Unless you’re in an area with no internet service either due to a lack of WiFi or lack of cellular. And there are people for whom PAAK can’t even be set up.
What time of the day (roughly) was that Mark? I wasn’t able to open FordPass on my iPhone either yesterday afternoon out here.
Does anyone have screen shots showing the mentioned "visual indication in the display of app command icons"? Seems like the failure scenarios may be a situation where the car is remaining in the "fall back" state even though the mobile device is close enough for Bluetooth.
I would literally throw a small party if Ford brought back MyFordMobile! (The app they used for their previous electrified vehicles....). ??? That app works great. ?
so, based on this it seems that although the vehicle has no cell signal dependency, the Ford Pass app has a "must be logged in" dependency, which may be intentional, but is very risky for non-malicious users. I think it might be intentional because although on the one hand, the app could provide a cached token stored on the mobile device, this would allow a malicious users to log out (or go into airplane/offline mode) before their device is revoked and take a car that the owner does not want them to be able to take. I think the only reliable tactic is Fob or memorize the door and start codes.
I wonder if there are private/public key or token systems being passed to the phone app and car that are updated on a certain time interval. The token(s) may be passed via bluetooth and confirmed. If the phone &/or car have been out of cell signal during the entire time since the expiration of the last token, that may prevent PaaK functioning.
I don't know their specific implementation but there are specific ways to do rolling codes to prevent man-in-the-middle intercept/replay attacks.
I think I mentioned that I noticed (or thought I did) that if FordPass was in a submenu that PAAK wouldn't work. Worked once I came back to the home page. However I wasn't careful enough about checking this but should be easy enough to reproduce.
Good point. There can of course be the occasional glitch but much better than requiring an external network connection. One reason why I doubt the MME needs such a connection.
This is most likely due to the timing of how long it takes ford to connect to the bluetooth. I believe this to be the problem with the customers who say they have to hit start like 2-3 times before the car recognizes the phone.
My phone will actually stay connected to the car's bluetooth all the time when I'm at home. Even when my phone shows its connected to the car it doesn't always wake up the car. I can hit unlock on the screen and it instantly unlocks the car. or I can push the door button on the car and it will wake up.
My iPhone will use wifi to make calls if no cellular connection. Could wifi be your cellular connection?
The key part of that was that, while my wifi was "on", it was not connected to any networks. On the off chance some backend bits in the Fordpass app utilized the 5GHz for some portion of the PaaK's authentication process. Turns out, the 5GHz is just part of the wireless Android Auto requirements. PaaK works just fine with cell and wifi off. (Edit: To be super clear, in order to unlock and drive your vehicle, you don't need wifi or cellular service. It's all BlueTooth. Car's Wifi, Cell Data, and Hotspot were turned off for this test too.)
