jetermeyer

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Lots of opinions which is why I read this forum. Lots to like and dislike. My 2 cents, a couple of the main reasons I went for the Mach E. I wanted my wife to be able to drive the car. Yes she has her own, but we have a vacation house and when we drive there we only have one car. So important that she was comfortable driving it. She currently has a midsize SUV. She would not even get in a Tesla because it is too different. So the start and stop but just makes her feel comfortable. She has a hybrid and is use to no sound but must shut it off after pulling into the garage. Mach E behaves the same way. To me it makes no difference so no issue with the button even though we all know it doesn't need to be there. Second the alternate display. If she didn't have this and had to look at the center screen she wouldn't drive it. Not normal to have to look to your right to see your speed. So again maybe redundant, but I happen to like that extra screen, especially with the advanced cruise control, navigation. The volume control is comfortable. I always use the steering wheel control for volume. My wife always uses the volume control even in her SUV which has both. I guessing the volume control will be programmable down the rode with OTAs for those that might want to use it for something else. The side mirrors, I'm just very use to so I have no issue with them and again my wife would not like the camera concept. As for Mach E over the other competitors besides Tesla. We both use key fobs. Paak to me is ok, but my Fob is attached to keys that I need where I'm driving to. So without the fob I would forget the keys I need. So attaching the two makes certain I have the keys with me. For my wife she would not like Paak and is just comfortable having the Fob in her purse. OTA is the reason I chose Mach E. Has if been a disappointment so far, a little since I have only seen 1 update. But the potential is there. Not something you can say for Audi, Jaguar, etc... At the same time after being in software development all my life and working on devices that if you screw up you have major consequences, the frequency of updates need to be few and far between since in many cases the customers cannot just take the update without doing their own testing. I definitely don't want frequent updates that change features in a car without knowing what they are and that they won't cause any issues. Ford is bein cautious which they better be. So Ford not going all out Tesla is why I chose the Mach E. I believe there are a lot of people that feel the same way.
Forgot one other thing, The climate controls in my opinion are very easy to use on Mach E. All displayed permanently on the bottom. Easy for me to adjust and my wife had absolutely no problem with figuring them out. By changing temp and turning seat on. So that fact that they are on the screen of real buttons didn't seem to matter.
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Forgot one other thing, The climate controls in my opinion are very easy to use on Mach E. All displayed permanently on the bottom. Easy for me to adjust and my wife had absolutely no problem with figuring them out. By changing temp and turning seat on. So that fact that they are on the screen of real buttons didn't seem to matter.
For them to go on and on and on and on about a wheel and a push button , means they
had nothing negative to comment about . Can"t have web show unless there is some controversy. Basically he took back all the positive comments on the ID4 and gave them to the MME.
Unitl the next BEV review !!!
 

jhalkias

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Their criticisms are clearly from a perspective of early adopters and technophiles. They have no concept that 99% of the population is not, and wants to see familiar controls and have familiar experiences. I have almost 3000 miles on my car and still hate the stupid touchscreen fan controls - it requires far too much attention away from the road rather than just feeling a knob and turning it. Just tilting your eyes/head to the side to instantly see what's beside you in the mirror instead of having to look down, hit a button, and then see the camera view in a potential emergency is far superior.
?

Just a suggestion.... next time you want to change the fan speed try a voice command.

Try pressing the voice button (short press - Long press activates siri/android auto) and say "Climate - Increase (or decrease) fan speed". That should work so you can keep your hands on the wheel. You can also say "Climate - Max (or min) fan speed". Those are old commands from previous sync systems that should work.
I always forget that even though I use voice commands throughout my house. Need to change my behaviors.
I will have to respectfully disagree with all of the suggestions that Sandy and Sean made in that video. From my experience every time a company replaces a perfectly functional, mostly analog, thing on a car, it just adds to my frustration with the car (*cough* PaaK). I particularly like having the volume knob around. Yes it is a redundant feature, but it is also a redundant feature repeated in just about every other car for more than a decade. Sorry Sean I am not a baby boomer, you ageist prick, I just happen to enjoy adjusting my volume with exacting precision. I happen to find the steering wheel toggle switch a bit to clunky to use. The toggle switches on my Mom's Subaru are better. This is one of the reasons why you need redundancy, and why some times it improves the overall functionality of a product.

I am not sure why Sean is so proud or concerned about his redundancy issue. He sure took a bit of time in this video and his appearance on the Inside EVs podcast to voice his opinion. I mean complaining about the volume knob because it is redundant is quite short sighted and stupid. Take opening the front trunk as an example. There is already a latch for that reason. Then why should Ford add a button in the center screen and in the FordPass app, because that would be redundant. The real answer is, of course Ford should do so. If I happen to be adjusting something on the center screen or I am outside of the car with my FordPass app, I should be able to open the front trunk from those locations for convenience sakes. Also the manual latch would be handy as a manual override when any software issues arise.

As for replacing the side mirrors, I am concerned that Sandy and Sean's justifications for that centers around design aesthetics, it being "futuristic", or an example of too much regulation rather than the technology's overall usability. So they would like to replace something that has zero lag, is always on, requires no power to operate, and has years of proven operation reliability with a new camera technology that can be blinded by a few rain droplets or a strong light source and a video feed that can drop out or become interment at times.

Then there is the start/stop button. I don't think it is that much of a big deal. People from ICE vehicles are already use to doing something to start their vehicle. It is something you learn once when you buy your car, then you get on with your life. Having the car start up when you sit in your car is nice, but it can also be one of those features that trades one inconvenience with another one. Assuming Ford removed the start button. Please consider this scenario, when I startup my car when I just sit in the driver's seat I have to wait for the screens to power up, my seats to return to my driving position (I have enabled the easy out feature), and wait for CarPlay to connect, load, and start playing what ever I was listening to. Once the car is fully started up, I noticed that my side view cameras are blocked by some water droplets, since it was raining before. I take a microfiber cloth (so I won't scratch the lenses) from the center console, and I exit the car to clean them. I re-enter the car to find that the car has shutdown when I had exited it, and I have to now wait until every thing starts up again before I can be on my way. Also there might be a child's toy or a newspaper on the ground that I noticed while I was backing up, and the whole thing starts again. You can solve this with a delay timer, but that will be yet another option with in the sea of options in the settings and more code to add to an already complex system. Also what will happen if your passenger wants to stay in the car while you grab something in the store. Do you now have to fiddle with the center screen to put your car into so sort of alternate shutdown mode? Sounds like an awful lot of extra functionality to add to the car to just remove one button.

There might have been more said in that video that I didn't like, but I stopped watching it that that point.
I stopped watching it too. It was a lot of whining like we heard on this forum months ago. If they had done their homework they would have seen the research that went into those items - not just some Ford Prima Donna like they suggested. All of us don't think the "Tesla Way" is better. It got really annoying.
 

ab13

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... I still have my model 3 and a few times my younger son almost drive the car in the back wall, he was just having fun and went in the driver seat pressing the brakes and playing with the controls doing things he seen me do many times before, I was in the passenger side cleaning the car and he got the car moving thank goodness I was able to stop him on time, having a start stop button is critical for safety, plus to have just the radio going without having the car ready to drive away ..
This is one of the exact reasons to have the start button, safety. Thousands of pounds that can move very fast, there needs to be basic precautions just like any other dangerous equipment. Tesla has a video game that uses the steering wheel and car pedals to drive a video game car on the center screen, but some kids will think that is okay to jump into the driver seat to do this, or to copy who they see driving the car. There is already at least one lawsuit against them due to lack of safety features to prevent putting the vehicle in gear too easily.

Another reason is door locking, for personal safety, especially away from home. On my vehicle the first thing I do is lock the doors after getting in, which happens when I push the start button, so regardless I would be pushing a button anyway. If in a Tesla, you would still have to push a button to lock the doors after getting in.
 
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This is one of the exact reasons to have the start button, safety. Thousands of pounds that can move very fast, there needs to be basic precautions just like any other dangerous equipment. Tesla has a video game that uses the steering wheel and car pedals to drive a video game car on the center screen, but some kids will think that is okay to jump into the driver seat to do this, or to copy who they see driving the car. There is already at least one lawsuit against them due to lack of safety features to prevent putting the vehicle in gear too easily.
That game is also very dangerous because the tires turn with the steering wheel.

If even one kid maimes an arm or leg while their buddy is playing that game or a pet gets crushed because they were checking out the tires as their friend started turning the steering wheel, would it have been worth it to society to build that dumb feature in?
 


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I will have to respectfully disagree with all of the suggestions that Sandy and Sean made in that video. From my experience every time a company replaces a perfectly functional, mostly analog, thing on a car, it just adds to my frustration with the car (*cough* PaaK). I particularly like having the volume knob around. Yes it is a redundant feature, but it is also a redundant feature repeated in just about every other car for more than a decade. Sorry Sean I am not a baby boomer, you ageist prick, I just happen to enjoy adjusting my volume with exacting precision. I happen to find the steering wheel toggle switch a bit to clunky to use. The toggle switches on my Mom's Subaru are better. This is one of the reasons why you need redundancy, and why some times it improves the overall functionality of a product.

I am not sure why Sean is so proud or concerned about his redundancy issue. He sure took a bit of time in this video and his appearance on the Inside EVs podcast to voice his opinion. I mean complaining about the volume knob because it is redundant is quite short sighted and stupid. Take opening the front trunk as an example. There is already a latch for that reason. Then why should Ford add a button in the center screen and in the FordPass app, because that would be redundant. The real answer is, of course Ford should do so. If I happen to be adjusting something on the center screen or I am outside of the car with my FordPass app, I should be able to open the front trunk from those locations for convenience sakes. Also the manual latch would be handy as a manual override when any software issues arise.

As for replacing the side mirrors, I am concerned that Sandy and Sean's justifications for that centers around design aesthetics, it being "futuristic", or an example of too much regulation rather than the technology's overall usability. So they would like to replace something that has zero lag, is always on, requires no power to operate, and has years of proven operation reliability with a new camera technology that can be blinded by a few rain droplets or a strong light source and a video feed that can drop out or become interment at times.

Then there is the start/stop button. I don't think it is that much of a big deal. People from ICE vehicles are already use to doing something to start their vehicle. It is something you learn once when you buy your car, then you get on with your life. Having the car start up when you sit in your car is nice, but it can also be one of those features that trades one inconvenience with another one. Assuming Ford removed the start button. Please consider this scenario, when I startup my car when I just sit in the driver's seat I have to wait for the screens to power up, my seats to return to my driving position (I have enabled the easy out feature), and wait for CarPlay to connect, load, and start playing what ever I was listening to. Once the car is fully started up, I noticed that my side view cameras are blocked by some water droplets, since it was raining before. I take a microfiber cloth (so I won't scratch the lenses) from the center console, and I exit the car to clean them. I re-enter the car to find that the car has shutdown when I had exited it, and I have to now wait until every thing starts up again before I can be on my way. Also there might be a child's toy or a newspaper on the ground that I noticed while I was backing up, and the whole thing starts again. You can solve this with a delay timer, but that will be yet another option with in the sea of options in the settings and more code to add to an already complex system. Also what will happen if your passenger wants to stay in the car while you grab something in the store. Do you now have to fiddle with the center screen to put your car into so sort of alternate shutdown mode? Sounds like an awful lot of extra functionality to add to the car to just remove one button.

There might have been more said in that video that I didn't like, but I stopped watching it that that point.
+1 on all accounts. I wish I could add 50 likes to your post. I want to take your post and shout it on the rooftops.

Now imagine if the car had no gear shift and attempted to "guess" what direction you wanted to go?

I'll be honest, I've just about 100% convinced myself that the reason Tesla has such an extreme minimalist design language is for cost reasons, NOT for usability / customer /safety reasons. I thought that @Mach-E VLOG's recent video really did a great job explaining the stark difference in usability between the Mach-E and the Model Y (https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/mach-e-owners-review-a-tesla-model-y.5930/). It pains me to see people like Sandy Munro rally behind such a non-user-friendly product and claim that is the way all things should be. Note I have no issue with preferences, but he doesn't say he prefers it, he repeatedly says or implies it is "better" for everyone.
 

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Here is my $.02 on this.

Physical knob is good. Great if we can customize it and make it control other items besides volume. Like when you click on the temp, instead of having to interact with the touch screen slider, we should be able to use the knob. (Wife always has it too cold) Normally don't notice until I'm out of the garage and on the road so I either have to pull over or get frustrated because I can't change it quick enough without having to stare at the touch screen.

I do like the suggestion on the sit, step on brake and should be able to go from off to drive. But I do see a miss use case they didn't think about. How about if I want the system ON but not in any drive mode? As in family stay in the car while I run in to pickup something quick at the store...want AC and radio going. Wish they has a setting to auto shut off the car after a certain time if I leave and forget to turn it OFF. Missed it a few times.
 

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Here is my $.02 on this.

Physical knob is good. Great if we can customize it and make it control other items besides volume. Like when you click on the temp, instead of having to interact with the touch screen slider, we should be able to use the knob. (Wife always has it too cold) Normally don't notice until I'm out of the garage and on the road so I either have to pull over or get frustrated because I can't change it quick enough without having to stare at the touch screen.

I do like the suggestion on the sit, step on brake and should be able to go from off to drive. But I do see a miss use case they didn't think about. How about if I want the system ON but not in any drive mode? As in family stay in the car while I run in to pickup something quick at the store...want AC and radio going. Wish they has a setting to auto shut off the car after a certain time if I leave and forget to turn it OFF. Missed it a few times.
I believe this is a setting to shut car off after 30 minutes. You can't set the time it is fixed to 30 minutes.
 

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These experts seem to have very shallow analysis. Their extended discussion of knobs, buttons and badging are just personal opinions about things that are not consequential to the quality or performance of the Mach e. The Mach e acceleration, handling, comfort and human interfaces are much better than competitors. In addition, the Mach-e gets federal and state incentives, and Tesla does not. I just took a 1,200 mile trip in my Mach-e along I-5. The Electrify America chargers are spaced every 100 miles, and they worked flawlessly. The navigation screen has them, and you can filter to only select the 150W DC fast chargers. The nav app expects you to put in your final destination and then let it select the charging locations for he entire trip. This interface caused me some anxiety, and one aborted leg to recharge in a mountainous area in Oregon. Luckily the 50W charger was located next to a nice Mexican restuarant.
 

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This was mentioned by someone on another thread (so I take no credit for it), but I thought it was a home-run idea and hope Ford implements it.

The 'volume' knob should dynamically change based on function. Example - when you select a radio channel it acts as a volume dial. When you press the fan control, it adjusts the fan speed. When you select the temperature, it adjusts that. Etc., etc. I think that would be great!
Everyone,
I started a separate thread for this so that we can consolidate comments/suggestions/opinions on the 'Volume Dial'

See here:
Ford - Make the 'Volume' button so much MORE... | Page 2 | Ford Mustang Mach-E Forum - MachEforum.com
 

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These experts seem to have very shallow analysis. Their extended discussion of knobs, buttons and badging are just personal opinions about things that are not consequential to the quality or performance of the Mach e. The Mach e acceleration, handling, comfort and human interfaces are much better than competitors. In addition, the Mach-e gets federal and state incentives, and Tesla does not. I just took a 1,200 mile trip in my Mach-e along I-5. The Electrify America chargers are spaced every 100 miles, and they worked flawlessly. The navigation screen has them, and you can filter to only select the 150W DC fast chargers. The nav app expects you to put in your final destination and then let it select the charging locations for he entire trip. This interface caused me some anxiety, and one aborted leg to recharge in a mountainous area in Oregon. Luckily the 50W charger was located next to a nice Mexican restuarant.
I'm with you. Sandy has some fans on here, and I will admit I have never watched any of his other videos, but this whole series was basically useless. He mostly sounds like a disgruntled former Ford employee who is amazed his old company actually did something right. If this is what passes for good YouTube content it only reinforces my decision to very rarely watch anything on there.
 

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I just returned my demo model (waiting for an unclaimed Mach-E to arrive at the dealer next week). I liked the knob, but for some reason, the way I grabbed it made me turn on the defrost buttons to the right of it maybe every other time I used it. Several times I was honest-to-god startled at the noise of the sudden surprise rush of air from the windshield vents ? By the time I returned it today, I'd learned to adjust my grip, user error. I dig the knob, if nothing else it makes the system look unique.
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