, but anyway, it was like 10 spaces with 120 V and 240 V outlets. Unfortunately, the 240 V outlets were 14-30, so they were no help... so I used the mobile charger (for literally the first time) at 120 V. I added... 4% in 3 hours and 6 minutes. Basically covered the hotel to restaurant and back. ?

No charging at all on Saturday, which involved a trip to the Udvar-Hazy, then a winery (not my choice, was a group decision). The winery though was where I was able to get these:

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210828_151303


Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210828_151317_LI


Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210828_151333_LI


Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210828_151350


That is a pristine 1966 (from the plate) convertible. (I moved my car again after taking these pictures, because as you can see, it was a bit tight...) Here's the convertible by itself:

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210828_151029


Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210828_150952


On to the trip home, which was Sunday. Before dropping folks at the airport, I was up early enough to go get some Starbucks, and the same plaza had an EVgo location, which meant I actually had to pay (boo! lol):

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210829_073600

Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210829_075847


28.7 kWh in 24 minutes. True story: I pulled into the Starbucks area parking, then was like "after I go get my drink, where can I charge"), and PlugShare was like "um duh dummy right over there", so I moved to start charging, then got my drink. I left my phone in the Starbucks, but I didn't realize until I got to the car... the multiple walk trips to/from there meant that I wasn't actually waiting that long at the charger.

Then after IAD it was time to drive home. The navigation routed me differently this time, presumably because of charger locations vs. my exact location, charge state, etc. - I stopped at the same Sheetz in Bedford, PA, where I gained 65% in 39 minutes. Out of the four units, one wasn't working this time, so there were only three, and ... all three were used once I was there! :
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210829_124714_LI


yes, that's a Bolt, and yes, I thought, "don't you dare catch fire next to me, buddy!" I felt bad for the Leaf... it was charging at like 0.00000001 kW. (***) By the time I finished in Sheetz, the Bolt was gone. Vanished, as if in a puff of smoke. (****)

Interestingly (*****), because the 150 W unit was not working, I had to use a 350 W unit, and I was worried - but it worked correctly. Not one of the "bad" units I guess. (******)

The navigation next sent me to the EA location at the Girard, OH Sheetz. This was... a poor experience, believe it or not the worst of the trip. The 150 W unit was down, so all I had were 350 W units, and one of those was acting funny (I forget how now, but it wasn't usable). I tried one of the other two, and sure enough, about 30 W, so I moved... I was somewhat ICEd by this jerkwad:
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210829_160223_LI


I managed to get 40 kW, and said "nah that's wrong", unplugged, replugged, and got 52 kW. Did it again, and got 51 kW. At that point it was raining, and I was losing patience, and didn't want to keep playing "charger rate roulette", so I left the 51 kW going. It ended up being 13% in 16 min, then 11% in 11 minutes. This was all from FordPass credits at least. But with all the messing around, this was well over 40 minutes. The navigation/GOM and basic arithmetic of consumption etc. suggested I'd have basically just enough to get home at this point, so I said "ok I'm done here," and left.

but

then there was an accident on the Ohio Turnpike that basically closed it for a while, badly enough that for two exits they had variable message signs saying "stopped at mile 183, use alternate route" or something to that effect, but the navigation system (which I didn't have running at this point - I knew how to get home from there... interesting bug in that often the navigation didn't resume the route after a charging stop and in this case I didn't bother to redo it) even was like "um buddy if you say on this road you're gonna lose at least 18 minutes, change your route, bozo"... so I rerouted... unfortunately, this put me very much into "range anxiety" mode (I was wondering if @trutolife27 had some buttermilk for me (*******)) - I was literally looking at getting to the girlfriend's house that evening at maybe 1% if I was lucky. This was just not something I was willing to risk... so there was one last unplanned charging stop at a free ChargePoint location:
Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210829_174217


This is a location that I think @jhalkias has been to as well. When I got there, there was a Leaf using the station - I was at 7% battery, and immediately was all, "oh crap, let me find something, anything in PlugShare"... but the Leaf immediately got out, unplugged and left. I think he was being nice to me - he was doing a convenience charge I think. Thanks, dude - that got me to 11% as you can see on the picture, and that was more than enough to pick up dinner, get to the girlfriend's house, then get home to charge.

So, what's the takeaways for me here and what are some other random thoughts?
  1. Other than the "losing the route after a stop" bug, the navigation worked very well. I liked how easy it was to look for chargers along the way without having to mess with my phone or some half-assed Windows 3.1 icon grid phone UI that didn't really know what was going on with the car (*cough*Android Auto*cough*CarPlay*cough*).
  2. Range anxiety continues to be real for me, but the fact I went for a good part of the weekend without dealing with charging made it less of a worry.
  3. I feel confident I can do my Chicago trip later this year now.
  4. Hypothetically speaking, it's very easy to keep up with a line of Corvettes doing 85 MPH or an ICE Mustang convertible doing 90 MPH. Hypothetically speaking.
  5. Everyone who got in the car loved it. I answered many, many "EV ownership" questions around charging, etc., and very possibly sold a Lightning in the process. ?
  6. One of the common reactions was a version of "I didn't know Ford was this far along, this is great."
  7. At one point some folks were like "I really want to hear the sound system, let's play something" - I had my USB flash drive in, and they were trying decide what to hear. I pushed the Sync button and someone yelled "Play Queen". I happen to have 2 CD-ripped Queen songs on the flash drive, and the first, "Bohemian Rhapsody", started. Setting aside the head-banging and "singing", everyone agreed the sound quality was fantastic. I insisted on doing something off the flash drive because SiriusXM is too compressed to do it justice... after the two Queen songs I have on the flash drive played, I played "From a Window Seat" by Dawes, which is perhaps my favorite song and has a lot of good bass... it's a great song for showing off what the system can do. (Another good pop-type song for this, by the way, is "Gives You Hell", by The All-American Rejects.) This car full of people rocking out to Queen had me smiling from start to end is very much a life memory.
  8. Fumbling with the mobile charger was honestly a little embarrassing. If I had been truly thinking, I would have undone all the wrapping etc. ahead of the trip. At least I had moved it to the frunk so I didn't have to mess with getting it out of the back.
  9. Everybody loves the frunk. Absolutely everybody.
  10. One of the other folks at the group meetup bought an ID.4 First Edition. We had an honest pros/cons discussion. He bought his off the lot, which surprised me a little (abandoned order maybe? he didn't know). One surprising thing was he asked about the app, and I showed him FordPass and he showed me his app. Apparently the VW app is almost completely featureless... he was actually surprised at all the features I could quickly show in the FordPass app. I know we all hate the FordPass app or whatever, but apparently it could be much worse.
  11. I still have EA credit, but I am down to 214 kWh. It's clear my Chicago trip will burn the rest of that.
  12. Charging has a way to go still (e.g. the Girard, OH mess), but it's honestly a lot better than feared, especially after all the doom and gloom on here. P&C working was nice when I could do it... but so many different networks each needing their own accounts was annoying, especially when I had to set up a new one (the SemaConnect account) partway through. Until the very end of the trip though, I didn't once feel any anxiety over the ability to charge as necessary, and that's good.
  13. Here's a picture of a Tesla from the Tysons Corners mall showroom just so you can see I'm trying to play nice with the other children. I didn't even ask them when they'd get Cross-Traffic Alert or how much the red paint costs. ?
    Ford Mustang Mach-E hey, I have a car! 20210827_160443
  14. Co-Pilot 2.0 worked really well for me the whole trip. It made the long drives through nothingness (VA, PA, OH) a lot easier. And it worked well enough for others to be impressed as well.
(*) for some reason I first typed this as "Phony" and woo boy, #NotAMustang or something ?
(**) a setup done very recently by a local contractor/reseller with SilFab panels and an Enphase controller that on a good day can put out over 50 kWh.
(***) this is of course me kidding. It was, I want to say, 11 kW? I thought I took a picture but apparently not.
(****) yes, I know, this is in poor taste.
(*****) to me, at least
(******) others on here have discussed about the four manufacturers, etc. and I don't recall the details, but search for say "Signet" and you can find them.
(*******) this is a very specific joke that I do not expect many people to get
 
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GoGoGadgetMachE

GoGoGadgetMachE

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oh, one other point. PaaK the whole trip on my Galaxy S20 5G. Never once got the fob out from the faraday bag. Only had one time it was a problem, when I got out of the car with the phone in my pocket but the car started - I got the double honk of "hey buddy, what do you think you're doing" and someone asked "why did it just honk like that?" and my answer was "oh, Phone-as-a-Key being weird" (which was easier than explaining the details of how it was working like it's designed and why when it was a quick throw-off question and answer).
 

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