Must be official if its coming across the newswire.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...en-controls-update-after-rankings-plunge.html
Ford to Send Customers Software Update for Touch-Screen Controls By Keith Naughton - Mar 5, 2012 1:00 PM ET
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Ford Motor Co. (F), which has plunged in quality rankings, on March 8 will begin sending more than 300,000 owners of the Ford Explorer, Edge, Focus and Lincoln MKX a UBS flash drive loaded with new software to fix problems with MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch systems, the company said.
“We know that there’s a group of customers that reported that there were features of MyFord Touch that were not working properly and we’ve taken that feedback seriously,” Derrick Kuzak, Ford’s product-development chief, said today at a briefing in Dearborn, Michigan. “We expect these improvements will put us back on track in the quality rankings.”
John Sommers II/Bloomberg
2011 Ford Motor Co. Explorer sport utility vehicles (SUV) move along the production line at the company's Louisville Assembly Plant in Louisville on Dec. 9, 2010.
2011 Ford Motor Co. Explorer sport utility vehicles (SUV) move along the production line at the company's Louisville Assembly Plant in Louisville on Dec. 9, 2010. Photographer: John Sommers II/Bloomberg
Glitches with the touch screens controlling audio, phone, climate and navigation systems were one reason Ford fell the most of any car company in Consumer Reports annual Automaker Report Cards last month. Ford slid to 10th place, from fifth a year earlier, in the magazine’s testing of braking, handling, comfort, convenience, safety and fuel economy.
“Subpar reliability of some new vehicles, due largely to the troublesome MyFord Touch infotainment system and Power-Shift automatic transmission, hurt its report-card grade,” the Yonkers, New York, magazine said in a Feb.
28 statement.
In October, Ford fell to 20th from 10th in annual reliability rankings from Consumer Reports. The technology also was blamed by J.D. Power & Associates for Ford falling to 23rd from fifth in its 2011 new-car quality survey.
Ford Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally made quality a pillar of his turnaround plan for the second-largest U.S. automaker.
Consumers can install the new software themselves, which takes about 60 minutes, or take it to a dealer for assistance, Ford said. The software upgrade, which dealers received today, is aimed to prevent system crashes, the automaker said. Ford redesigned more than 1,000 screens on the system, to make buttons and graphics larger and more responsive.
Ford said in November it expected the download time would be about 45 minutes. The company added more content and changed additional screens and functions in response to feedback received from 1,700 employees and dealers, Kuzak said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Keith Naughton in Dearborn, Michigan , at
knaughton3@bloomberg.net