SOLVED (not really): Alarm Motion Sensors Won’t Stay Off

Awmustang

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If this works the same as in the Mustang Coupe, you don't have to interact with the prompt every time if you want all the sensors enabled. It will pop up but that will be selected by default so you can just get out and lock the car.
If you truly don't want the sensors ever to be on and this is bugging you that much, I would think a square of black electrical tape over the sensors would effectively disable them permanently. Or perhaps they could be unplugged, though that might throw a fault code.

As for the ferries, I think that's a difference sensor. There's an inclination sensor to sound the alarm if the car is jacked up to either steal the wheels or tow the car. Basically it records the angle of the car when the car is locked and then if that changes by more than a slight amount, the alarm goes off.
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HuntingPudel

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Well, I’m sure y’all know my position on Dog Mode. ??
 

pumasalad

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I wonder if anyone on the engineering team at Ford actually drives a mach-e as a daily driver with their family, because it sure looks like everything done in this car is by committee and not by user testing. This motion sensor thing is the sole reason I'm actively looking to replace my 5 month old mach-e with another EV that allows me to take my dog with me when I go places. It's a serious enough thing to make me break my lease and get out of the ford lineup forever.
 

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Yeah I've been dealing with it practically every weekday recently. My son likes it when I bring the dog to pick him up at Kindergarten. Now I remote start the car so I don't have to disturb the whole neighborhood with the alarm every time.
Hold on, this actually might be a solution. If you remote start the car it cannot be driven without a key, so it addresses the concern about leaving the car on while away.

So if you remote start it, the motion sensor is then turned off? So I can walk away from the car, it locks, then I remote start it? That sounds like a pretty easy work around.
 


mkhuffman

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I would think a square of black electrical tape over the sensors would effectively disable them permanently.
Taping over the sensor is a good idea if this is a regular occurrence, and you frequently have dogs/kids locked in. Does anyone know where the sensor is located? You could put one of those shutter sensors like you put on a laptop camera that you can slide across when you want to block it.
 

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Hold on, this actually might be a solution. If you remote start the car it cannot be driven without a key, so it addresses the concern about leaving the car on while away.

So if you remote start it, the motion sensor is then turned off? So I can walk away from the car, it locks, then I remote start it? That sounds like a pretty easy work around.
This might be OK for a short period in a quickie convenience store. You might have to remote start several times if you’re having dinner. ?‍♂??
 

mkhuffman

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This might be OK for a short period in a quickie convenience store. You might have to remote start several times if you’re having dinner. ?‍♂??
Good point. The remote start only leaves the car on for 15 minutes, right? I think for most cases, when the dogs are in the car for example, that is sufficient. And it allows you to keep the car at the right temperature with climate control running. Very important in the summer. Dog mode would be better, of course.
 

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I took a trip to Seattle this summer and we took a ferry to one of the islands there. The car kept going off regardless if I disabled motion senors in the settings or via a prompt. Useless, broken feature. Worse yet, their solution is to not lock the car? Ya ok.

It might've been fixed since then, but as of July, it was 100% broken and not working.
 

mkhuffman

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I took a trip to Seattle this summer and we took a ferry to one of the islands there. The car kept going off regardless if I disabled motion senors in the settings or via a prompt. Useless, broken feature. Worse yet, their solution is to not lock the car? Ya ok.

It might've been fixed since then, but as of July, it was 100% broken and not working.
Remote start is your friend.
 

Electric Goat

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@Mirak Thanks so much for taking the time to tag many of us and have the conversation with an engineer.

I wonder the same as many others in this thread... Do any of the engineers actually drive this car? It's absolutely infuriating that I have to implement a "work around" in order to travel with my dog. I will consider disabling the walk away lock when on road trips. It was incredibly annoying to hear my alarm go off at a highway rest stop while i'm inside taking a quick ? or running inside the grocery store quick while my car DC fast charges.

On second thought, I think that I'll just keep a roll of painters tape in the car and cover the motion sensor whenever I have my dog with me.

Ridiculous.

Mirak, thanks again for your efforts.
 

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@Mirak Thanks so much for taking the time to tag many of us and have the conversation with an engineer.

I wonder the same as many others in this thread... Do any of the engineers actually drive this car? It's absolutely infuriating that I have to implement a "work around" in order to travel with my dog. I will consider disabling the walk away lock when on road trips. It was incredibly annoying to hear my alarm go off at a highway rest stop while i'm inside taking a quick ? or running inside the grocery store quick while my car DC fast charges.

On second thought, I think that I'll just keep a roll of painters tape in the car and cover the motion sensor whenever I have my dog with me.

Ridiculous.

Mirak, thanks again for your efforts.
Most engineers are excellent problem solvers so these major issues are trivial to them. It’s also not really a work around, it’s a valid solution to the problem you are seeing. It operates as intended, just not exactly how you want it to operate, there’s a key difference there. And I’m not saying it can’t be improved, because it definitely could with the OPs and other peoples ideas. However, it never bothered me one bit. I use PAAK exclusively and just leave my phone in the car with my kids and lock it, or press the keep motion sensors off (that seems to work for me). No issue and not hard at all for the solution, so i don’t see what the big deal is. And I see this comment as ridiculous because to me it’s based solely off of principle and not using the solution offered and demanding another solution.
 

Electric Goat

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Most engineers are excellent problem solvers so these major issues are trivial to them. It’s also not really a work around, it’s a valid solution to the problem you are seeing. It operates as intended, just not exactly how you want it to operate, there’s a key difference there. And I’m not saying it can’t be improved, because it definitely could with the OPs and other peoples ideas. However, it never bothered me one bit. I use PAAK exclusively and just leave my phone in the car with my kids and lock it, or press the keep motion sensors off (that seems to work for me). No issue and not hard at all for the solution, so i don’t see what the big deal is. And I see this comment as ridiculous because to me it’s based solely off of principle and not using the solution offered and demanding another solution.
Pressing "keep motion sensors off" does not work reliably. It's a terrible design if it is operating as intended. Generally speaking, engineers may be great problem solvers but these particular engineers appear to have created more problems than they solved.

You reference kids. I reference a dog. I'm not leaving my PAAK phone in an unattended car with my dog. This is equivalent to leaving a key in the car. Most insurance policies won't even cover grand theft auto if you deliberately and knowingly leave a key in an unattended vehicle. These solutions offered are not actually solutions. They are workarounds. Disabling walk away lock and not locking an unattended vehicle is downright foolish and in some case dangerous.

Edit: Also, the issue is not PAAK. These issues existed before PAAK was even set up on my phone. The issue is a bad software.
 
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Mirak

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Right now, sounds like the very best workaround is a piece of tape over the interior sensors. Then you can still use the walk away lock and you don’t have to be hassling with trying to keep the interior sensors off.

I should add that the engineer told me that “motion sensors” includes both interior and exterior sensors (there is some sort of exterior sensor to prevent someone from jacking up your car, etc.). So the tape fix won’t fix a ferry problem (that would be sweet to live somewhere I’d need to take a ferry).

One day, if Ford implements safe zones, I might forgo the tape. But for now I just don’t see another consistent solution and I’m sick of the darned alarm going off.
 

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I think the ultimate solution to this is for Ford to just build a "Dog Mode" similar to Tesla's. I would have to assume they'd have the motion sensors off for that :)
I was actually disappointed that Ford didn't include a "Dog Mode" in the initial rollout of this car. It's one of the most useful (and obvious) features to have copied from Tesla.
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