Has a Ford "corrected" you...lately?

I respect Ford and enjoy their vehicles.  We've had a bunch as rentals and always been impressed.  My Dad had a Tempo (well, there's no accounting for taste) that served him well, then moved on to a 95 Taurus SE (the one with the SHO seats) that eventually gave its life to save my son and his girlfriend in a multiple-car fiasco on the 401.  My SIL leased a new Escape, loved it, and just signed up for three more years with a 2020.  Etc.

And I get that nobody, even people being paid eight figures a year to have the answers, really knows where the auto industry is going or how to get there.

But I have to say that I didn't enjoy reading this in CD's online piece about the new electric van on November 12: "Work-friendly features come with the E-Transit's Sync 4 system such as active driver coaching, which will correct a driver who hits the brakes hard, rapidly accelerates, or drives above the speed limit."  Vin Diesel I'm not, but that trio of activities basically describes me going out for groceries. 

Here's how TTAC puts it: "As a byproduct of your data being thrown around, Ford will offer an in-cab driving coach. This system can be paired with the voice command feature, allowing a digital assistant to lecture you on your speed and braking performance, or transmitted to fleet managers who want to come down hard on employees that aren’t performing to their liking."

Let me put it this way: I hope the coach can be muzzled.

Discuss?

I work in the EV industry, and we're investigating the same sort of technology for our fleet customers. Driver behavior has a massive impact on efficiency, an order of magnitude greater than any incremental improvement we can make in a vehicle's design. Improving your driver is the best way to lower fuel(electricity) costs. If you're a fleet driver, your job is to drive in the manner that your employer specifies. I'd definitely shut it off in my personal vehicle, but you don't have that right if you're a fleet driver. 

Stealthtercel said:

..."As a byproduct of your data being thrown around, Ford will offer an in-cab driving coach. This system can be paired with the voice command feature, allowing a digital assistant to lecture you on your speed and braking performance, or transmitted to fleet managers who want to come down hard on employees that aren’t performing to their liking."

I've been married to one of these for 35 years...

cummins has a driver rewards programnge.. hidden in the ecm..    You drive it gently you get more power and more rev range..  you beat on it and it dials back the fuel and timing and limits your rpm max...  been around for nearly 2 decades... how is this new?

I'm sure you will be able to disable it, just like all the lane-keeping, back-up-warning, etc stuff now. At least, you will for now. Later? Who knows?

My boss drives by what the efficiency meters in his cars tell him. He got in the habit with an old CRZ and has kept doing it with his newer Civic. First vehicle I ever drove that gave you driving instructions to improve efficiency was an early nineties Wrangler that had a "shift up" light on the dash. It was hilariously wrong.

That bleak future is already here.  MIL's Tesla yells at me for 'potential collisions' when it doesn't like my driving.  In exchange for potentially lower rates, some sheeple have insurer-supplied black boxes in their car that tattle on them for similar 'offences' like Ford describes.  Who knows how or when the GPS-recorded speed/location data our sat navs, mobile phones or fitness trackers are collecting will be used against us.  The whole thing is a bowl of No Good.

Oh good, this thread again.

At least its slightly different than the last few times it has come up.

Bottom line?

WE AREN'T THE TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC

Honestly, the more of this stuff that is available to the average motorist?  The better we all are since the average motorist is really quite terrible at driving and manufacturers keep making faster and faster vehicles.

This seems fleet targeted and that seems like a good thing.  Governors don't work that well (you can still drive like a dick with a top speed of 55mph).  This seems like the next logical step.

Probably a good thing for fleet operators and for the rest of us.

Fleet management has been commonly available in the aftermarket for some time, and all of this sort of data was (at least optionally) available since OBDII came out.   I'm not surprised to see a mainstream manufacturer targeting small/medium fleet managers with it.   It'd be a massive selling point for any buisiness not to have outfit their vehicles with aftermarket management stuff if the integrated was good enough.

Stefan (Forum Supporter) said:

Bottom line?

WE AREN'T THE TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC

Can it be hacked to coach you on getting better lap times?

This does make sense for a fleet vehicle where the driver isn't the owner.

I'm sure there are bad commercial drivers out there but when I needed to get into a lane on the highway I always liked seeing those white work vans.

They almost always kept a good distance allowing me to merge without drama unlike the tossers in EVs and Audis who'd see a gap and get their schlong hard by racing through it.

MadScientistMatt said:

Can it be hacked to coach you on getting better lap times?

This is the logic of how the new Garmin datalogger works. It uses machine learning to learn your driving style and coach you into better driving and better laptimes.

 

Stefan and ProDarwin both make good points that I hadn't really thought about: #1, morons, and #2, fleets.  Obviously, the typical driver out there needs all the help s/he can get.  (Maybe there's a way to "coach" them to put down their damn phones, too.)  Also, I fully accept that a fleet manager has a legitimate interest here, and, after all, these are VANS we're talking about, and electric ones at that.  Fair enough.

I don't want to be one of those old people who says things like "in MY day..." but I probably will be.

I realize that some day I will call for a taxi and get an autonomous hovercar show up at the homing beacon installed in my brain, but I'm horrifically frightened right now of how much not-ready-for-primetime nanny-tech is showing up in cars.  I'm constantly blinded by high beams; which I'm convinced is either due to cars that don't deactivate them, or drivers that are used to just letting the car do it for them.  My friend's auto-braking Honda likes to stab the brakes at night when you're on the road at 2am with no one for miles every time it sees a road sign.  My mother's Acadia vibrates your ass every time you deviate 2cm from the middle of your lane.

Annoying.  I realize that SOME DAY they will all be lovely safety additions to vehicles, but that is not today.

The Toyota rental car that beeped at me every time it thought i was not sufficiently within the lines was bad enough.

DD#1's 2013 C-Max awards you extra leaves for driving smoothly and efficiently. It coaches to help you extend range. 

Duke said:

DD#1's 2013 C-Max awards you extra leaves for driving smoothly and efficiently. It coaches to help you extend range. 

Yep. Ford's been doing this type of "coaching" for quite awhile on their hybrids. The goal is always to use less fuel. There's another screen that shows the driver's "score" in acceleration, cruising, and braking. I think fleet customers are a logical next step considering how crucial fuel costs can be.

Another consideration is that the EV transit that uses this tech has a max range of 126 miles. Get the less aerodynamic high roof option and the range shrinks. Load it down with a couple thousand pounds of tools or packages, and that range shrinks again. Drive that heavy truck someplace cold and the range shrinks even more. And of course hard acceleration really drains the battery, and hard braking doesn't allow the regen braking to charge the battery back up, so If the driver is gunning that 9k lb brick from stops, it's really going to wreck the already shortened range. So, some coaching in the name of stretching the range as much as possible could be the difference between a package delivery driver in Duluth getting a max range of 80 miles with smooth gentle inputs or a max range of 50 miles or less if their last name is Andretti.

OK, I know I am very juvenile...but what about annoying the system?  What happens then?  I cannot remember what car my son and I were driving, but we did whatever we could to keep the fuel mileage in the "poor" zone.  We laughed hysterically.  Our newest car is a fiesta st, and it doesn't have this type of nanny.  I would love to irritate any type of nanny that tries to coach me, at least voice activated.

Possibly it was the same car, (rental?) as above, but I jumped a mile when something bonged or buzzed to "help" me with my driving.  I am very curious what my kids will be like when they buy some type of modern car.  They are  used to junkers that we have fixed, always have some type of character, but very few nannies.  They learned to drive in a fiesta st and had to deal with me warning them not to get used to the hill assist, or whatever it was that held the car for five seconds on a hill.

Sorry, I digress, but If I had something telling me how to drive, I would do whatever I could to irritate it. 

Now if they just had this back when a Taurus transmission was about to E36 M3 the bed so you could trade it in that would have been useful. Lol.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

I 100% agree with this, and for some reason there are tons of people who will angrily defend those things from any criticism no matter how questionable they are.

And this is why I have E36 M3boxes.

I didn't subscribe to the OnStar stuff when I bought my GMC, but the software is still there and watching my every move. You ought to see the level of detail it reports back to GM. I get a question emailed regularly asking  if I'd like to forward my driving habit data to multiple insurance companies for a possible rate reduction......NO!!!

As has already been said, it's about fleets. I receive daily reports on my employees with top speeds, harsh braking, overlong idling, et cetera. 

It's also generational. My son ponied up for a new Sonata, which is a great car by the way, but he really likes the active driver assist stuff, and I can't stand it unless I'm on a several hundred mile slog and I'm concerned that I might space out.  If I'm listening to fine music, I don't want chirps every time I come close to the bike lane on a right hand sweeper. He's 21YO and it doesn't bother him a bit. He also doesn't mind Google maps taking him through routes. I'd rather take an extra minute and memorize it.

But it can all be turned off if you're the owner. 

Stefan (Forum Supporter) said:

Oh good, this thread again.

At least its slightly different than the last few times it has come up.

Bottom line?

WE AREN'T THE TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC

Honestly, the more of this stuff that is available to the average motorist?  The better we all are since the average motorist is really quite terrible at driving and manufacturers keep making faster and faster vehicles.

There is no demographic, the target is corporate buyers and they will eat this up. 

Am I the only one who thinks this same technology can be used on Mustangs and Miatas to make us better drivers? I'd take some coaching on trail-braking, weight-transfer and threshold braking. I mean, after a lap the car tells you to brake a little later into corner #4, tap the brakes to put weight on the nose before the esses, get on the gas sooner as you hit the back straight..