In my truck, I use the fan speed and temperature controls fairly regularly, and I can operate them without taking my eyes off the road because they’re big distinct rotary knobs. In my Flex, I have to take my eyes off the road to adjust pretty much anything because there aren’t any tactile buttons, just touch-sensitive surfaces, with the exception of the fan knob. The design of those control surfaces is far and away my least favorite design feature about that car, even with auto climate control. At least my Lincoln had distinct rockers for adjusting the temperature—if I try to adjust the temperature in the Flex, I’m just as likely to skip back 10 seconds in the podcast that’s playing as turn the temperature down one degree.
I use the temperature control and fan speed including Auto fairly often. My personal experiences with my Edge and MME touchscreens require me to look to locate the buttons to touch and often required multiple touches to make the change due to lack of responsiveness or other. I do not have this same problem with my Raptor or our ST.
My Bronco has physical controls, and I do like them. I have not had experience with the new interface with HVAC on the screen, but I think the permanent docking on the bottom will make a difference vs. other setups where you have to dig through multiple menus just to change the air.
That said, I have it set to Auto, so I rarely touch the A/C unless I want the temp up or down a degree or two, or the recirc on/off.
My view on it is sort of mentioned above. I think One Ford was the right strategy, but wasn't fully implemented to its full potential.....
Ford had to make drastic changes at the time given the company health, and I think the idea of consolidating to a few worldwide platforms (small vehicles, midsize/large, and 3 truck/suv sizes - mid/Ranger, f-150, super duty) made complete sense vs. the 8,000 different platforms for different models that they had.
It was fine to pare down to minimal platforms......the problem for me was that once pared down to that with the few key models, they stopped. After that point, they should have then used those platforms to branch out into regional models on top of those platforms - that way you get the savings of a few global platforms, with the ability to customize the lineup regionally specific to the market tastes.
For instance, the NA market didn't like smaller cars, so it could get Fiesta, Focus, and Escape on a small platform, whereas Europe likes smaller cars, so it could get Fiesta, Focus, Kuga (Escape) and maybe an additional model or two of various body styles on that same platform in the smaller segments appropriate for Europe. For an example of a platform where they did this path a bit better - Europe didn't want bigger cars like Edge, Taurus, Explorer, Flex, but did want Mondeo - so they used CD3/4 to give Europe the Mondeo, but added several other models on the same platform for the NA market.
You might want to try the UAW and the pension plan(s) too- The Teamster Local I was in had membership records going back at least to the 1930s, and pension plans have had a legal responsibility to maintain records of pension contributions for employees since the 1970s.
but that goes against spreading your self too thin because of costs of developing these products.
From what I understand-Ford of China was in desperate shape (most likely still is) before 2020 or so with sales shrinking.
That forced Ford to spend money on three different C products, in the shape of the Mondeo/Evos, Edge and Nautilus.
The EV program was more NA/EU focused then CN market....not to mention being started after the debacle above.
I use audio controls the most. And here, moving more of those controls to the center screen works just fine. I thought that I would miss the center console physical controls for station browsing, but I don't. The new steering wheel controls for volume and station browsing are better implemented than before, and the new infotainment system now has so many more pre-select stations (that keep scrolling from the end back to the beginning, which is huge -- I came from Sync3) that I never need to worry about finding a station I like. When my wife is in the passenger seat and is doing audio selection, she just uses the big volume knob (which is great) and the on-screen browsing which works fine for her as a passenger.
But I use the temp controls second most. And as stated above, I find it a pain to use when driving (and sometimes dangerous because it takes more attention away from driving). Again, when stopped it is just fine.