Asystole
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- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 2013 Explorer Limited
REVIEW: UPDATED 4/11I picked up new 2013 Ford Explorer this past Saturday (3/31/2012)
We are leasing this car after deciding that we needed a bigger vehicle with seven seats. We traded-in a Volvo XC-60 T6 AWD for the Explorer. The Explorer is the Limited 4x4 with the 302A package.
I'm going to provide mine and my wife's impressions compared to the car we have replaced because when we got the Volvo, the Swedish company was owned by Ford (we even got X-Plan pricing on it for the 2010 model we took delivery of in November, 2009), and Ford took safety tech from Volvo and began spreading it to other cars in the Ford line-up. As such, we were expecting that some of the safety features that we have come to love on the Volvo would have carried over in like kind to the Explorer and would be familiar.
Let''s begin...
Performance:
Essentially, there is none. We knew this going into it; the Volvo's 6 cylinder, 286hp, twin-turbo/inter-cooled engine with 0-60 times in the mid 6's is just a whole other animal than the Ex's 290hp V6 with 0-60 in the 8's. It's just a wistful reminder to my wife that now when she steps on the accelerator on the on-ramp, she's not going to be thrown into the seat like the Volvo. Those turbos bend the torque curve down so that almost all the horses are available at half the RPM of the Ex's engine. It's a huge difference, we don't like it, but, we knew it would be like that.
Handling:
The Ex is definitely bigger, which is what we wanted. It handles and feels like driving a truck, however. I compare this to the Volvo SUV, the XC90 V8 AWD(311 HP) we had back in 2008 on a lease, which despite its size (similar to the Ex), felt like a car and was easier to maneuver. Volvo stopped making the V8, and the 240HP model they have is simply underpowered.
The Ex feels solid on curves, and I was well aware of the curve control when I was getting on the turnpike via a 30MPH on-ramp while I was at about 45-50MPH -- the car began slowing itself down.
The Volvo had/has AWD, it's always on, can't be turned off, and is intelligent. It monitors each wheel some 30 (or 300...don't remember) per second for slips, deltas in rotational speeds, torque differentials, etc, and can independently increase/decrease power and/or braking to any one or combination of wheels as necessary to maintain control. As for the Ex, I have no idea what it does. Is four wheel drive always on? Is it on only when I select one of the terrain modes manually? It was raining on Saturday. Do I choose the snow mode? If I don't choose a mode, is the car not going to be in four wheel drive? The manual is quite ambiguous, and two different people at the dealership gave me two different answers.
There is a large puddle that forms on the right side of a two lane road near my house when it rains. In the Volvo, the right tires will be in the puddle when I hit it at 45mph. For a split second, I could feel the Volvo, just for a split second start to pull to the right, but then instantly is straight without any input from me. The Ex was pulled to the right and I had to pull left on the wheel to keep from hitting the curb. This was with the terrain mode set to 'Normal'. Not good.
Safety features:
BLIS works well and as expected, as does the backing out of a parking space thing; experienced it first hand and was impressed.
The Volvo's lane departure nanny, when enabled, stays enabled and works at all speeds. The Ex's has to be manually enabled every time the car is started by pressing a button on the end of the directional stalk; there is no option to make this setting always on. However, if you make one of the keys into a 'MyKey', you can default it to always on. Also, The Ex's lane departure nanny only works above 40MPH. The Volvo gives the audible and visible in the windshield warning every time a lane marker is crossed without the turn signal on.
The Ex, however, has some rules regarding the amount of pressure exerted by the driver's hands on the steering wheel (apparently there are sensors in the wheel), and the rules are again ambiguous in the manual. We finally got some kind of response from the Ex by being in the middle of the lane, both dotted lines on the lane icon were green, and giving the wheel just enough of a skew so that the car began heading towards the lane markings, I took my hands off the wheel. When the car was about to cross the line, it actually steered itself back into the middle of the lane. There was no audible or visual alerts, however, even though they are enabled in the settings.
The adaptive cruise control works as I expected, nothing else to say about it. The collision avoidance system, however, is mostly useless. Even when bearing down on a car ahead of us at a relatively uncomfortable rate of speed, the Ex let out no warning of any kind until a crash was all but impossible to avoid without slamming on the brakes. The Volvo, on the other hand, allows easy configuration of the inter-vehicular gap and is quite aggressive in warning you well in advance to get your attention. Further, the Volvo will actually slam the brakes on if necessary, and it's 'City Safety' really works.
The auto high beams work as expected, but bear in mind that the car will interpret porch lights and street lights as headlights and turn off the high beams.
I haven't had the opportunity yet to try the parallel park assist, but will report back when I have. Added 4/4Have tried this feature several times now. It is fantastic!!! It works flawlessly, every time, and puts me about 8" or less from the curb when the maneuver is complete. This feature is a godsend to any city dweller.
Comfort and Convenience features:
My kids really like the ambient lighting colors. It's a nice touch.
The mirrors are power folding, but you have to do so manually. The Volvo had a setting so that the mirrors would automatically fold when the car was locked, and unfold when unlocked. My wife and I keep forgetting to fold/unfold the mirrors in the Ex. This should have had an auto option; there's really no excuse for it not to. After losing four side mirrors over the years to poor drivers knocking them off of our parked cars with their own side mirrors, this is a must-have feature.
Further, the Volvo had a nifty feature that the side mirror on either side of the car could tilt itself down automatically while parking so you can see the parking spot line or curb, and when placed in park, the mirrors would go back to their previous position. Please bear in mind that this Explorer cost two thousand dollars more than the fully loaded XC60 we traded.
The automatic movement of the driver's seat and steering wheel to facilitate ease of entry / exit from the vehicle is really slick. We truly like this and haven't had it in a car before.
The steering wheel gets nice and warm when activated, but the heated seats heat up unevenly. The area of the seat under my thighs and between my legs gets warm, but directly under my a**: no heat! The Volvo's seats heated-up from just below the headrest to the edge of the seat. What the hell? Both of the Ex's front seat had the same sparse heat distribution. I haven't tied the air-cooled feature of the seats yet. Added 4/11The air cooling feature of the seats is pretty nifty. The seats get quite cool quite fast. This will be welcome come summer.
The Sony stereo is clear, full, loud without noticeable distortion, and the sub-woofer nicely accentuates the bass.
The remote start works, but we have to remember the rules for using the car after remote starting it to prevent it from turning itself off when we get in the car...still haven't gotten it right yet and therefore have to restart the car every time we get in.
The key-less entry only works on the driver and passenger doors; the Volvo worked on all four doors. Further, in the Volvo, opening the rear hatch (keyless -- just having the key in your pocket, like the Ex, would unlock the hatch), however, unlike the Ex, all the doors would also unlock so the kids could start getting in while I'm putting groceries in the back. On the Ex, I can open the hatch keylessly, but I also have to unlock the doors either by walking to the driver or passenger front door and touching the handle, or using the remote...not well thought out. More frustrating, however, is trying to keylessly lock the doors. You touch the black button in the door handle of either of the front doors in order to lock the car. However, instead, the doors try to unlock even thought they are already unlocked. My wife got quite pissed off yesterday just trying to lock the doors. She pressed the black button on the passenger door repeatedly, holding the keyless-key thing in her other hand, and after over a dozen attempts just locked the car using the remote. I ran into this same issue myself, and found that the first or second attempt to lock the car with that black button in the the door handle (each time it tries to unlock), it will finally lock.
There is significantly more leg and shoulder room in the Ex. I'm 6'3", 200 pounds, and I can sit comfortably in the second row (bench, not buckets), and can even somewhat comfortably manage the third row accommodations. The front seats are spacious, comfortable, and the armrests are correctly positioned for someone of my size. A smaller person, however, will not like the location of the door arm rest relative to the seat position; it's too far away for someone who is under 5'7", let's say. The front seat headrests are, in a word, excellent. The ability to tilt them to make contact perfectly with the back of my neck is heavenly! The second row bench is also comfortable. A suggestion from the Buick Enclave would do the Explorer well: Move the bench to the third row. That way, three people can sit in the way back, and having two buckets in the second row provides walk-through access to the third row as well as the comfort of bucket seats for the second row passengers without losing seven passenger seating. Further, the Enclave offers a second row bench as well for a total seating load capability of 8 passengers! Ford could do this today if they wanted to.
As it stands now, getting in and out of the third row requires folding the second row seats down and flipping them forward. The latter is extremely difficult to do from the third row and therefore requires the driver or another passenger to perform. I see this as a safety concern for the third row passengers: How can they get out of the car if there is an accident and no one can assist in the movement of the seat(s)?
Okay, now, let's talk Sync/MFT:
The car was delivered with the most recent firmware and the A3 map SD card. In the first hour of using the car, I parked it, got out of the car and locked it. The screen stayed on. I though that this was normal. I got back in the car about 15 minutes later. Started the car. The screen stayed black. We started driving and after a minute of me tapping the black screen it came to life, but said it had to do necessary maintenance. It eventually came back up and hasn't repeated.
However, several times when starting the car, we might be serenading by static from an AM radio station, a random song might play from a random Sirius preset, etc.
The sync services don't seem to actually work. I sent a destination to the car. I connected to services while in the car, and was asked if I wanted to receive the destination, to which I agreed. After a couple of minutes, the voice said that everything was sent successfully, and we could use the phone again. The screen changed to navigation, a route began to appear, and then it was gone. Period. Simply gone.
As for voice commands, this is indeed tricky and is dependent on cadence, tone, inflection, sunspots, astrological sign, blood type, sperm count, and level of frustration. Example:
(My wife) "Play Song 'Can we all'"
(Sync) "Calling Lisa Whitman"
(Wife) "Cancel! Stop!"
(...ringing sound...sound of phone button on steering wheel being repeatedly pressed, fruitlessly trying to hang up)
(Wife) "I'm going to ###*ing rip you out of this car, chop you up and bake you into a pie!!!"
(Lisa Whitman) "What??!! Who is this??"
Ah, the hilarity!!
The thing is my wife speaks clearly. She was born in PA, lived in eight different states as she grew up as the daughter of the director of all mining operations for North America for the world's biggest mining company, and has no accent of any kind. No adenoids, no nasal sounds, no vocal idiosyncrasies that should stump Sync, yet stumped it is.
Complete documentation for Sync/MFT is lacking. There are supposedly, what, like 10,000 commands /key words that the system supposedly understands? Where are they? The web site says you can download and print out a Sync glove box reference, but the link for it takes you to the owner's support page where you can only download a manual for the car, a quick reference guide, and some other thing that I don't remember but has nothing to do with Sync.
Separately, our phones connect flawlessly, and Bluetooth streaming works perfectly. We both have the Android-based HTC Evo 3D from Sprint. I haven't tried text messaging yet, but I read that it works for this phone.
ADDED 4/5/12: I configured our phone's Bluetooth messaging. This feature works. Incoming texts show a notification on the SYNC screen, and the text can be read. I haven't tried to compose a text from the car yet, but they appear to be canned messages, not freshly dictated. Examples are along the lines of, "I'm going to be late," etc.
That's it for now. I'll let you know what else I find out. We have to take the car back to the dealership to have the headrest DVD players and roof rack cross bars installed. I'll tell them about the locking and the crash avoidance issues and see how hard they laugh and report back.
UPDATED 4/11/12We took the car in this past Monday to have the DVD players installed in the headrests and the roof rack crossbars put on. I gave the service department a list of issues as well. The upshot was that they cleaned the radar sensor, there was a loose wire having to do with the door handle, and they did a master reset of the Sync system. We were experiencing an easily reproducible issue whereby we pressed the talk button several times in a row while trying to get Sync to understand what we were saying, and Sync would simply no longer listen. It would leave the listening icon on the screen permanently, and subsequent presses of the button would do nothing. The only fix was to restart the car. This has not recurred since we got the car back.
We haven't had the opportunity yet to try out the DVD players, but will report back after trying them. A downside of the DVD install is that the afore lauded wonderful headrests have been replaced out of necessity with immobile headrests to better hold the players. Oh well, what can you do. Interestingly, the system comes with not one, but two remote controls; one for each screen. The system in our previous Volvo which were made by the same manufacturer (Innovision) came with one remote that could control either or both screens. Regardless, the screens came with two IR headsets as well as batteries and manuals, but no cables like I'm used to seeing, for attaching any kind of device you can imagine. Again, I'll report back
PROS:
Power steering column, ease of entry/exit
Power pedals
Roomy, comfortable seats
Cool ambient lighting
Heated steering wheel
Stereo is nice
Curve control
Remote start
BLIS works well
Bluetooth music streaming works well (for us, anyway)
HID headlights are bright, crisp
Parallel Park assist is truly inspired
Seat cooling is excellent
Cons:
Poorly engineered seat heating
Sync/MFT is brittle: Unreliable, is not a 'tool' (something you can just use without thinking about it, like a hammer, or worrying about it failing)
Keyless locking/unlocking needs a rethink
Access to third row is problematic
Lane assist/aid needs a rethink
Lack of collision avoidance alerts even though enabled
Power folding mirrors can't be set to do so automatically
Handles like a truck (In a former life, I was a paramedic and drove rather large vehicles)
Can't tell if the Ex can be trusted as a four wheel drive vehicle
HID headlights don't 'look around' corners or load level like the Volvo
Overall, at this price point (just over $50K), and for a vehicle that has a heritage pushing 20 years, I expected something a lot more refined, more ergonomically sound, and all-round to be engineered...better. My wife wants to return the car and is saddened at the idea of spending 24 months (lease) stuck in it. I really wanted to like this car.
All in all, I don't. UPDATED 4/11/12 It's growing on me
We are leasing this car after deciding that we needed a bigger vehicle with seven seats. We traded-in a Volvo XC-60 T6 AWD for the Explorer. The Explorer is the Limited 4x4 with the 302A package.
I'm going to provide mine and my wife's impressions compared to the car we have replaced because when we got the Volvo, the Swedish company was owned by Ford (we even got X-Plan pricing on it for the 2010 model we took delivery of in November, 2009), and Ford took safety tech from Volvo and began spreading it to other cars in the Ford line-up. As such, we were expecting that some of the safety features that we have come to love on the Volvo would have carried over in like kind to the Explorer and would be familiar.
Let''s begin...
Performance:
Essentially, there is none. We knew this going into it; the Volvo's 6 cylinder, 286hp, twin-turbo/inter-cooled engine with 0-60 times in the mid 6's is just a whole other animal than the Ex's 290hp V6 with 0-60 in the 8's. It's just a wistful reminder to my wife that now when she steps on the accelerator on the on-ramp, she's not going to be thrown into the seat like the Volvo. Those turbos bend the torque curve down so that almost all the horses are available at half the RPM of the Ex's engine. It's a huge difference, we don't like it, but, we knew it would be like that.
Handling:
The Ex is definitely bigger, which is what we wanted. It handles and feels like driving a truck, however. I compare this to the Volvo SUV, the XC90 V8 AWD(311 HP) we had back in 2008 on a lease, which despite its size (similar to the Ex), felt like a car and was easier to maneuver. Volvo stopped making the V8, and the 240HP model they have is simply underpowered.
The Ex feels solid on curves, and I was well aware of the curve control when I was getting on the turnpike via a 30MPH on-ramp while I was at about 45-50MPH -- the car began slowing itself down.
The Volvo had/has AWD, it's always on, can't be turned off, and is intelligent. It monitors each wheel some 30 (or 300...don't remember) per second for slips, deltas in rotational speeds, torque differentials, etc, and can independently increase/decrease power and/or braking to any one or combination of wheels as necessary to maintain control. As for the Ex, I have no idea what it does. Is four wheel drive always on? Is it on only when I select one of the terrain modes manually? It was raining on Saturday. Do I choose the snow mode? If I don't choose a mode, is the car not going to be in four wheel drive? The manual is quite ambiguous, and two different people at the dealership gave me two different answers.
There is a large puddle that forms on the right side of a two lane road near my house when it rains. In the Volvo, the right tires will be in the puddle when I hit it at 45mph. For a split second, I could feel the Volvo, just for a split second start to pull to the right, but then instantly is straight without any input from me. The Ex was pulled to the right and I had to pull left on the wheel to keep from hitting the curb. This was with the terrain mode set to 'Normal'. Not good.
Safety features:
BLIS works well and as expected, as does the backing out of a parking space thing; experienced it first hand and was impressed.
The Volvo's lane departure nanny, when enabled, stays enabled and works at all speeds. The Ex's has to be manually enabled every time the car is started by pressing a button on the end of the directional stalk; there is no option to make this setting always on. However, if you make one of the keys into a 'MyKey', you can default it to always on. Also, The Ex's lane departure nanny only works above 40MPH. The Volvo gives the audible and visible in the windshield warning every time a lane marker is crossed without the turn signal on.
The Ex, however, has some rules regarding the amount of pressure exerted by the driver's hands on the steering wheel (apparently there are sensors in the wheel), and the rules are again ambiguous in the manual. We finally got some kind of response from the Ex by being in the middle of the lane, both dotted lines on the lane icon were green, and giving the wheel just enough of a skew so that the car began heading towards the lane markings, I took my hands off the wheel. When the car was about to cross the line, it actually steered itself back into the middle of the lane. There was no audible or visual alerts, however, even though they are enabled in the settings.
The adaptive cruise control works as I expected, nothing else to say about it. The collision avoidance system, however, is mostly useless. Even when bearing down on a car ahead of us at a relatively uncomfortable rate of speed, the Ex let out no warning of any kind until a crash was all but impossible to avoid without slamming on the brakes. The Volvo, on the other hand, allows easy configuration of the inter-vehicular gap and is quite aggressive in warning you well in advance to get your attention. Further, the Volvo will actually slam the brakes on if necessary, and it's 'City Safety' really works.
The auto high beams work as expected, but bear in mind that the car will interpret porch lights and street lights as headlights and turn off the high beams.
I haven't had the opportunity yet to try the parallel park assist, but will report back when I have. Added 4/4Have tried this feature several times now. It is fantastic!!! It works flawlessly, every time, and puts me about 8" or less from the curb when the maneuver is complete. This feature is a godsend to any city dweller.
Comfort and Convenience features:
My kids really like the ambient lighting colors. It's a nice touch.
The mirrors are power folding, but you have to do so manually. The Volvo had a setting so that the mirrors would automatically fold when the car was locked, and unfold when unlocked. My wife and I keep forgetting to fold/unfold the mirrors in the Ex. This should have had an auto option; there's really no excuse for it not to. After losing four side mirrors over the years to poor drivers knocking them off of our parked cars with their own side mirrors, this is a must-have feature.
Further, the Volvo had a nifty feature that the side mirror on either side of the car could tilt itself down automatically while parking so you can see the parking spot line or curb, and when placed in park, the mirrors would go back to their previous position. Please bear in mind that this Explorer cost two thousand dollars more than the fully loaded XC60 we traded.
The automatic movement of the driver's seat and steering wheel to facilitate ease of entry / exit from the vehicle is really slick. We truly like this and haven't had it in a car before.
The steering wheel gets nice and warm when activated, but the heated seats heat up unevenly. The area of the seat under my thighs and between my legs gets warm, but directly under my a**: no heat! The Volvo's seats heated-up from just below the headrest to the edge of the seat. What the hell? Both of the Ex's front seat had the same sparse heat distribution. I haven't tied the air-cooled feature of the seats yet. Added 4/11The air cooling feature of the seats is pretty nifty. The seats get quite cool quite fast. This will be welcome come summer.
The Sony stereo is clear, full, loud without noticeable distortion, and the sub-woofer nicely accentuates the bass.
The remote start works, but we have to remember the rules for using the car after remote starting it to prevent it from turning itself off when we get in the car...still haven't gotten it right yet and therefore have to restart the car every time we get in.
The key-less entry only works on the driver and passenger doors; the Volvo worked on all four doors. Further, in the Volvo, opening the rear hatch (keyless -- just having the key in your pocket, like the Ex, would unlock the hatch), however, unlike the Ex, all the doors would also unlock so the kids could start getting in while I'm putting groceries in the back. On the Ex, I can open the hatch keylessly, but I also have to unlock the doors either by walking to the driver or passenger front door and touching the handle, or using the remote...not well thought out. More frustrating, however, is trying to keylessly lock the doors. You touch the black button in the door handle of either of the front doors in order to lock the car. However, instead, the doors try to unlock even thought they are already unlocked. My wife got quite pissed off yesterday just trying to lock the doors. She pressed the black button on the passenger door repeatedly, holding the keyless-key thing in her other hand, and after over a dozen attempts just locked the car using the remote. I ran into this same issue myself, and found that the first or second attempt to lock the car with that black button in the the door handle (each time it tries to unlock), it will finally lock.
There is significantly more leg and shoulder room in the Ex. I'm 6'3", 200 pounds, and I can sit comfortably in the second row (bench, not buckets), and can even somewhat comfortably manage the third row accommodations. The front seats are spacious, comfortable, and the armrests are correctly positioned for someone of my size. A smaller person, however, will not like the location of the door arm rest relative to the seat position; it's too far away for someone who is under 5'7", let's say. The front seat headrests are, in a word, excellent. The ability to tilt them to make contact perfectly with the back of my neck is heavenly! The second row bench is also comfortable. A suggestion from the Buick Enclave would do the Explorer well: Move the bench to the third row. That way, three people can sit in the way back, and having two buckets in the second row provides walk-through access to the third row as well as the comfort of bucket seats for the second row passengers without losing seven passenger seating. Further, the Enclave offers a second row bench as well for a total seating load capability of 8 passengers! Ford could do this today if they wanted to.
As it stands now, getting in and out of the third row requires folding the second row seats down and flipping them forward. The latter is extremely difficult to do from the third row and therefore requires the driver or another passenger to perform. I see this as a safety concern for the third row passengers: How can they get out of the car if there is an accident and no one can assist in the movement of the seat(s)?
Okay, now, let's talk Sync/MFT:
The car was delivered with the most recent firmware and the A3 map SD card. In the first hour of using the car, I parked it, got out of the car and locked it. The screen stayed on. I though that this was normal. I got back in the car about 15 minutes later. Started the car. The screen stayed black. We started driving and after a minute of me tapping the black screen it came to life, but said it had to do necessary maintenance. It eventually came back up and hasn't repeated.
However, several times when starting the car, we might be serenading by static from an AM radio station, a random song might play from a random Sirius preset, etc.
The sync services don't seem to actually work. I sent a destination to the car. I connected to services while in the car, and was asked if I wanted to receive the destination, to which I agreed. After a couple of minutes, the voice said that everything was sent successfully, and we could use the phone again. The screen changed to navigation, a route began to appear, and then it was gone. Period. Simply gone.
As for voice commands, this is indeed tricky and is dependent on cadence, tone, inflection, sunspots, astrological sign, blood type, sperm count, and level of frustration. Example:
(My wife) "Play Song 'Can we all'"
(Sync) "Calling Lisa Whitman"
(Wife) "Cancel! Stop!"
(...ringing sound...sound of phone button on steering wheel being repeatedly pressed, fruitlessly trying to hang up)
(Wife) "I'm going to ###*ing rip you out of this car, chop you up and bake you into a pie!!!"
(Lisa Whitman) "What??!! Who is this??"
Ah, the hilarity!!
The thing is my wife speaks clearly. She was born in PA, lived in eight different states as she grew up as the daughter of the director of all mining operations for North America for the world's biggest mining company, and has no accent of any kind. No adenoids, no nasal sounds, no vocal idiosyncrasies that should stump Sync, yet stumped it is.
Complete documentation for Sync/MFT is lacking. There are supposedly, what, like 10,000 commands /key words that the system supposedly understands? Where are they? The web site says you can download and print out a Sync glove box reference, but the link for it takes you to the owner's support page where you can only download a manual for the car, a quick reference guide, and some other thing that I don't remember but has nothing to do with Sync.
Separately, our phones connect flawlessly, and Bluetooth streaming works perfectly. We both have the Android-based HTC Evo 3D from Sprint. I haven't tried text messaging yet, but I read that it works for this phone.
ADDED 4/5/12: I configured our phone's Bluetooth messaging. This feature works. Incoming texts show a notification on the SYNC screen, and the text can be read. I haven't tried to compose a text from the car yet, but they appear to be canned messages, not freshly dictated. Examples are along the lines of, "I'm going to be late," etc.
That's it for now. I'll let you know what else I find out. We have to take the car back to the dealership to have the headrest DVD players and roof rack cross bars installed. I'll tell them about the locking and the crash avoidance issues and see how hard they laugh and report back.
UPDATED 4/11/12We took the car in this past Monday to have the DVD players installed in the headrests and the roof rack crossbars put on. I gave the service department a list of issues as well. The upshot was that they cleaned the radar sensor, there was a loose wire having to do with the door handle, and they did a master reset of the Sync system. We were experiencing an easily reproducible issue whereby we pressed the talk button several times in a row while trying to get Sync to understand what we were saying, and Sync would simply no longer listen. It would leave the listening icon on the screen permanently, and subsequent presses of the button would do nothing. The only fix was to restart the car. This has not recurred since we got the car back.
We haven't had the opportunity yet to try out the DVD players, but will report back after trying them. A downside of the DVD install is that the afore lauded wonderful headrests have been replaced out of necessity with immobile headrests to better hold the players. Oh well, what can you do. Interestingly, the system comes with not one, but two remote controls; one for each screen. The system in our previous Volvo which were made by the same manufacturer (Innovision) came with one remote that could control either or both screens. Regardless, the screens came with two IR headsets as well as batteries and manuals, but no cables like I'm used to seeing, for attaching any kind of device you can imagine. Again, I'll report back
PROS:
Power steering column, ease of entry/exit
Power pedals
Roomy, comfortable seats
Cool ambient lighting
Heated steering wheel
Stereo is nice
Curve control
Remote start
BLIS works well
Bluetooth music streaming works well (for us, anyway)
HID headlights are bright, crisp
Parallel Park assist is truly inspired
Seat cooling is excellent
Cons:
Poorly engineered seat heating
Sync/MFT is brittle: Unreliable, is not a 'tool' (something you can just use without thinking about it, like a hammer, or worrying about it failing)
Keyless locking/unlocking needs a rethink
Access to third row is problematic
Lane assist/aid needs a rethink
Lack of collision avoidance alerts even though enabled
Power folding mirrors can't be set to do so automatically
Handles like a truck (In a former life, I was a paramedic and drove rather large vehicles)
Can't tell if the Ex can be trusted as a four wheel drive vehicle
HID headlights don't 'look around' corners or load level like the Volvo
Overall, at this price point (just over $50K), and for a vehicle that has a heritage pushing 20 years, I expected something a lot more refined, more ergonomically sound, and all-round to be engineered...better. My wife wants to return the car and is saddened at the idea of spending 24 months (lease) stuck in it. I really wanted to like this car.
All in all, I don't. UPDATED 4/11/12 It's growing on me