rmc523

I wonder if we'll ever see the magical solid state batteries

I'm sure they'll have a product there, maybe they just want to move on from Mach E branding, thus no second gen, but there'll be an adjacent product? It'll be interesting to see where they source materials from though - I forsee screws getting tightened on all things Chinese.

Sounds like you're bad luck! 😛

They wanted to get a EV pickup out first because they're the pickup leader. You can't rethink the whole process and be first out of the gates unless you were years ahead on planning, which they weren't. So we got the stopgap measure, which isn't bad, but isn't world beating either. The alternative was doing what they've done with the 3-rows and cancel/push them back multiple times and years, endlessly waiting until they're "just right"

It'll be interesting to see how the move to use Chinese batteries will go...

A couple of thoughts, and it's not meant to be an apologist, but 1) Ford is hardly the only company to have invested billions in EVs with little to show for it.....I think where Ford gets dinged is that it decided to purposely break out EVs in their results, whereas competitors just have it in their overall numbers.........which looks better for you? Ford made $2.59 billion overall OR Ford Blue made $1.17B, Ford Pro made $2.56B, but EV lost $1.14B. 2) Changes should've been made earlier for quality purposes, but at least changes have been made that seem to be paying off so far. I'll agree that Oakville is a bad mis-step, and how can you blame him for the VW move when that was done by furniture man (can't even remember his name)?

I don't know why DS was made its own brand. I agree that the problems here are more on the European front than the US front, but Chrysler is probably on thin ice, as mentioned above without any product aside from Pacifica.

On a different note, I was in a Q7 yesterday (as a passenger), and it has the main upper touchscreen and a separate touchscreen below for climate. This could be an ok arrangement, but what I hated about it in my brief time in it was that they didn't operate like a normal touch screen where you just tap and it activates. You had to apply pressure until it gave a haptic "click-like" feed back and noise - seemed like the worst of both worlds lol. And it's odd because the A3 isn't like that - it's a normal touch screen.

This is one of those absolute statements you don't like lol. Sure you can use physical controls without looking.....it depends on the control, though. Giant knob for temp or volume, sure. Smaller button in a row of buttons....eh, maybe not. I believe your setup has toggle switches for air temp? You're telling me, you can't reach down and find the only toggle switches there and change it without looking?

Agreed that they need to get on a shorter, more regular refresh cycle. Ford has a history of delaying updates and then wondering why sales dry up, and then leaves the segment (not suggesting they'll leave Explorer's segment, just that some of their issues are self-inflicted). I too preferred the Mountaineer. I think if it's permanently docked on the bottom, it's not as big of a deal, vs if you have to dig through 3 menus just to adjust the temperature and/or fan.

This isn't considered a new generation, it's a refresh...

For instance, the Platinum grille: vs. the ST Line grille I never liked the 2020-2024 grille/headlight interface, so I welcome the change on the new model, though I would have preferred for the outer edges to have tilted in slightly more as they move lower (creating more of a V shape, vs. the complete box look we see).

I had a recall for my Bronco that consisted of adding some plastic clips on the seatbelt to keep the attachment point higher up on the pillar to make it more convenient to grab. Not saying all of Ford's recalls are like that, but it can't be ignored that some percentage of them are for minor things like that.

2025 Ford Maverick Will Be Revealed On August 1st (fordauthority.com) Ford Authority is reporting that Maverick will be "shown" on August 1.

Yeah, they had to change the front and rear quarter panels to accommodate the new headlight/taillight designs, but I guess it was too expensive to change the doors.