GreenChicago

Most of mine are covered, but how about these:

Cubby for cell phone

Cubby for key fob for SEL (how many times have I misplaced this???)

Coin storage drawer

Liftgate warning sound when left open because you double tap hatch control instead of lock button, leaving hatch open all night

This is just FYI for anyone with the automatic lift gate feature in hopes that you will learn from my big "duh" moment. I parked my cmax on the street in my quiet suburb when I visited a friend recently, hitting the key fob twice to lock the car doors. I apparently hit the bottom button that controls the lift gate instead! So two hours later on a thankfully dry evening I returned to find my gate wide open and interior lights blazing. I was worried the battery would have run dry powering the lights, but thankfully all was okay.

It seems to me that an improvement would be to have an auto close feature automatically kick in after x minutes open. I can't think of an application where you would ever need the gate to stay open more than say, 15 minutes if you we're loading cargo. Unless you are tailgating! What do others think about this as a way to prevent battery drain? Maybe Ford engineers can learn from my idiotic mistake and program an autoclose feature?

I just rode in a cmax cab in Chicago and had an interesting chat about the car. The driver really liked it, most of all for the economical operation! I was able to give him a bunch of hints about using mft and his settings that he hadn't yet discovered. I look forward to your observations about operating a fleet of these.

This is really hard for me to answer because I"m not sitting in my car.

 

1) There is an option in the settings somewhere to pre-fill in your current state.  Turn that off.

 

2) In the Phoenix area it always prompts me.  When you type in 4th street, there should be a little button with > and a number next to the text box.  If you press that it doesn't give you the options?

 

3) I've seen weird quirks like that b4 3.5.1.  I haven't used Nav enough since to see if that has solved the problem.  Have you tried switching between the keyboard options?

 

4) How so?  What are you saying to it?  Where does it fail at?

 

5) I'm not sure if it takes traffic into consideration, but remember you have to have an active Sirius subscription w/ the traffic option for it to work.  There may be an option to always select one route instead of showing, shortest, fastest, and eco, but I can't remember.

 

I hope this helps some.

Thanks, all-- some of this helped, like turning off the autofill state in options (which I hadn't discovered until just now!) But voice lady still doesn't seem to accept any verbal destinations. I don't think I have an accent and I've tried using the "ten fifty five" as well as "one thousand fifty five" for house number, as I read elsewhere on this forum but still no dice with the verbal instruction. Honestly my nav was far more reliable before 3.5.1, and would function more as some of you who responded to this thread indicated.

I discovered that I don't have a traffic subscription through Sirius, so that explains why this isn't taken into account when providing route guidance.

I will definitely try sending google directions to my phone-- that's a really nifty work around! And I know that google knows where the traffic jams and construction sites are (pretty much everywhere here in the summer!) Thanks for the great suggestions from this forum! Will post any progress as I make it in hopes that others can benefit.

I grew up in New Mexico, it's always someone's second thought.  I'm surprised it shows up at all in half the GPS units out there, lol.

 

My understand is that companies like Navteq (http://www.navteq.com/products_data_whatis_difference.htm) actually drive the streets with a gps taking down points, and simultaneously taking pictures of all the signs, like speed limit, and importing it into their database.  They probably don't travel rural areas as much as more populated.

I just completed a 1600 mile roadtrip from Chicago to New York and back. I used Route 80 most of the way, and the speed limits were frequently off in nav in Ohio and Pennsylvania. I'm not referring to work zones (which I would not expect to be reflected in the database as they change frequently), but regularly posted speed limits. They were often posted on signs at 55 mph, but my display said 70 mph. There were a few times it was reversed (display reflected lower speed limits vs. posted), but nevertheless my point is still that you should not take the info in nav as gospel. Put another way, I don't think the cop who stops you for speeding is going to care what your Ford Touch said!

Actually, the easiest way is to say "weather".

Thank you! Unfortunately I don't have that subscription.

I am having a really tough time using navigation to set destinations. There seem to be several issues, which I will try to illustrate below:

1. Changing states.  When I set a new destination for a different state, unless I know the zipcode of that destination, I am unable to change the state I'm in (<--lol) This renders nav completely useless. How do I override this?

2. N, S, E, W street names. I am having difficulty getting nav to ask me which street: "West 4th street" or "east 4th street" when I type "4th street." Also renders nav useless.

3. Picking house numbers. When I try to set a destination, I am first setting city, then street, then street number. But when I do this and reach the house number, the number pad is dimmed out and unavailable, leaving me only with alphabet options for house numbers! Also, useless nav!

4. Voice activated nav. 100% fail. I have never, ever gotten this to work! I mean, what's the point of using MFT nav if it takes 20 minutes in the garage to set a new destination? I almost exclusively rely on Google maps through my iphone 4s speaker at this point.

5. Selecting the best route. Before I "upgraded" to 3.5.1, I would be presented with several route options and asked to select the one I want. Now after 3.5.1, I never get to select, and the default also often puts me right in the middle of traffic jams or construction! Does nav even take traffic into consideration?

The only time nav works is if I select a previous destination. What the heck am I doing wrong here?

Yes. Pull the voice paddle and say "Bluetooth Audio" or, if you have the cord plugged in, "USB." This assumes you also want your entertainment audio coming from the phone (eg the iphone's native Music app, Pandora, Spotify, NPR app etc.). Otherwise, you are forcing your phone to interrupt whatever other audio source you're using (radio? nothing? CD?) with each communication. Google Maps is smart enough to do that, but apparently Apple Maps isn't.

 

BTW, I think it's normal for the car to call such communications "unknown call." It does so when I use Siri. When the communication ends, it will briefly show "In Privacy" and then end the communication.

Thank you, HotPotato! I was having the same issues and couldn't find "BT" option from either the entertainment or dashboard menus. I was having to start playing BT music from my phone before the BT option would even display on the screen, completely defeating the point of having controls from MFT. I will try the paddle and see if it starts automatically.

Oh! I totally read that backwards, lol sorry.

 

Yeah, speed limit is only shown on the Main display only when your in the navigation section.

 

And it's only on the right of the speedometer if you have that display set to Nav.

 

What I often do is set that display to nav while my passenger is playing w/ radio.  If I'm by myself, I swap the two.

Unfortunately, I have found that the speed limit displayed is sometimes wrong, or doesn't match posted signs on the side of the road. Be careful with that!

I just returned from my first road trip in my new SEL, and got solid mileage (~44.5 mpg overall this trip). But lookie what I saw on the streets of New York City! Lots of them! Btw, I'm told by a local dealer that the reason the inventory is so low and build times so long because the New York City taxi fleet upgraded their Fusion batteries to the ones used by C-Maxes.

Wife likes the umbrella trays.   I like the weather map.  I call that one a hidden feature because I had no idea it was there until I read about it on this forum.  Afterwards, I went to the owners manual and couldn't find it in there.  Works like a champ, though.

 

Haven't used this one, and it's already been mentioned...the storage areas underneath the rear floor mats are cool hidden features.

BWP, where is the weather map feature? Is it on my SEL somewhere in MFT?

Welcome to the cult of ruby red! I live in Illinois but am visiting New Jersey now so honk if you see me!

Bill, thanks for posting that. You sure are patient! I have been known to have a row with Siri- I swear at her and everything when she fails to get it right (which is always, in my case!)

I am experiencing the same flakiness with voice commands, paddles and most everything mft related after 3.5.1. I'm planning a road trip later this week and I sure hope I don't get stopped for screaming at my car!

Adair, I have never tried to "speak" a phone number, so I can't help with that. But I did upload my phonebook via bluetooth (iphone 4s), and in another thread, someone suggested turning off "auto download" after the first load. I had a lot of tics and pops, and a looooooooong wait to use the phone while MFT checked for new entries. Turning off that setting did seem to help. I still can't figure out how to create a "favorite" shortcut in the phone book-- there's an option to "star" a number, but I can't seem to figure out how to do that. Anyone?

Adair I haven't been back since Thursday. But all this weird behavior occurred over the weekend and reading others here makes me realize its not me and its totally unstable. It would be one thing if one issue immediately presented itself, but this has been a series of things I was going to shrug off till I started reading others here. Will keep you apprised.

After pulling the right paddle I would say, "call HPRifleman on cell". There was no acknowledgement of the paddle pull. The call would then go through and connect to my voice mail. I never tried calling via the touch screen.

 

All the normal functions of MFT worked except for the talking computer voice. Satellite radio, navigation (except voice directions), USB connectivity, and phone.

This is exactly what is happening to me on my recently upgraded 3.5.1 car, HPR. I wasn't concerned until I read your post here, as I just assumed it was user error. I'm still getting used to this car, but none of this new behavior is acceptable-- it's going in the wrong direction for me, introducing new bugs. Can I ask you how you do a master reset yourself? I thought that was a dealer only procedure? Thanks in advance.

Today I lost all voice prompts from MFT. These were working fine yesterday and I made no adjustments that I know of. I checked the voice command volume and that was fine.

 

When I pull on the voice paddle on the steering wheel, there is no voice saying "Say a command". The lower left corner of the touch screen shows that MFT is listening but any voice command generates greatly delayed results. It's as if MFT can hear me but cannot talk back.

 

When the navigation has a destination active, there is no voice giving turn-by-turn directions. But the system will lower the volume on music playing when you would expect those commands to occur. A couple of times I heard part of a command but it was only a word or two.

 

Has this happened to anyone else?

YES! The exact same thing is happening to me following my 3.5.1 upgrade, but until I read your post above, I thought I was doing something wrong. Now I realize that it's endemic to this lousy "up"grade.

I got the upgrade and a whole lotta problems I didn't have before :-( Sometimes my phone won't sync, sometimes my phonebook doesn't load, sometimes voicelady doesn't respond when I toggle the right hand button, sometimes when I select bluetooth, MFT plays sound FROM MY PHONE (!) and a whole lotta tics and pops in the sound system I never had before. I hope to get mine rolled back to the last release, as I didn't have any serious problems before, but I sure do now. Sorry if this sounds like a rant, and I sincerely hope you have better luck. Or, that Detroit considers more thorough testing before prematurely releasing unstable software.

they do say red paint fades a lot quicker in the sun than other colors so hopefully in a few years you are still happy with your color choice.

Salsa, is that sour grapes I hear?!? <jk>

Salsaguy, thanks for commenting and the reason I'm leaving it in the hands of my purchasing Ford dealership is because I have a personal relationship with the Service Manager and my Sales Manager since my family has bought a half dozen Ford products from this dealership over the last 10 years.  We are considered to be part of the dealership family as I'm reminded every time I drop by.  I'm about to tell them this family member is growing very impatient.  I will be dropping by come Monday morning and force the issue upon my dealership family a week after this personal hell began.

Mtb and others,

I honestly think that the techs are shadow boxing on this one, because Detroit has obviously prematurely released an upgrade that wasn't ready for prime time. So regardless of your relationship with the dealership, I don't think they can help you solve the issues if the roadblock is with the software engineers. It seems like Detroit leaves the techs high and dry, and dump the customer service issues on the dealers.

I am also experiencing increasingly buggy and funky issues with my 3.5.1, so I really do feel your pain. Maybe let the family friends the dealer off the hook on this one, and tell them to pressure Detroit to do more complete testing before releasing things? I hope you get some resolution, and would sure appreciate your posting your updates here. Best of luck!

Thanks ceemax and Adair. I will try turning off auto download contacts. There are no emoticons in my address book, but there are ~1300 contacts. As of now mft only shows a first name, which is not very helpful. And ever since the upgrade, the voice lady never asks me to confirm which number I want (or the name). She just decides who to dial!

Mine were erased and have not come back yet.  However, when I did have it under 3.1.3, I had noticed that the location of EV+ coming on was slightly dependant on my battery level.  If my battery was almost full, it would go into EV+ alittle further from home and if the battery was really low, it would go into EV+ mode closer to home.  The difference being a couple of hundred feet maybe.  I don't know the distance from my home I just notice the landmarks where it would cut on.  And it only made a difference if the battery was really full (~80%+) or really low (~20% or less).  Anywhere inbetween and it cut on at the same place (+/- a few feet). 

 

As I am typing this I am wondering if your issue could be due to the GPS having a more (or less :doh: ) accurate location of where "Home" is after the upgrade?

I'm not sure how this works, but supposedly after 2-4 weeks your CMax knows where you live and uses EV when you approach your home from a certain distance. Maybe your EV+ changes have to do with the proximity to your home, and not the software upgrade at all? I read that in the OM somewhere.

I've been on this 3.5.1 odyssey all week and I wanted to share my experience for others to consider before upgrading. I agree with others who have said that it seems to have fixed some random bugs. I didn't have nav problems before so I can't comment on that. But! It's taken me 4 days and 9+ hours at the dealership and my phone is still not being recognized consistently, my phonebook will not download and stay loaded, and I now have a lot of blips and tics in my sound system that were not there before.

I got upgraded on Tuesday and the service took 5 hours. The tech said they have had problems with MFT consistently, so were not surprised. When I drove away I didn't notice that my iPhone 4s was not paired, so I tried in vain to do so myself. No dice. Went back on Wednesday, and they managed to pair it so off I drove. As soon as I powered down the car it would not recognize it again, and got bt errors from the console (not the phone, which reported that it was discoverable.) Returned on Thursday and they did a master reset, which did manage to pair the phone, so off I drove. I didn't realize that it did not/would not download my phonebook, which meant that I could not call from the car, only by using my hands on the phone. By Friday, they didn't have any info from Detroit on how to handle this, so they just shrugged and apologized.

At this time I have a paired phone that can stream podcasts or music, but cannot be used to make or receive calls. The techs are stumped, they are aware of the many failure points, but are powerless to fix them until software engineering either does better testing or slows their releases down until they are stable. I'm pissed that I can't use my phone in the car (we have hands free laws here and they are very quick to ticket for this), and I'm no closer to an answer or a fix. They said they can't roll it back to the previous release, and I'm left hanging.

So let the buyer beware before you are so anxious to get upgraded. I suppose if I was directed off course by a faulty nav system I'd be motivated to upgrade, but that was not my issue now or then. I wish I had just left well enough alone. Going to go back on Monday and try to sort this out once and for all, and planning to ride my bike all weekend, and not my car! Sorry for the rant; it's been a trying week.

Weeeell, another 4 hours in the dealership and still no phone sync with upgrade. Tech did a master reset and still nothing. Now he has to email Detroit for ideas. Interestingly, I seem to know more about this car and its current issues than he does! He's been a Ford tech since 1991 but this is his first cmax.

Sorry to hear that. Not that misery loves company, but my phone no longer pairs and they can't seem to fix this. Will advise any progress and hope you make some too.