Mach-E = Beta Tester

[Burnsy8787]

I agree because I lived over sixty years without a smartphone (thirty years without a line phone before) and I tend to leave it at home on short trips. I don't need a phone to live. But I want a physical means to access my cars. What will a car owner do if their phone is lost or broken and they have no other way to access the car or call for help? With a key or fob they can still drive.

You can enter the car with your code and start it with a password if your phone died/was lost

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[dwiz49]

If you own a Mach-E you are an Early Adopter (AKA Beta Tester)!

Like it or not. That is a fact, The MME is not ready for mass adoption. With all the on going issues it will take a few years for Ford to get everything refined to the point that anyone could operate one without issues.

Our job as Mach-E owners is to help Ford pave the way for the future. Our pain and suffering will payoff when the days come that EV ownership is taught in public schools as the normal way to drive. We are along way from that.

PaaK is one example. It is not a simple program. I needs to support 2 operating systems and multiple versions of each. Along with this it needs to be tested with dozens of different popular phones to make sure 90% of the customers are covered. Same thing that Tesla does and Tesla took 7 years to get it pretty smooth. Tesla customers still have issues today with some of the Tesla app updates but their mindset on ownership of the car is different then most gas and legacy car owners. Most Tesla owners accept that they are drive a cutting edge computer that will sometimes have software issues. PaaK will get better in time, but it takes a lot of time to get it working for all possible phone/OS combinations. We may have to accept that some phones will never work correctly and 90% is good enough on Ford's part. (Besides this, if you are buying a $50,000 car upgrading your cell phone so you have the best overall experience should be easy enough.).

A modern EV is a supercomputer with wheels. It is a software controlled appliance that you can drive. It is a major departure from legacy cars from the past 100 years. This software is very complicated and takes many very talented programmers to develop, maintain and troubleshoot. It takes a team. When a company like Ford spends 100 years trying to make affordable gas cars then designs an EV from scratch, it may as well be from a different company because Ford had to learn to think different to design the Mach-E. The software may have issues but the hardware is pretty damn impressive.

If we work with Ford and be patient about the little issues we will help pave the way for future EVs from Ford that are truly unplug and drive.

Everyone else we will drag into the future kicking and screaming.

 

[dwiz49]

MME ignores my iPhone (go away, no Bluetooth detected), but it likes my wife's phone (same model). Anyway, I got nothing for our site here. I figured out how to activate the back up code, which the dealer blew off, so that does provide some start-up confidence. Meanwhile, I'm just using the fob and hoping things will be updated somehow by FMC. We'll see.

 

[Mirak]

If you own a Mach-E you are an Early Adopter (AKA Beta Tester)!

Like it or not. That is a fact, The MME is not ready for mass adoption.

There is a difference between being an early adopter and being a beta tester.

An early adopter can expect bugs, but at least it’s supposed to be a finished product. Beta testing is disclosed by the manufacturer for… testing products that aren’t fully baked.

You are right that we are definitely beta testing the Mach E. But we didn’t pay $50k+ to be beta testers and Ford did not release the Mach E in beta.

As an early adopter, I’m willing to be patient on some of this stuff. PAAK is complicated. So is charging. But other stuff like basic Sync bugs should have been fixed by now. Period. Full stop. Even Ford acknowledges they should have been fixed by now, when they set deadlines they fail to meet.

So I’m getting really tired of the “software is hard” excuse, the “it’ll be ready when it’s ready” excuse, and the “hey, you’re a beta tester” excuse.

 

[Garbone]

I work for a company that has been doing tech for a 100+ years with systems and software used tested patched upgraded fixed etc over decades. Shit still breaks, software glitches and humans human..........Such is life.

 

[Mirak]

True, but at least there are comparatively far fewer hardware problems than software problems. The most common hardware problem appear be driver screen buzz, followed by misaligned pano roof as a distant second.

 

[Scooby24]

Who's manager would you like to talk to about these issues?

 

[RockwallRick]

My Wife says if the PAAK won’t work inside her purse then it is NO good! She had me carry her purse out to the car to try it out. Worked for me, but I won’t be caught dead carrying her purse around!! Lol

 

[macchiaz-o]

I won’t be caught dead carrying her purse around!!

Ok then. You prefer to carry the dead?

Be grateful this isn't her purse.

 

[RockwallRick]

Ok then. You prefer to carry the dead?

Be grateful this isn't her purse.

She wouldn’t be caught dead carrying that purse! Lol

 

[Jimrpa]

I disagree with the label “beta tester”. “Beta” software (and hardware) are unfinished products that are still in development that companies release to specific partners for the purposes of allowing those partners to start their own advance product development and to assist the company in trouble shooting the product in development.

The Mustang Mach E is a shipping product being sold to end consumers, not a “beta” product, in development, that Ford Motor Company is providing to partners and developers for troubleshooting and development purposes.

All first year products are a bit rocky. Almost every first model year car has “teething problems”. In the technology world, does anyone remember the very first Apple Watch that came out? Let’s talk about Microsoft’s first attempt at cleaning up Windows - Vista (or perhaps we shouldn’t). All products that shipped, not “beta”.

If you are really dissatisfied with your Mustang Mach E, I’m sure your dealer will gladly take it off your hands, as will any number of third party resellers. But let’s stop with this “Ford is dumping ‘Beta’ products on us” nonsense. By the commonly accepted definition of the term in industry, they absolutely are not.

 

[timbop]

She wouldn’t be caught dead carrying that purse! Lol

But would she be grateful to be dead if she carried that purse*?

* sorry. I am a middle aged father. by contract I am required to say things like that

 

[RockwallRick]

But would she be grateful to be dead if she carried that purse*?

* sorry. I am a middle aged father. by contract I am required to say things like that

She will be grateful when our Ford dealer provides another FOB for her purse! Lol

 

[Mirak]

I disagree with the label “beta tester”. “Beta” software (and hardware) are unfinished products that are still in development that companies release to specific partners for the purposes of allowing those partners to start their own advance product development and to assist the company in trouble shooting the product in development.

The Mustang Mach E is a shipping product being sold to end consumers, not a “beta” product, in development, that Ford Motor Company is providing to partners and developers for troubleshooting and development purposes.

All first year products are a bit rocky. Almost every first model year car has “teething problems”. In the technology world, does anyone remember the very first Apple Watch that came out? Let’s talk about Microsoft’s first attempt at cleaning up Windows - Vista (or perhaps we shouldn’t). All products that shipped, not “beta”.

If you are really dissatisfied with your Mustang Mach E, I’m sure your dealer will gladly take it off your hands, as will any number of third party resellers. But let’s stop with this “Ford is dumping ‘Beta’ products on us” nonsense. By the commonly accepted definition of the term in industry, they absolutely are not.

Well I agree with you to an extent. Sync and FordPass are absolutely not Beta. But they sure seem to function like beta.

 

[joymyr]

For one, it seems that they now have a white list of phones that work with PaaK, and a hard stop placed on phones they haven't yet validated - why didn't they let us know about this, rather than making me spend hours debugging their app? Two, are they ever going to add more phone manufacturers to this whitelist?

Yes, thats kind of correct as they have configuration for each phone model. This seems far from ideal, and I'm quite sure this configuration is relevant to why it doesn't work for all phones. For samsung phones the app downloads this file: https://www.fordpass.com/content/dam/cal/mfg/samsung.json. If you decode the base64 encoded "data" field here: https://www.base64decode.org/, you can see that they have configuration like "offset" for each model. If you try https://www.fordpass.com/content/dam/cal/mfg/sony.json you can see that it doesn't exist, and is why it wasn't possible to set ut paak at all with Sony phones for a while. I guess now it just uses some default values which is not tested.

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