Ford may still be smarting from how Consumer Reports downgraded its reliability rating this year, largely because of continued customer problems with MyFord Touch. But CEO Alan Mulally is defiant in asserting the brand's leadership in infotainment technology and seems determined to keep it central to the company's strategy.

In fact, Mulally told Automotive News that the company plans to help Ford dealers serve customers with technology upgrades to its vehicles that will feel similar to how Americans already frequently upgrade to new smartphones or, say, to Windows 8.

"We want to move to the place where you have this enduring relationship with your Ford store just like your Apple store," he told the magazine.  "You go in, you get the latest upgrades on the technology and off you go. You see what's coming, and you can decide which features you want."

Unfortunately for Ford, such "features" these days don't necessarily include MyFord Touch. After a strong start in the infotainment biz with Sync for a few years, MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch have been souring the brands' relationships with new-car buyers for two years now, and finally have begun bringing down regard for Ford overall.Continue reading...

Less than a year and a half after Consumer Reports first devastated Ford with its critique of the automaker's MyFord Touch infotainment system, the influential arbiter of consumer decisions is back at it again with an even more devastating review of MyFord Touch -- one that comes after Ford's mighty efforts to fix the platform.

"Why the MyFord Touch Control System Stinks" is the title of an almost-vitriolic blog posting on the magazine's web site by Eric Evarts, a senior automotive editor. "We wouldn't recommend dealing with the frustration of MyFord Touch on a daily basis even to an adversary," he wrote.

Specifically, Evarts didn't like how Ford has removed lots of conventional buttons and switches on MyFord Touch -- essentially, Version 2.0 of its pioneering Sync infotainment system -- in favor of touch-screen commands and voice controls that he says are badly executed, complicated, and potentially a safety concern as Ford and Lincoln drivers try to use the system while hurtling down a highway. Continue reading...

Ford's fix to debug its Sync on-board connectivity system is in the mail, and company executives are hoping they can now resume their brand's upward arc in the infotainment universe.

The company announced that its dealers started receiving the software upgrade packages on Monday, containing USB flash drives with the revised version of MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch, which essentially are Sync 2.0, and about 300,000 customers who bought the systems will be receiving them soon.

Consumer confusion over how to operate those systems contributed greatly to lower ratings of the overall Ford brand in influential surveys conducted by Consumer Reports and J.D. Power & Associates last year and vanquished much of the lead that Ford had established several years ago with its trailblazing Sync service.Continue reading...

If there’s one week a year that auto brands listen to their dealers, it’s this week – when the National Auto Dealers Association convention is held in Las Vegas.

And Ford brand stewards this week told their retailers the company has been listening to them with an important gesture. Ford said that it would begin offering a “technology allowance” that will help dealers offset the costs of the time and trouble of teaching consumers how to use the proliferating menu of in-dash technologies in Ford and Lincoln vehicles.Continue reading...