Love my Edge....but it's still early

[rogerthat]

1 Week Old / 500 miles in. Wordy first post, consider yourself warned.

First American made car I have ever owned. Was not a factor in the buying process but thought the Edge drove the best of the vehicles I considered.

 

Started out looking for best fuel economy in a smaller size SUV (was trying to downsize for a larger SUV that gulped premium fuel)

Ended up not being happy with either the interior luxury (Rav-4, Ford Escape, Tiguan, CR-V) OR felt the engine/tranny was not a good pairing for such a heavy car (Terrain, Equinox, Venza 4cyl)

Drove the Edge and thought it was perfect for my needs, althouth a little less practical (more money and worse gas mileage)

To be fair I guess a closer comparable in terms or price was the Highlander which also had luxury and an ample engine but flt bigger to me and in my mind at least I wanted to downsize.

 

Basically I wanted a car but got used to the high riding position and the occasional need for a Utility vehicle.

Basically 90% a car and 10% SUV. I think the Edge is basically that,

 

Really wanted to go with the EcoBoost 4cyclinder but also wanted AWD for snowy winters in New England

The EcoBoost IMO had a very peppy feel, more sportscar like ride. I would have preferred that engine over the standard 6 plus the mileage is better.

BUT lack of AWD and also I want to own this car for at least 8 years / 200K miles so I thought a 6 is probably going to be more reliable in the long run.

 

 

The Limited was out of my budget and the SE was missing some required (for me) features. So I went with the SEL with vistaroof and the MFT screen (no nav)

Couple of things that bug me about options / pricing:

Paying 35K for a car it should have auto controls and at least 8 way adjustment for the Passenger seat, I am sorry that is inexcusable but in my case not a deal breaker.

I understand that I would have auto controls for the Pass seat if I upgraded to Leather (for $1500 more) but it came down to that or the Vista Roof for me budget wise.

I can accept that heated seats only come with leather but for the pass to be manual with very limited adjjustment is going cheap on something that should not be an option at SEL plus level trims.

 

Secondly having recently purchased more luxury brands, the starting price for this car (28K) to the price with all options (43k) is a joke.

Many of the otions also require other options or packages as well so the car can quickly escalate in pricing.

I guess there is logic behind it when trying to appeal to a broad range of buyers price wise, but for example an Acura RDX which I never did test drive due to premium fuel but maybe I should have, starts at 32K and the ONLY option is Nav which takes it to 34K I believe. Everything is standard (powers seats, leather, moonroof, AWD, etc...)

It just bothers me becuase the Edge is sold as a under $30K car, but the actually MSRP of the Edges on the road are rarely under 30K

 

Ok enough ranting.

Very happy with the Edge thuis far.

Ride is very quiet, I find it to be smooth with just the right amount of road feel. Steering and handling for a big heavy vehicle I find to be well above average and I am very pleased with the acceleration and available power. Brakes also feel good, absolutely no complaints about the ride. Re: acceleration, the tranny shifts early so it is definitely not sporty driving like the EcoBoost is but my other car (wife's car) is a sports sedan so that is not what I needed for this vehicle.

Love the Vista Roof and the upgraded SEL level cloth is very nice for non-leathing seating.

Interior is very nicely done, while not luxurious, it has the right mix of soft touch materials, LCD screens and pleasing upscale look. Much more car than truck like interior.

I am getting 22 MPH combined thus far with mostly all highway mileage, I hope it will improve to 23 or 24 in a few months but even if doesn't the mileage is not too bad.

Mainly using to drive as a work vehicle.

The backup camera is great and very useful, the MFT and entire infotainment system I love but I have some concerns about.

 

I consider myself to be quite tech literate, so I was hoping most of the issues were from the older generation not wanting to adapt to touchscreens vs. manual dials.

Some of the non-owner opinions is clearly that, many overlook the fact that the Edge has multiways to adjust things like the radio and temperature, so if you don't want to use the voice commands or main touch screen you can control most things from the sterring wheel. Overall an ingenious concept.

The bluetooth phone intergration is outstanding. I have an IPhone and while not all features work with it (Apple's fault not Ford's) it works great for calls, downloaded my phone book, setup easily for the 911 service, streams music from my library, etc...

But I am starting to fear that many concerns about MFT is from people just like myself.

Thus far I would say I love the system 90% of te time and HATE it 10% of the time.

For example last night I started the car, screen is blank and states Radio Off on the driver display, radio, bluetooth, backup camera, etc... all compeltely off.

It is very dark at night in the car with the screen off and I can't stand driving with no radio or sound at all.

I actually pulled over 3 times in the first 5 minutes to restart the car and see if that would do the trick.

Nothing worked, was resigned to bring the car back to the dealer to fix the next morning.

Well 10 minutes into the drive, after being on the highway for a couple of minutes, the screen starts up and after booting turns on and everything works flawlessly.

if that continues to happen Ford will have one very unhappy customer, if it never happens again I will likely remain loving my Edge.

 

 

Also, 3 nights before during my late night drive home my tune buttons on the radio did not work. They just flat out did not function the entire ride.

I am still learning the Sirius radio channels so I still like to manually tune. You can not do that through the driver wheel control as it only lets you check through your 18 presets for Sirius but not manually go up 1, down 1 like the buttons to the lower right of the main screen.

The preset buttons worked fine as did all of the other radio features just not the manual +/- tune buttons. When I started the car the next morning, the buttons worked fine and have worked fine ever since.

 

Minor issues with MFT other than the one Radio Off and other non-working tune button occasion...

When I press certain buttons it sometimes reacts right away and other times there is a delay, same with the voice controls ; sometimes a long delay before I hear the Ladies reponse and sometimes it works very quickly. Overall inconsistant. As a result I for the most part think the voice activation (other than Bluetooth phone) is mostly gimicky and I will rarely use.

I do love the big touchscreen and the little driver screens though and just hope they don't fail me.

 

2 somewhat major issues in 1 week of ownership, though they were not long lasting and resolved on their own.

Other minor issues: loading from a large USB drive takes forever to index everything and slowed my system down.

I had a 32 GB USB drive filled with music and now switched it out to a 2GB drive without about 220 songs.

The 2GB drive the system seems to work well with, since it re-indexs every time it starts the car, even though I keep the USB drive permanantly in the USB slot, I think the 2GB size is a good compormise and provides me with enough music at the ready.

Reading off of USB it most of the time displays the artist/song but the voice commands seem incapable of finding them if I ever ask for an artist or song.

It seems to load the cover art about 50% of the time, maybe the way my songs are formatted, not sure but will look into it on my end.

Also, loading a wallpaper it ONLY wqorks if the height of the file size matches the size of the screen, 376. Probably same with the width, that it needs to be the same or smaller to work 798.

That is fine, but the manual and/or on screen it should state the required size and it does not. Most would not be like me and experiment enough to figure it out.

 

Bluetooth Audio from my IPhone works well but it never captures the artist or song, may be an apple issue with bluetooth, I am not sure.

Either way sounds good through USB or Bluetooth, I can't tell any sound difference and I love all of the connectivity options this car has,

 

The touch screen should be less senstive like an Iphone/Ipad.

Having owned the first generation Blackberry Storm (which was universally hated by owners and reviewers alike for their Surepress screen) this uses the same stupid thought process that the user wants to feel like they are pressing real buttons. But I did grow used to it and kept the Storm for a couple of years, longer than most folks could tolerate it and its bugs.

 

The screen seems to dim and brighten at strange times, maybe the auto dimming feature but kind of seems glitchy.

 

And finally as may have stated please FIRE the designer who decided the hazard lights should be a.) touch screen senstive and b.) directly below the main touchscreen

I have turned on my hazards 4x by accident in 1 week and never once on purpose.

A different location and less senstive button is an absolute requirement when they remodel the interior controls.

Next time for me, but I almost feel the design is so poor they should offer a fix on previously sold cars when they do solve the problem.

 

Overall love the Edge but have some reason to worry about the electronics inside.

Cutting edge yes, without some operating flaws: no

If I had to choose today the same car with an without the MFT additional $750 upgrade I would still choose the MFT option and have no buyer's remorse about the Edge in general.

It is still a really cool system and I love the sterring wheel controls that offer an amazing amount of features at my fingertips without leaving the wheel.

I would still recommend the Edge highly, with or without MFT depending on how techy the driver is.

I hope if you ask me again in another year I will have the same answer!

 

Cheers,

Rogerthat

[NatG]

Glad to hear you're happy with the car Roger. A couple of pointers for you that might help:

 

1) I found that the engine breaks-in, performance gains a bit. Also, I've learned how to coax the engine (drivetrain) for better performance (playing the throttle map through throttle input, if that makes sense). Basically, I'm saying you'll get used to it.

 

2) Regarding the indexing when the car starts, at 2 GB that should only take about 10 seconds. I have a 16gb USB drive (flash drive) in my 2011 with 12.8 GB's of music, and it takes about 5 to 10 seconds for that brief index when the Radio gets power. When I had less data, it was virtually seamless, but with the older SYNC it would occasionally do a full re-indexing. You may want to check into it with the dealer (make sure you have latest SYNC version).

 

EDIT: Moderator, please move post if possible Also, to clarify, my comments about the break-in were regarding V6 Performance with AWD.

Edited October 19, 2011 by NatG

[rogerthat]

Thanks for the reply NatG

Yeah, I checked again this morning and it is actually very fast at Indexing, but it seems to constantly be "building media commands" on even my 2GB USB Drive.

This seems to never finish at least not in the 30 minutes plus time while I was driving.

Until this finishes I assume my voice commands for Artist / Song will not work, as they haven't worked for me when I have tried.

 

I probably should ask elsewhere on the forum, but does anyone know how to find out what software version the MFT in your car is running?