Three Months In Reflecting on Adoption

[imstriker]

Apparently I am now three months in on ownership and about 5,200 miles now. My dealer happily reminded me of the three month dates by sending me a generic e-mail to come get my oil and filter changed. Certainly appreciate their help.

I absolutely love this car, but I am reminded daily that we are early adopters. Being in the tech field, this feels somewhat normal for me. However, I can imagine that many of the small issues with this car would not work for the great majority of driving public. If Ford is going to make this a widespread vehicle a lot of little things need to improve. And honestly, I do have to say that I am disappointed with their speed of fixing things and transparency about it. I realize this is a point of major contention on this forum, but the truth is that these types of issues and lack of response would not fly with the general public. I just do not consider us the general public here.

Here is my typical journey in the morning to work that I think would stop adoption...

- Car is set to charge at midnight, happily completed about 1am. Go to unplug car at 6:45, receive orange ring of death. Service Vehicle Soon message inside, FordPass message sent. Ok, it's a bug, it goes away after a restart, but it's not right. Even coming from my LEAF, I've never had to worry about simply unplugging my car.
- Unlock car via FordPass app because just pressing button does not work. PaaK must not be connecting again.
- Get in car, try to start, nope, try again, nope. Try too many times and eventually enter long passcode string.
- Back out of driveway as car randomly complains no key detected. Really, had not noticed?
- Radio station stuck on what it was previously. Sync 4 has decided to run really slowly this morning. Getting there, getting there...
- Get to work, doors won't lock. Try again, nope. Try back door, nope. Again, forum to the rescue, hold 7-8 and 9-0. Done.

Again, it is a great car and a marvel of engineering. We have to be honest though, these issues would not fly for most people coming over expecting an easy experience. I have done many of the workarounds thanks to this group. My audio presets now hold since I changed the defaults. I turned off the school zone notice since every day going into work the car found a phantom school zone that has never existed. I flat out gave up on the ridiculous cargo cover that just pops off. Without being willing to chase things and this forum, it would be more annoyances. And I know that there is a PaaK SSM out there that might help. But that means giving up half a day or more dealing with the dealer on my car that was supposed to be OTA updatable.

I don't mean any of this as a rant, just a hope that Ford realizes widespread adoption is going to take a lot more work, speed, and transparency. On the positive side, the car has been rock solid as a daily driver. Range has been better then promised. We have taken several road trips and always been able to continue (after calling EA to initiate charges 4 out of 6 times). I love my car and I hope it continues to get better. I'm looking forward to the experience eventually being acceptable to the general public.

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[fayt349]

I agree. Hope Ford actually fixes all this, otherwise all their efforts are for naught honestly.

 

[Garbone]

My odd bug is on occasion when loading up the little on for school I hit the button to open the rear door and nothing happens. I then hit the button on front door and both pop open.

Heh

 

[JoeDimwit]

I don’t use PAAK because of the reasons you mention. It is currently rainy season here in Michigan, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend any extra time in the rain waiting for my car and phone to talk to each other and decide to let me in the car. I hear that the recent service memo about PaaK has helped some people tremendously, but I’ll just use my fob for now.

the cargo cover is a simple fix. You haven’t pushed the rod ends into the clips firmly enough. It needs to click in. It’s kinda like plugging the plug tail into the mobile charger… it mentally feels like you’re about to break something right up until it finally seats into place.

 

[RockwallRick]

Still don’t have a car yet but thanks to our awesome local Ford dealer my Wife and I have racked up 1,000 carefree MME miles!!! We have yet to try PAAK or Fordpass yet but otherwise we have NO complaints!!

 

[imstriker]

I don’t use PAAK because of the reasons you mention. It is currently rainy season here in Michigan, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend any extra time in the rain waiting for my car and phone to talk to each other and decide to let me in the car. I hear that the recent service memo about PaaK has helped some people tremendously, but I’ll just use my fob for now.

the cargo cover is a simple fix. You haven’t pushed the rod ends into the clips firmly enough. It needs to click in. It’s kinda like plugging the plug tail into the mobile charger… it mentally feels like you’re about to break something right up until it finally seats into place.

Thanks... We have tried the push to you break thing. One side clicks in, the other seems to not have enough compression from day one. The dealer thinks that some people just got better clips then others. They have offered to do more follow up on it but really I just gave up messing with it.

 

[RockwallRick]

I don’t use PAAK because of the reasons you mention. It is currently rainy season here in Michigan, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend any extra time in the rain waiting for my car and phone to talk to each other and decide to let me in the car. I hear that the recent service memo about PaaK has helped some people tremendously, but I’ll just use my fob for now.

the cargo cover is a simple fix. You haven’t pushed the rod ends into the clips firmly enough. It needs to click in. It’s kinda like plugging the plug tail into the mobile charger… it mentally feels like you’re about to break something right up until it finally seats into place.

Have not experienced the paak frustration myself, but sounds like they need to provide 2 key fobs!!

 

[jhalkias]

Another thing on door locking . . . if you hit the door lock button on the inside of the door before you shut the door when getting out, the doors will lock when the door is shut every time. The little lock symbol above the door open button sometimes does not work for me either, so I have gotten into this habit. Just don't shut that door if you need something out of the back seat.

Also . . . PAAK seems to be more consistent if FordPass is on and active on your phone.

And yes, we ARE early adopters who tolerate more.

 

[janitorjim]

with 70K eF150 on order I have to think a lot of improvements to the above issues will be fixed or improved before the eF150 is released

 

[deadduck]

My current car’s ACC would randomly fail with a warning/error. It was failing multiple times / day / week at its worst. But it could also go weeks and not trigger. Dealer’s didn’t have a clue and really did tell me to just restart, “sure I’ll just pull over on the side of the freeway and do that”.

1-1/2 years later Honda releases a fix and it’s never happened again. It was a software issue. Dealers couldn’t have fixed it if they had tried And they didn’t try very hard. There was no recall, just a TSB, that I had to discover and take to the dealer.

I don’t really have a point except to say that software and car manufacturers are a scary combination. That oil change email or letter is a perfect example.

 

[Scrannel]

Back in Tesla's early days there were also issues. But, with such a small population of cars. no one noticed. Now, since all EV manufacturers admit to having pulled a Tesla apart to see how it works, there really is no excuse. My 3 Performance just, plain works. And has had zero bugs since the day I bought it. THAT SAID... the real challenge is, we early adapters must show the ICE world that charging can be handled in a routine fashion. To me, that's the real battle.

 

[HuntingPudel]

I don’t really have a point except to say that software and car manufacturers are a scary combination. That oil change email or letter is a perfect example.

well, at least they didn’t ask him down to change the headlight fluid or the blinker filter.

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