Note: Mach-e has a 30 minute time out on this, though I think you can change that in settings.
That’s if you take the fob with you. I think.
Someone put this post in front of the lightning product manager and just say "fix every one of these gripes, now". It's almost all software and all legit stumbling blocks.Oh boy here we go! I am 8 days in and I wanted to love the truck. I've been waiting for an EV F150 for a decade (ever since the DOA Toyota/Ford hybrid was announced). The wife and I are not fully in love with it. We really like it, but it's stupid little things getting us, which is frustrating because they are so fixable in software. Mine are (some are repeat).
1) Dog mode. This is a killer. We travel a lot and the dogs come EVERYWHERE. We picked the truck up and drove about 120 miles north to a family birthday dinner. We tested and saw remote start left climate on, leaving us to think "awesome we can make our own dog mode". I figured I could keep extending the remote start by 15 minutes. Welp at dinner I learn you can only extend it once. Okay fine I'll just turn the car off and on again from the app. NOPE you have to go to the car, start it, and then it lets you reset. So a 2 hour dinner had me setting a timer, having it go off every 28 minutes and going out to cycle the car. Each time disturbing the dogs who had settled down. This put a huge damper on day one excitement. We also thought it was a given we could monitor temps from the app; nope. So the whole time we were worried if it was on or not. Losing Dog Mode is almost enough justification to sell the truck. We didn't realize how much we rely on it, but we live and breath by it. Just today, she is out of town and I couldn't take the truck because I had client meetings and was going to be away from home much of the day. I needed dog mode and took the Tesla. With it being 100 degrees, knowing it would alert me if it failed, or that I could check the temp every 5 minutes was a huge relief.
2) The Navigation. This has me very irritated daily, especially in stressful driving situations. I never had a car, or drove a car, with any good navigation UI, and I have been in many cars, besides the Tesla. I was so pumped when Android Auto/CarPlay came out. Well we had a Jeep Gladiator from May '20 - Nov '21 and really disliked both Android Auto/CarPlay (mixed OS household). We thought it was Jeep adding extra nannies and having poor USB connections. Well now in the F150L I learned how much I prefer the Tesla OS to AA/CP. It's just so fluid and fast to boot. There's a weird delay in AA that has me missing turns (turns are very close in Boston area); it's weird and cannot explain it but it (Google Maps or Waze) lag a fraction of a second that messes me up. Also the boot up time is long. But more than anything, the inability to type in an address.
Day 2 of having the truck. My wife calls me and we plan on me picking up dinner, I need to change the address. I go to type it into Waze, but I'm locked out. I go to use built in Nav, I'm locked out. I have to then hang up on her, try voice commands and they don't work. Then I try voice commands on AA and it works. Then I call the wife back. It was so frustrating and much less safe than me quickly typing a few letters in the Tesla; I was so distracted for a good 2 minutes.
On top of all that, the Ford voice prompts suck. I am at about 30% success.Tesla is about 95% success. AA is better, but I prefer the built in. So any time my plan changes, I gotta pull over to type in the address; how is that safer when on a highway!
3) Boot up: In the Tesla, as I am walking out the door, I click the address and send it the Tesla (takes 10 seconds). I unplug the car, get in, put my phone on the wireless charger, and drive. It's booted up immediately, has my address, and Spotify is picked up and playing where I left it off; 15 seconds and I'm on the road. In the truck, I unplug, get in, hit the start button, wait 10-20 seconds, enter the address, wait for Android auto, plug in my phone, realize I forgot to close the charge port, get out, close it, get in, and go. It's so many more steps and most have been eliminated in the Tesla. Again I had no idea how good I had it with the Tesla UI/Nav/integrated music.
4) Manual Charge Door: I feel like I'm breaking it with how hard you have to push to open. Then on top of that, I have forgotten to close it every single time. I am sure I will get better with this, but it's just something I am not used to at all.
5) Start Button: I mentioned it above BUT WHY IS THERE A START BUTTON. First time I drove a Model 3 I was so confused, but after that, it just made sense. It's so silly to need a start button in an EV.
6) Cabin overheat protection: I didn't realize how nice it was to have a cabin that is never over 100 degrees getting into it. Coffee is never melted after 5 minutes, waters still drinkable, etc.
7) The Data: Everything that was said earlier about the charge data. It's crazy how limited your data is and how important that is. Why limit it?! And not being able to set the amps per charge is a giant miss. I still have been unable to find where to set the charge to 90 from 100, except the one time override (this is me being dumb probably and not researching).
8) The instrument cluster. I was excited to have one again after the 3, but it is very limited. I would have hoped for a lot more efficiency data, configurability, or maps. I assumed I would see the GPS overlay there like Audi does (most of my experience with digital dash). It's not bad, but I just thought there would be more.
9)BlueCruise. I love it except the nags have me not using it. The eye tracking is a good idea, but with sunglasses, it beeps at me at all the time. If I got to change my seat temp, beep. Change the volume, beep. Even many times looking fully ahead it beeps and only way I can avoid the harsh brake warning is to take them off. Without sunglasses, no issue, but I almost always drive with them during the day. I feel on the highway it is more stable than Tesla AP, but the nags are killer.
Also, when is it on?! It seems there are no real tones and very minor visual details to tell you it's on and what mode it is in. I am not sure, but I think there are 3 modes: 1) Basic ACC/Lane Keep 2)BlueCruise not hands free 3) BlueCruise hands free. After 700 miles, I still am not sure if that 3 mode assumption is right and can never realize, without looking at the tiny icon, what mode I am in. Tesla has one mode - AP (ignoring all the FSD BS).
10) The App. If you are coming from Tesla, just assume there is no app. The features are minimal (no HVAC, no temp, no ability to change chargin settings, no radio control) and the features it has are so slow to load. You open the location and most times it's out of date and hasn't loaded a recent location. I was walking the dogs and thought cool, I can turn Zone Lighting on the see better in the yard. Well that takes 15-20 seconds to load, then once it does, another 15-20 to turn on. Just an incredibly poor app, horribly slow, and leaps and bounds behind Tesla even when I got it in 2018.
11) DahsCam: I've had dashcams for some time and when Tesla integrated them, it was a great feature add! Recording wasn't as good as a dedicated one, but it hit all the main points and gave a great 360 view. I miss having that and didn't even think about needing to buy and install one now; it's been a given for years now.
12) Charging: Small note, but a 131 kWh battery is Huge! I knew, but didn't fully realize the impact. I'm on the mobile charger right now, that's about 18 hours to fully charge! One night we got home with range around 20% and the next day I left and it was only at 65% range after a full night's sleep. It wasnt an issue, but just very surprising as I had not done the math out.
13) DCFC: I had thought the networks were better than what is being said, and did a big post on this earlier on. The chargers are so much fewer, and I am not sure why this isn't a giant talking point, but they seem to average 4 stalls! That's so few, most Tesla SC are a minimum of 8. We have only had to DCFC once, and it was a great comparison as the EA charger was in the same lot as the Tesla SC we frequent. Man did the experience leave a lot to be desired. I didn't realize we had to think about parking orientation. Tesla SC are easy, back in and you are good. I had to remember where the port was and park the right way. Easy enough to do, but just something I didn't realize. Then when I parked realized station was down. Okay there are 4 stalls and all are open. We go to the next stall. Well that one was broken too. We go to the 3rd and it works! Plug and Charge gets a lot of fan fare, and maybe it is better than our experience, but it took ~2 minute to start; it was like booting up a computer with a HDD vs SSD, spinning that felt like it was never gonna stop. So our experience probably 50+ times of using the SC in the same lot was magnitudes better than the EA station. It took about 6/7 minutes to start charging between finding a working stall and waiting for it to finally go. Maybe this was a fluke, but from the experiences we are hearing about, this sounds normal. It feels like a giant step backwards.
14) Charge Speeds: I knew 150 kWh on a big battery was going to be slower, but man. We ran into WalMart and did a little shopping. We charged for 24 minutes and had gained about 40%. In the same time on a Tesla V3 we get about 75-80% and about 70% on a v2. Charge stops are now going to be charge stops we lose time to. With the Tesla, charge stops are usually perfectly timed breaks and 80%+ of the time, car is done before us.
15) Range: From the Mach-e efficiency tests, we were hopeful to get 80% of rated in mild weather, worse in the winter, and better in the summer. We hoped to get a real 280 miles out of it based on past Ford EVs. Well, we are getting 260 miles real range (from 100% to 0%) in the summer. I am nervous what winter will bring. Again, expected with an EV, and what we get in the Tesla, but I just had higher hopes based on Mach-es.
16) Wireless Charging. Huge hardware miss. In an hour drive, I get a few % at most. It must be 5w wireless charging, which is an incredibly old standard and overheats phones fast, with virtually no charge; it is a maintainer at best. And why only one phone slot? There is plenty of space for dual wireless chargers. I never realized how smart Tesla's setup is. My Model 3 has the older console and had a wired charger, but the aftermarket (and later factory) dual wireless charges are much faster. I looked online for aftermarket, but no good solutions.
17) Guess-o-meter(GOM): I often wondered why Tesla did not adjust it's GOM on the fly. I always hoped they would let you out your own efficiency in and have it recalulate to that. Ford's automatically recalulates on the fly. And of the 3 ways to do a GOM (Static/Change parameters manually/Change parameters real time) is this by far the worse. You start a trip based on your last trip. Is it 30 degrees colder today? Are you driving all highway today and yesterday was all city? I have had days it start at 280 miles, 230 miles, and many more random numbers. It is completely meaningless as every day is a different drive with different variables. At least with a static GOM, you can learn the efficiency and mentally calculate. The numbers always changing on the fly kill any planning I typically do in an EV.
Okay fine, ignore the GOM then, just use % you say. We guess what? It is about 3/4 taps down on the center screen or shows on the IC if you are in Calm Mode/BC only. Ford assumes the always changing and temperamental GOM is what you should listen to and shows it 100% of the time, where % is hidden a majority of the time. Tesla lets you pick either and quickly swap by tapping it. Give me that, or at least show both at all times.
Overall, this sounds like a scathing review. It's not! We love the truck and think it is amazing at being an EV F-150. But if you look at it from the lens of an experienced EV (Tesla) owner, it feels very behind the game in many areas. Honestly, almost all of these gripes (minus charging) are pretty straightforward software fixes in the future. I will say though, I was 15/10 excited for this truck and am 6/10 happy with it. I had fully written off the Cybertruck as Tesla BS that will be plagued with issues, and just look at how ugly it is. That being said, I am now more excited for the CT as the software and UI of the F150L really is half a decade behind Tesla. There is not a single "EV" thing it does better. Truck things, oh heck yes! And features, love the cooled seats, love the 360 cameras, power frunk is amazing! And countless more great features.
If you are looking at the F150L through the lens of an ICE owner, especially a F150 owner, this is an amazing vehicle and you will love it. The interface and features are leaps and bounds above any non-EV I have driven. And I think that is what Ford was benchmarking for, and crushed.
Hope this helps!
At my business we have a gravel parking lot that goes up slightly to a concrete curtain that goes down slightly. to the road, the truck will roll back and then inch forth 8-10" multiple times if I'm "stopped" and about to pull out.
Exactly. Normally I am not a negative Nancy, and is it refreshing to not be in a Tesla forum. I thought I was going to get flamed out by posting something like this! Over there I would be called a liar, short seller, and a whole other list of things for valid complaints...
.Yeah exactly. Speed makes sense and should not be an issue, but it's weird in real life to have a 240v not charge overnight.
Those are other great points!
I don't regret not going Platinum, as I can do a lot better for less $, but a disappointment for sure.Yes and we are going to have to learn those settings, and for safety buy a Waggle temp sensor.
Awesome points. I have to agree. Hardware wise, some things I would like different (or could have paid more for in the radio), but man is it a tremendously engineered vehicle. And I said it before, but think it's worth saying again. It's an amazing value all things considered. Very little comes close to it in value, and that's saying a lot. I love the Model 3, but when I bought it, the total objective value wasn't there like it is with the F150L.
I agree with you 1000%. I am hopeful they will update software and innovate a little or just copy the glaring omissions.
Here are the vehicles listed to receive Sync 4:
