2014 FFH Titanium 1 Week Review

[dalesky]

Two things go against this car from the very start. Short trips(under 7 miles) and speeds above 65 MPH. Either one of these will kill gas mileage. This is especially true for one that hasn't even broken in yet. One of the most important things we discovered here on the forum is that you need to "train" the car to get good MPG. GrySql did just that after a hard reset. His car was acting just like yours did, and he has been getting much better results after his training session.

 

Every car has a sweet spot, and the FFH is right around 65 MPH for best interstate MPG. Highway MPG is right around 50 MPH. City I find if you can cruise around 40 MPH, you can exceed EPA.

 

Note that there are actually 3 different types of driving, City, highway and interstate. EPA only tests for city and highway. In the EPA definition of highway, they are referring to rural highways of 55 MPH. When driven on these roads, your average MPH does come out to roughly 45 MPH as their tests indicate. This is part of the reason why most of us dont see EPA at "highway" speeds in this car. If you drive them at EPA highway, the car can get 47 MPG, I have done it myself when conditions were perfect for it many times. Add in wind, hills, and temps above and below the "sweet" spot, and YMMV.

 

Some may argue that I am wrong with the 3 types, but think about it, other than a major city, where do you see an Interstate under 65 MPH? Where do you see a rural highway over 55 MPH? I am pretty certain that if the EPA changes its highway to be more realistic to Interstate speeds, then you will be seeing much lower highway numbers across the board.

Nicely stated.

I agree with the three types, and have easily gotten 45 average at under 65mph of steady driving. Physics dictates that if we go uphill, have a headwind, drive very fast, and don't keep a steady foot on the gas, we will see negative effects on our mileage. You mentioned all of those, and the EPA testing. Most important is the EPA testing. They used to be almost always wildly wrong, now they are just often wrong. That truth is a function, partly, of trying to "help" the manufacturers achieve better mileage. Mfgrs build cars to maximize EPA testing results. We have to know that going in, or suffer the disappointment of finding that out when we drive our cars under conditions that very rarely are the same as those used by the EPA. In fact, we never drive in an enclosed space, do we?

The sweet spot for my car is between 50 and 55, when I can easily and often get over the EPA rated MPG. I generally see 49MPG.

[Richard Goodwin]

I'm going to keep an eye on Fuelly as it starts to warm up here as well. It will coincide with about 3k miles so between the break in and the temperature, will be very interesting. I do like that Fuelly removes the computer generated MPG from the equation so it can't lie to me :)

[Richard Goodwin]

New fuelly, same crap numbers ;) 31.something avg MPG.

 

Slightly different question: anyone else having issues with keyless entry? About 50% of the time I can sit there, HOLDING THE KEYFOB AGAINST THE DOOR, and slip my hand into the handle in like 100 different positions and the damn thing won't unlock. Eventually I give up (usually when my daughter or fiance is glaring at me) and just click the remote button. Added it to my complaint list.

 

Also my Bluetooth has again started randomly ignoring the phone is present, and says "Connect a Phone" on the home screen. But get this: turn off the BT on the phone, and the MFT display says "Phone disconnected"! You don't get it both ways Ford, you can't tell me it's not connected, then tell me it's even MORE not connected when I turn off the phone's BT. It's like turtles all the way down.

 

I realized today that the touch screen is actually a step back from something I THOUGHT I hated, the rotary dial in Honda/Acura. I can't believe I'm saying this but...well, here's what I tweeted: "@Ford has done the impossible: create a touch screen that actually has less value than any physical controls I've ever used. #fusion." At this point the only value add I can think of is typing in addresses, but it's so slow and error prone that I just give up and use Sync. I could dial in an address on the old car about 3x as fast as using the touch screen, change audio sources/stations 3x as fast, and god knows change climate controls (like heated seats) 3x as fast.

 

Ford's customer service is going to comp me a rental for a couple of days so I can drop TxTuxedo off for a day or two for diagnostics. Looking forward to them completely resetting everything so I have to set it all up again (which I'm guessing is the first thing they'll do). I'm not sure what fully constitutes a lemon but I'm continuing on my quest to get them to take the blasted thing back.

 

Thanks for letting me rant, folks. :) Hope this helps some others as well. I think I'll start a new thread of 2014 FFH issues, so people can list specific issues versus buried in this review thread. (Unless someone thinks that's just me being more sour grapes...)

[murphy]

The keyfob doesn't need to be held up to the door. Mine is in my keycase in my pocket. I've never had a problem. When you grab the door handle make sure your hand is not near the the section at the top rear of the handle. That is the lock sensor area. Also check the batteries in the fob in case one or both are weak.

[Richard Goodwin]

The keyfob doesn't need to be held up to the door. Mine is in my keycase in my pocket. I've never had a problem. When you grab the door handle make sure your hand is not near the the section at the top rear of the handle. That is the lock sensor area. Also check the batteries in the fob in case one or both are weak.

 

I've had it in my hands, my pockets, my jacket. Sometimes it just flat out refuses to work. I've tried putting just one finger (har har) onto the handle to make sure I don't hit the lock as well, but no dice. Added it to my list for Service to look at.

[acdii]

Most likely its the battery in the fob. The door handles are very sensitive, if I have the key in my pocket when washing the car, the door locks go nuts every time water touches them. The phone issue most likely is related to the phone itself. I have seen it happen many times with my Droid. Deleting all pairings on the phone and re-pairing to the car fixed it. I also had to do a master reset on Sync. The MFT does get frustrating at times, it is slow in comparison to what PC's and Laptops and even phones have become, we have just gotten spoiled by them. I'm used to it now and dont have any complaints other than I keep changing to the AC screen when touching the seat heaters. If I dont touch it dead on, it brings up the HVAC screen.

[Richard Goodwin]

FWIW (and will cross post this to Issue thread), all they did was:

• "recalibrate the PCM"; I asked if there was an update included, and was told "in layman's terms yes that means we updated and recalibrated". If you know a way to tell from the service sheet or otherwise, let me know and I'll look it up
• applied the HD audio fix/recalibration

Everything else was "unable to duplicate", which I basically expected since they are all MFT/Sync software issues that are a) sporadic and b) the dealer can't fix. Noted they didn't seem to update the version of the MFT/Sync.

 

So, I'll keep an eye on mileage and MFT/Sync, and continue to look towards probably selling this car sooner rather than later this year if things haven't improved.