I would fire up my classic Jeep Commander.Please answer the poll considering that it might take an hour or longer to fully precondition a cold car in the winter (that's just how long it takes to warm up both the battery and cabin). If you left early, the cabin would still be cold because the battery is heated first.
Scenario: You wake up in the morning and want to go somewhere unexpectedly (and you didn't have a departure time set). You hit the "Precondition Now" button in FordPass around 8 AM, and you are told you have to wait until about 9 AM. How does this make you feel? Would you wait or not?
This is my vision of what such a feature might look like in FordPass. The "View Chargers" button would turn into "Precondition Now" when you are plugged in. When you hit the precondition button, the battery would start heating and FordPass would display the estimated time to finish. While running, you'd have the option to stop preconditioning or switch to remote start (cabin heating only).
New owner here so please be patient with newbie questions. Not clear to me if I need to be plugged into my home charger when I precondition my cabin using the remote Ford app. The online article I read wasn’t clear - just said I could use the onboard Charge Settings (car is plugged-in) or the app (silent on plug in status). Haven’t preconditioned yet - only owned the car for a few weeks and still learning this whole new way of driving!Please answer the poll considering that it might take an hour or longer to fully precondition a cold car in the winter (that's just how long it takes to warm up both the battery and cabin). If you left early, the cabin would still be cold because the battery is heated first.
Scenario: You wake up in the morning and want to go somewhere unexpectedly (and you didn't have a departure time set). You hit the "Precondition Now" button in FordPass around 8 AM, and you are told you have to wait until about 9 AM. How does this make you feel? Would you wait or not?
This is my vision of what such a feature might look like in FordPass. The "View Chargers" button would turn into "Precondition Now" when you are plugged in. When you hit the precondition button, the battery would start heating and FordPass would display the estimated time to finish. While running, you'd have the option to stop preconditioning or switch to remote start (cabin heating only).
FWIW, my car has finally started communicating with the phone for departure schedules again. It hasn’t done so in 6 months or so. I’m not sure if it was 4.2.5 or a FP update, or something else. But if either of the first two, they really ought to cover this in the patch notes.
They've been doing stuff with the servers this past week, probably unclogged a lot of stuff that hasn't been working right for months, at the same time creating or exposing new problems.
Thanks Lee. I honestly don’t care why it works, I’m just glad it does again. Hopefully that means fewer people with the issue. That’s a good thing. Walking to the car to set up the departure time isn’t that big of a deal here — even with our brutally mild winters.
I generally agree, but right now, the system is set up to work best for daily recurring activities and be very difficult to use for one off longer trips, which is when you really need it. You have to set up a departure schedule (then go to the car to make sure it actually connected and set the time). And then after you leave on your trip, you need to remember to go in and cancel out the departure schedule. You also need to manually time when to start charging to 100% so it doesn't sit there too long.
