Generally speaking the horrifying quality of Ford's electronics have been enough to keep me away from even considering purchasing one. Absolutely nothing works right and certainly nothing works well. It may or may not be able to connect bluetooth, it may or may not acknowledge a USB device, it may or may not start blaring whatever FM station was last tuned in for no reason on startup, or start playing the first album on your phone. Phone audio will sometimes play as media, and sometimes show up as phone calls. And of course, cripplingly slow, which for a touchscreen is deadly -- you have no idea whether or not the system even realized that you pressed it, and when you mash the button more than once you may find that you've clicked a button on a not-yet-visible-screen. Absolute garbage.
Mazda is apparently taking the right approach here -- increasing the tactile buttons on the dash and console, and ditching touchscreens.
Really, cars should just have a built-in phone mount and connectors, and just let the phone do pretty much everything. If Ford wants to have a map of charging stations, partner with Apple or Google (or Waze) or build their own OSM-based maps app. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are okay-ish, but frankly I find the experience of just having the phone on a mount and using that as the display to be far superior in almost every way.
Mazda is apparently taking the right approach here -- increasing the tactile buttons on the dash and console, and ditching touchscreens.
Really, cars should just have a built-in phone mount and connectors, and just let the phone do pretty much everything. If Ford wants to have a map of charging stations, partner with Apple or Google (or Waze) or build their own OSM-based maps app. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are okay-ish, but frankly I find the experience of just having the phone on a mount and using that as the display to be far superior in almost every way.