nanohead
Member
- Joined
- May 6, 2021
- Threads
- 5
- Messages
- 23
- Reaction score
- 27
- Location
- NJ&VT
- Vehicles
- 21 MME, 23 Lightning ER
- Thread starter
- #1
Well, I patiently waited 9 months for our MME, and as a car, it is phenomenal. In the meantime, I also bought a 2021 Ranger. Also, for context, been an engineer in the software/tech business for 35 years and I've seen it all, built tons of cool stuff and broken more than my fair share of tech products. Worked on aircraft, networks, chips/ASICs, software (including mobile) and lots more interesting stuff.
First of all, mobile phones as all around platforms where you need to RELY on them as things like car keys is simply dumb. Yep, trendy and we're all used to using "apps", but phones and the wireless networks that they leverage are not now, and likely will never be as reliable as a simple key fob. FordPass is basically useless, as I had 3 cars on it, now down to 2 (sold my Mustang GT), and it just has almost zero value. On my Ranger, it does nothing other than unreliably and slowly lock/unlock or remote start the car. Why couldn't they give me remote start on the Fob like EVERY other car and manufacturer on the earth. On the MME it is simply stupid for Ford, which just produced a tour-de force in the Mach E, to destroy the ownership experience with this idiotic and banal Phone As A Key idea. FordPass is filled with garbage that I, and I assume almost everyone else, doesn't care about. I constantly have new "messages", which basically is just more garbage notifications about nothing. If they ever put something important in there, I'll never see it, because I don't have 30 minutes a day to scroll through, read and delete mindless marketing dribble from some random Ford marketing unit that has nothing better to do than "engage" with their "Ford family".
The PAAK implementation is horrendous. I have a choice, either leave the app running all the time and drain my phone battery, have the phone and the car confuse each other all day when I walk by it with my phone in my pocket or leave it in proximity, OR disable the app until I need it, and wait 10 minutes for it to get itself organized, then wait another 5 minutes for the car to decide it likes the phone, then wait for the car to give me an error message "no key detected", shut itself off, then restart the FordPass PAAK thingy, then wait another 10 minutes, then maybe, just maybe, I can reliably leave my house. Yesterday, it took 45 minutes of this idiotic dance before I literally lost it, went into the house, grabbed the single Fob (which my wife uses as she has no patience for garbage tech), then left the house. Just awful and its literally like this EVERY single time. It is shameful that of all the places that the MME/Ford team decided to remove cost, was in the basic and absolutely crucial area of having a reliable KEY to start and use your car. OMFG.
Next, phone integration is wildly inconsistent, even when its working well. Its not just me. Just read the threads here (and other MME forums) about phone problems regardless of which phone brand you have. Apple/Android... doesn't matter. Sometimes it connects, other times nothing. Sometimes wired works, other times, nothing. Sometimes wireless Carplay/Android Auto works, other times nothing. Its monstrously distracting and frustrating. More than that, its incredibly UNRELIABLE, which Ford of all companies should be sensitive to, as it got killed years ago in JD Power surveys for the notoriously fickle My Ford Touch that they eventually killed after bad publicity and litigation. It can take me 20-30 minutes sometimes simply to get Google Nav to work reliably on the glorious screen in the MME. I have to pull over, plug, unplug, reboot the phone, shut the car off, open and close the door, then start the phone, wait for it to completely boot, then restart the car, then pray. Over and over and over again. I know that Android Auto and CarPlay can work, as they work in our other cars. Android Auto works fine (mostly) in my Ranger as an example (not 100%, but fairly reliable). But in the amazing Mach E, who knows? Now this is not all on Ford, as Google and Apple, in their most profound arrogance, really don't care about their software quality anymore as they have plenty of nasty bugs all over the place, and their billions of users can't escape them. But it is on Ford to ensure that the CAR I bought from them works like a car, and not like a mutant phone/toaster/TV/car hybrid contraption.
Finally, overall software is totally wonky. Ford should try to be Ford, and not Tesla. I don't care about all sorts of goofy features, but the ones that make a car actually work. I just want to be able to change the damn radio channel without nearly crashing while I'm trying to figure out how to get back to the Sirius station I was on before I accidentally hit some random arrow and ended up on an non broadcasting AM band blaring static. I have to pull over so I don't crash while I figure out how to get back to Sirius, and then figure out how it ended up on Sirius channel 53 when I was previously listening to channel 9. How can this be so terribly executed.... Same with lots of other basic car features.
Out of the 122 cars I've owned over 40 years, the MME is amongst my 3 or 4 favorites (up there with the incredible Aston Martin Vantage that I recently sold). I'm totally sold on the CAR part of the MME, but the software part is an abomination. And I hope that Ford doesn't have another case of My Ford Touch lurking in the shadows. They need to rethink how they're doing this software, what's important, and how they can make it RELIABLE every.....single..... time.
Rant complete
First of all, mobile phones as all around platforms where you need to RELY on them as things like car keys is simply dumb. Yep, trendy and we're all used to using "apps", but phones and the wireless networks that they leverage are not now, and likely will never be as reliable as a simple key fob. FordPass is basically useless, as I had 3 cars on it, now down to 2 (sold my Mustang GT), and it just has almost zero value. On my Ranger, it does nothing other than unreliably and slowly lock/unlock or remote start the car. Why couldn't they give me remote start on the Fob like EVERY other car and manufacturer on the earth. On the MME it is simply stupid for Ford, which just produced a tour-de force in the Mach E, to destroy the ownership experience with this idiotic and banal Phone As A Key idea. FordPass is filled with garbage that I, and I assume almost everyone else, doesn't care about. I constantly have new "messages", which basically is just more garbage notifications about nothing. If they ever put something important in there, I'll never see it, because I don't have 30 minutes a day to scroll through, read and delete mindless marketing dribble from some random Ford marketing unit that has nothing better to do than "engage" with their "Ford family".
The PAAK implementation is horrendous. I have a choice, either leave the app running all the time and drain my phone battery, have the phone and the car confuse each other all day when I walk by it with my phone in my pocket or leave it in proximity, OR disable the app until I need it, and wait 10 minutes for it to get itself organized, then wait another 5 minutes for the car to decide it likes the phone, then wait for the car to give me an error message "no key detected", shut itself off, then restart the FordPass PAAK thingy, then wait another 10 minutes, then maybe, just maybe, I can reliably leave my house. Yesterday, it took 45 minutes of this idiotic dance before I literally lost it, went into the house, grabbed the single Fob (which my wife uses as she has no patience for garbage tech), then left the house. Just awful and its literally like this EVERY single time. It is shameful that of all the places that the MME/Ford team decided to remove cost, was in the basic and absolutely crucial area of having a reliable KEY to start and use your car. OMFG.
Next, phone integration is wildly inconsistent, even when its working well. Its not just me. Just read the threads here (and other MME forums) about phone problems regardless of which phone brand you have. Apple/Android... doesn't matter. Sometimes it connects, other times nothing. Sometimes wired works, other times, nothing. Sometimes wireless Carplay/Android Auto works, other times nothing. Its monstrously distracting and frustrating. More than that, its incredibly UNRELIABLE, which Ford of all companies should be sensitive to, as it got killed years ago in JD Power surveys for the notoriously fickle My Ford Touch that they eventually killed after bad publicity and litigation. It can take me 20-30 minutes sometimes simply to get Google Nav to work reliably on the glorious screen in the MME. I have to pull over, plug, unplug, reboot the phone, shut the car off, open and close the door, then start the phone, wait for it to completely boot, then restart the car, then pray. Over and over and over again. I know that Android Auto and CarPlay can work, as they work in our other cars. Android Auto works fine (mostly) in my Ranger as an example (not 100%, but fairly reliable). But in the amazing Mach E, who knows? Now this is not all on Ford, as Google and Apple, in their most profound arrogance, really don't care about their software quality anymore as they have plenty of nasty bugs all over the place, and their billions of users can't escape them. But it is on Ford to ensure that the CAR I bought from them works like a car, and not like a mutant phone/toaster/TV/car hybrid contraption.
Finally, overall software is totally wonky. Ford should try to be Ford, and not Tesla. I don't care about all sorts of goofy features, but the ones that make a car actually work. I just want to be able to change the damn radio channel without nearly crashing while I'm trying to figure out how to get back to the Sirius station I was on before I accidentally hit some random arrow and ended up on an non broadcasting AM band blaring static. I have to pull over so I don't crash while I figure out how to get back to Sirius, and then figure out how it ended up on Sirius channel 53 when I was previously listening to channel 9. How can this be so terribly executed.... Same with lots of other basic car features.
Out of the 122 cars I've owned over 40 years, the MME is amongst my 3 or 4 favorites (up there with the incredible Aston Martin Vantage that I recently sold). I'm totally sold on the CAR part of the MME, but the software part is an abomination. And I hope that Ford doesn't have another case of My Ford Touch lurking in the shadows. They need to rethink how they're doing this software, what's important, and how they can make it RELIABLE every.....single..... time.
Rant complete
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