Hello Everyone, we put our first 750 Miles on the 2012 limited Explorer with 302. I have some comments,
First of all, MFT sucks. It's slow, and tries to do to much. At Mile 350 it performed system maintenance, or AKA BLSOD and auto Reboot = Enabled.
Who's idea was it to put the 4 Way Flashers where they are? Terrible, it needs to be up above the MFT. Or at least a physical button. I can't tell you how many times I rested my hand there and hit that "button".
The voice control, meh. It tries to do to much. Simple commands like, Call Joe, or Cancel Route work every time. Anything more than that and you are asking for your Sirius satellite to tune to Grateful Dead.
Saying "Climate 70 Degrees" for example works every time as well. However saying "Driver seat cooling on" doesn't because they didn't include it in the voice control options. [sic]
On our trip we found a fatal flaw, we drove about 200 miles from home, we have an 11 week old, and a 2 1/2 year old. My wife grabbed my key, remote started the car, put my key in the passenger door cup holder area, shut the door. I was standing outside the vehicle at the time, both kids inside.
Does anyone else see the problem? It's 88 Degrees yesterday, and both kids are in the car, which is running - thank God. But the doors are locked, and even though the key is within three feet of the door you can't unlock it. I know what you are thinking, "outside entry" , yes I tried to memorize that number, I remembered a few of the digits, tried a couple of times and got it! Whew, crisis averted. But the car is new, luckily I spent time trying to memorize the keypad code.
This needs to be fixed, if the key is within 3 feet of the door, it needs to unlock when you put your hand in it, every time.
And yes, after a good hour and some coffee, mama calmed down.
So if you are looking at purchasing one and wondering what features you'll use:
1. Adaptive Cruise Control - Amazing
2. BLIS - Completely Necessary, the Ex's BlindSpots seem very big to me
3. Backup Camera
4. iPod plugged directly into Sync - I know everyone wants to use ipod/droid bluetooth stereo. A dedicated iPod is probably more reliable, less points of failure.
5. Cooled Seats - this is amazing on a hot day
6. Power Liftgate - I am seriously lazy
What kind of mileage? 22.9 on the trip back last night, all highway. Too early for a real accurate number on city/highway.
MFT Glitches thus far
1. iPod Touch 2nd Gen plugged in via USB Cable randomly stops working and it defaults to some radio serious station or something - Unplugging and plugging the iPod in fixes this.
2. iPod Touch 2nd Gen plugged in via USB Cable shows incorrect songs, or starts the song, then skips it - Unplugging and plugging the iPod in fixes this.
3. I am a Christian and listen to Sirius the Message, on MFT Big screen it shows up as Christian Genre, on the Right Hand LCD behind the steering wheel if you go to Entertainment while on that station I'm no longer a Christian, I'm a Chrstian. Sounds like Churchstian, which is a topic for another discussion.
4. Performing system maintenance at 350 miles, really? Black Screen and reboot. Not that I mind, but it put the radio on some bizarre station while it rebooted, and didn't fix itself when it finally came back up.
5. I'm a tad ocd, and some of the buttons on the mft do not have the letters centered. Where the ones above it do.
6. It's slow. I can't believe it was slower in previous versions.
MFT Tips -
1. When you connect your phone, manually download the address book, when it asks to auto download, the answer is no
2. Be patient
3. Use your finger tip, not your finger nail - I had to say that a few times
4. Be patient
5. Skip MFT and use Driver Controls
ADD Moment, the HID Lights are awesome.
Navigation:
Wow, I would call the navigation terrible. But really it's just overly complicated. I love how when you are in a strange location and you are about to make a turn, and the suddenly your map SPLITS IN TWO and you have a random map exit location on the right and roads on the left.
That's not confusing at all [sic] Because 2 maps definitely make it easier in a strange location when you have 2 seconds to figure out where to go.
There's a lot you can do with the NAV, it's far more feature rich than my Garmin (260w I think). However it's so cumbersome and incredibly slow, you aren't going to use them.
Here's a tip for new NAV users, when setting the destination, even though street number is in the top left and it looks like you should enter that first, don't. I know it makes since to do it that way, but this is MFT, do it backwards. Start at state in the lower right, then city, then road, then number. It'll work a lot better.
You know what else it cool? Setting the destination, then clicking on Go, and starting to drive. Again, I'm the idiot, because I clicked "GO" on my address, and assumed it meant the NAV was going to, you know, Go there. What "Go" really means is, "Go to the next screen". Ugh. When you get there, it doesn't look like it, but the top option of fastest route is probably selected, and then you click Start Route or something, whatever, seriously a $60 Garmin is better. I quit.
Anyway if you were curious of the accuracy of the NAV, it worked on 100% of my addresses I put in, it was off by about 30 feet in some instances, and 10 in others.
So, on the forums everyone seems to focus on the negative. Even me, but let me say this. These problem's with MFT and NAV are actually minor compared to then entirety of the vehicle, in my experience thus far. At this point I would say make sure you can live with the MFT Slowness and glitches, this was something my wife and I accepted before we purchased, so we weren't let down.
However if I removed MFT and NAV from the mix, this car is amazing, the design, the color, the safety features. We love it.
I of course am holding a decision on if I would recommend buying this to someone else until I hit 3-4K miles.
