Pre-condition cabin while unplugged

[AKgrampy]

C’mon, if I turn this toggle on in FP and I get out to my car and nothing has happened then it’s broken and does in fact need to be fixed. Especially with my phone being in the car and having perfect connectivity.

We are splitting hairs but that could be a phone issue or a Ford Pass issue but I agree something should be looked into. Can you auto start your car by pressing the auto start button yourself?

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[933233311602]

my phone sent out an auto start just as if I did it myself. So the car does not do it in the same manner as if plugged in. So it is not the car doing it rather it is the phone when the car is not plugged in.

As goofy as that sounds, I did another test, and I think you're right.

I tried removing all scheduled times and then added just one, from my phone, and left the car un-plugged to see what happened. It worked.

I noticed that Ford Pass had the same status messages as when remote starting the car. Not the usual "preconditioning in progress" status messages as when the car is plugged in. So I think you're on to something that it's a remote start signal from Ford, not the car acting on it's own clock and schedule. I've no idea why Ford would do this.

So the software bug appears to be this. If two departure times are set in a day (morning and evening, for example) the 1st time (morning, plugged-in) will work but the 2nd time (evening, un-plugged) will not.

 

[Mach-Lee]

As goofy as that sounds, I did another test, and I think you're right.

I tried removing all scheduled times and then added just one, from my phone, and left the car un-plugged to see what happened. It worked.

I noticed that Ford Pass had the same status messages as when remote starting the car. Not the usual "preconditioning in progress" status messages as when the car is plugged in. So I think you're on to something that it's a remote start signal from Ford, not the car acting on it's own clock and schedule. I've no idea why Ford would do this.

So the software bug appears to be this. If two departure times are set in a day (morning and evening, for example) the 1st time (morning, plugged-in) will work but the 2nd time (evening, un-plugged) will not.

Close, scheduled starts while unplugged come from the cloud, not your phone (it should still work if you turn your phone off). So if you park in bad cell service area it might not work because the car won't get the signal. When you're plugged in, the SOBDM in the car handles the charging and preconditioning schedule and operates completely offline.

The behavior has to do with the fact that unplugged is really just a remote start being sent at a schedule time (hence why it should be called a scheduled start). From the car's perspective, it's exactly the same as a user-initiated remote start coming in, it doesn't know if you triggered it or the cloud did.

In order for the feature to work right, the cloud has to get plug status from the car to decide if it has to send the remote start command or not. If it sees the car is plugged in as last state, then it won't send anything. If the car is unplugged at the scheduled time, then it will send a remote start.

The feature only exists in the cloud, not in the car.

 

[933233311602]

scheduled starts while unplugged come from the cloud,

That's bizzare to me. Why would Ford rely upon something as indeterminate as wireless cell service and a live connection to the car? Literally, a winter storm, when you would most want cabin conditioning to work, could cause "from the cloud" to not work.

For the car to handle it's own autonomous scheduling is so obviously better? What am I missing?

 

[billy_at]

The Departure Times setting has always worked for me. I don't use it because I don't have a fixed schedule. Like someone else said above, I just remote-start the car from my phone or watch 5-10 minutes before leaving.

 

[EVJoe]

So my car is a POS and has known communication issues with the server (gets internet data signal maybe once a month (has cell signal no data)) and Ford hasn't found a fix yet. So am I simply hosed to schedule my "remote start/cabin preheat" while unplugged? remote climate does not function from ford pass app and hasn't for some time.

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