PAAK being removed from Extended Range Lariat and Platinum Lightning production!?

[COrocket]

Your dealer will be able to install that feature once parts arrive.

Ford's view is to get people their trucks ASAP instead of waiting for parts and making people upset over the wait.

So if the steering wheel heat is a -$140 MSRP removal, would I have to pay the dealer $140 in the future for the parts/install? Or is the $140 some sort of “sorry for the inconvenience of having to bring your truck back to the dealer for final assembly later” discount?

Im in a warmer climate so the wheel isn’t a big deal but stuff like PAAK is. I never got a real clear answer when I ordered mine.

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[nanohead]

As far as PAAK goes, its been nothing but trouble on the Mach E. Its a terrible implementation. The car wakes up, flakes out, and gets confused often. The dealer gave us a second Fob, and we haven't looked back.

Its an interesting idea, but super hard to make reliable. Phones in general are simply not reliable (been in the mobile software business on and off for years). They might be fine for teenagers and their social media, but for actual industrial type applications, they always let you down when you need them the most. This was the case with the PAAK for more than a year.... good riddance.

I'm just annoyed at the fact that my Lariat ER will not have a heated steering wheel yes my '16 Taurus does, and that says nothing about the price I'm about to pay for a truck without a heated steering wheel.

Yes, I agree.

So if the steering wheel heat is a -$140 MSRP removal, would I have to pay the dealer $140 in the future for the parts/install? Or is the $140 some sort of “sorry for the inconvenience of having to bring your truck back to the dealer for final assembly later” discount?

Im in a warmer climate so the wheel isn’t a big deal but stuff like PAAK is. I never got a real clear answer when I ordered mine.

Nobody seems to actually have any answers on any of this stuff. Its the most frustrating thing about this whole Lightning process. The heated wheel is a big deal to me, especially on a ~$90K truck. We use the pickup as a ski car in new england, and the wheel makes a huge difference.

 

[brewski]

Its an interesting idea, but super hard to make reliable. Phones in general are simply not reliable (been in the mobile software business on and off for years). They might be fine for teenagers and their social media, but for actual industrial type applications, they always let you down when you need them the most. This was the case with the PAAK for more than a year.... good riddance.

None of this is easy, but I will say...Tesla...PAAK works just fine.
The only real *confusion* is the Tesla constantly waking up as I walk to my car. I finally logged out of the app.

Most of the items currently removed to really bother me, though resale value becomes and question...but certainly want an answer on PAAK.
While I'm a fan of the keypad, I also want PAAK.

 

[nanohead]

None of this is easy, but I will say...Tesla...PAAK works just fine.
The only real *confusion* is the Tesla constantly waking up as I walk to my car. I finally logged out of the app.

Most of the items currently removed to really bother me, though resale value becomes and question...but certainly want an answer on PAAK.
While I'm a fan of the keypad, I also want PAAK.

Yep! Thats one of the big ones. Made us insane, both of our phones on the kitchen counter, which is near the inside garage door, not 10 feet from the Mach E.

Its nearly an impossible problem to solve the way the current PAAK systems are architected using Bluetooth LE that always has to be on.

 

[nanohead]

It's probably a reliability issue. PaaK on my MME has been a real issue. It has left me and my wife stranded, her twice. We received a second FOB because of being stranded. Ford Pass and somewhat SYNC 4, in my mind and I'm a retired software engineer, are BETA software. And, the biggest problem FoMoCo has is that people are asking mechanics to do software diagnosis. FoMoCo needs a direct customer interface to its software problems. Reporting a software problem to a service manager just adds to the frustration.

Same here, but not retired yet The implementation is incredibly suboptimal.

I would assume, from a fair bit of painful experience with similar systems, that their PAAK implementation relies on high precision timing and other low-layer profiling information to defeat relay attacks and other forms of tampering that involve additional devices.

This is not standard Bluetooth stuff and though a customer of Ford's size and prominence can likely bludgeon any IC vendor into cooperation, considerable development work is likely to be required any time they change digital (Bluetooth IC) and possibly even analog components of the overall implementation.

This is almost certainly what held up PAAK deployment at initial release, and it is going to pose a significant component sourcing and development burden for them any time the parts they last qualified get scarce.

It's even possible they decided they had to switch to a part where their techniques simply couldn't work at all and don't know whether they can get to acceptable levels of Type I and Type II error to safely enable PAAK, yet.

Not sure, but I believe Ford uses Texas Instruments PAAK ASIC (application specific integrated circuit), which may be in short supply but I don't know for sure. It leverages a combination of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) as the RF (radio frequency) section which connects to the cars CAN (controller area network) which then can activate the car by communicating with the correct controllers to turn on car and its subsystems. Some other implementations use NFC (near field communication like apple/google pay), and some newer ideas also leverage a form of Wifi, namely UWB (ultra wide band) which is the high speed/bandwidth but short range RF method that is part of the 5G consortium's high speed strategy.

I don't know this for sure, but likely, Ford is buying an off the shelf chip like the TI PAAK chip, rather than having a chip foundry integrate the functionality into a special chip for their use. I've done both, and buying it off the shelf is way more expedient and for even long production runs, overall much cheaper usually. Either way, the automotive chip supply problem is an actual problem.

It could be that there are tons of performance, reliability and potential security problems that we don't know about, and hence the potential to discontinue the PAAK program in the short term.

Funny, I'm sure the actual "car" part of these PAAK implementations could become reliable, its the phone part that is a trainwreck. Mobile phones are simply not reliable and stable platforms. All the garbage that people install on them, and the junk software "apps" that are out there that interfere with core system operations, as well as Apple and Google constantly fiddling with the internals of the operating systems and the dynamic nature of the hardware supply side of mobile components, to me at least, makes mobile phones the most suboptimal platform for doing something that requires safety, security and reliability as a car key.

 

[brewski]

Same here, but not retired yet The implementation is incredibly suboptimal.



Not sure, but I believe Ford uses Texas Instruments PAAK ASIC (application specific integrated circuit), which may be in short supply but I don't know for sure. It leverages a combination of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) as the RF (radio frequency) section which connects to the cars CAN (controller area network) which then can activate the car by communicating with the correct controllers to turn on car and its subsystems. Some other implementations use NFC (near field communication like apple/google pay), and some newer ideas also leverage a form of Wifi, namely UWB (ultra wide band) which is the high speed/bandwidth but short range RF method that is part of the 5G consortium's high speed strategy.

I don't know this for sure, but likely, Ford is buying an off the shelf chip like the TI PAAK chip, rather than having a chip foundry integrate the functionality into a special chip for their use. I've done both, and buying it off the shelf is way more expedient and for even long production runs, overall much cheaper usually. Either way, the automotive chip supply problem is an actual problem.

It could be that there are tons of performance, reliability and potential security problems that we don't know about, and hence the potential to discontinue the PAAK program in the short term.

Funny, I'm sure the actual "car" part of these PAAK implementations could become reliable, its the phone part that is a trainwreck. Mobile phones are simply not reliable and stable platforms. All the garbage that people install on them, and the junk software "apps" that are out there that interfere with core system operations, as well as Apple and Google constantly fiddling with the internals of the operating systems and the dynamic nature of the hardware supply side of mobile components, to me at least, makes mobile phones the most suboptimal platform for doing something that requires safety, security and reliability as a car key.

All of that is quite interesting, and kills my thought of "hell, its just software...".
The fact that there is a PAAK chipset could be part of this.
Yet, why would they kill PAAK on the higher end models?

IF PAAK is removed because of chipset shortage vs software challenges, that furthers my concern on resale values.
"yes, this lightning has the following removed....."

 

[metroshot]

.....
Yet, why would they kill PAAK on the higher end models?

IF PAAK is removed because of chipset shortage vs software challenges, that furthers my concern on resale values.
"yes, this lightning has the following removed....."

PAAK is standard only on the ER Lariat and Platinum.
It is an option for the lower trims for a cost.

As an example, my SR Lariat does not have PAAK.

Ford is not "killing" PAAK - just not including it for some December builds due to parts shortages.

It may get restored at a later date like the heated steering wheel, heated mirrors, waiting for parts/modules.

Ford's reasoning is that due to the long wait (reservation holders), it's better to deliver a truck with most of the features to some owners instead of alienating everyone by holding back to wait for parts to make it complete.

 

[GrokTime]

I don't think I could ever go back to having to carry a car key. I especially hate the giant chunky fobs like the one that comes with the F150. I have had no real problems with PaaK so far. Every once in a while it slow to recognize my iPhone as the key. But it has always worked. Combined with the keypad entrance and back up start code I am not worried. In addition to all that I have one of the fobs with the battery removed hidden in the truck as an ultimate backup.

That said, I think the implementation could be far better. It is mind numbing to me that all car makers have not immediately implemented Apple's car key system. Then the Apple watch would work as well.

The only reason there are all these existing problems is that car companies are stubborn and short sighted and stuck in the "we won't implement that until 5-10 years" mindset.

 

[brewski]

PAAK is standard only on the ER Lariat and Platinum.
It is an option for the lower trims for a cost.

As an example, my SR Lariat does not have PAAK.

Ford is not "killing" PAAK - just not including it for some December builds due to parts shortages.

It may get restored at a later date like the heated steering wheel, heated mirrors, waiting for parts/modules.

Ford's reasoning is that due to the long wait (reservation holders), it's better to deliver a truck with most of the features to some owners instead of alienating everyone by holding back to wait for parts to make it complete.

That makes sense, on the models.

So, are we actually expecting that the removed items will late be added back on?
If that is the case, I can live with it.
Yet, all I see in writing is on my sticker, 4 items removed: Adv sec pack, scales/smart hitch, multi-contour seat, heated steering wheel.
I've not seen anywhere that, due to supply chain issues (covid-19), we are removing some items that will later be put back.
Side note: my wife's 2022 S arrived missing the aft storage area cover for supply chain. They said they'd send it, then a few months later cut her a check for $40 as it will never arrive.

 

[nanohead]

I don't think I could ever go back to having to carry a car key. I especially hate the giant chunky fobs like the one that comes with the F150. I have had no real problems with PaaK so far. Every once in a while it slow to recognize my iPhone as the key. But it has always worked. Combined with the keypad entrance and back up start code I am not worried. In addition to all that I have one of the fobs with the battery removed hidden in the truck as an ultimate backup.

That said, I think the implementation could be far better. It is mind numbing to me that all car makers have not immediately implemented Apple's car key system. Then the Apple watch would work as well.

The only reason there are all these existing problems is that car companies are stubborn and short sighted and stuck in the "we won't implement that until 5-10 years" mindset.

You're lucky that yours has always worked. With our Mach E, it was maybe 10% of the time it actually worked. It stranded me several times, and also stalled the car several times. Not good

Also, its not mind numbing at all that car makers don't adopt Apple's key or Apple's anything for that matter.

First, Apple isn't the only phone vendor, there are dozens, especially outside of the US.

Second, the car companies aren't implementing phone vendors features because it means that the car manufacturer loses control of a product that they need to support (the car companies) and that their customers need to rely on.

And third, (this is something I've had some exposure to in my tech industry career), many many industrial companies, not just car companies, have been either seriously burned by the Apples/Googles of the world, or see them as actual competitors in controlling the customer relationship. Remember that both of those companies have been sabre rattling about building their own cars.... this has been going on for many years.

It has very little to do with the car companies being short sighted or stubborn. Cars have a 10-15 year life span, smartphones have a 9 month product cycle, and we've all learned that you simply cannot rely on Apple or Google to not pull the wool out from under you at a moments notice, especially if you try to rely on them for product stability.

 

[GrokTime]

You make some very very good points.

I think the bottom line is that car companies are deliberately making a decision to make customer satisfaction worse because of this fear of losing control over certain things. The key thing is that customer satisfaction is worse. It may just catch up with them in the long run.

I would argue that implementing something such as Apple's key functionality does not by itself make them dependent upon Apple. There is no reason Ford or any car company could not easily support Apple, Google and their own solutions. Therefore there is no problem if Apple were to ever drop the Key functionality. The problem is that car companies know that their own solutions can never be as good. There is nothing that can beat the convenience of having a reliable working key built into someone's watch that they already wear every day. So it would make them dependent on Apple only because anyone who gets used to just having things work when they are wearing their watch would never ever want to use any other system. Basically they don't want to make their customers happy at the expense of control.

Another interesting thought is to imagine if Apple came out with its own car and did not let any other car company use CarPlay or use their key functionality or tie into the iPhone in any other way. There would be howls and accusations of monopoly. Interestingly though Apple is offering CarPlay and and its Key functionality.

Ford has so far proven its software skills are severely lacking. Its own interface is horrendous and slow. I spent $80,000 on my Lightning and, for example, I can't even get it to properly warm itself ahead of time for me in the morning either by schedule or by using the app. Basic and obvious functionality either isn't there or is so buggy it doesn't work. These types of bugs should not be hard to fix. I certainly will remember the next time I buy a vehicle.

The battle for the hub of your life over, at least for the foreseeable future. People want to consolidate everything they can into their phone/watch. Any car company that thinks they can do better by making customer's carry additional FOBs, cards, wristbands, whatever, is crazy.

So, I do think the refusal to support things like Apple's key technology is mind numbing and shortsighted.

 

[nanohead]

Its a spiritual argument for sure. Whether people think Apple is great or not has little to do with this whole debate

Its true that car manufacturers suck at software, at least the kind that the user interacts with. They've been using software since the 90s though to control almost every function in the car, even though most people don't know that. Everything in a modern car is software controlled, from windows and HVAC, to fuel delivery and steering. Everything... and it all works fine for the most part. The entire CAN Bus approach exists so software based digital controllers can pass commands to in car subsystems... they are completely digitally controlled.

The car manufacturers produce a consumer product, that if it malfunctions in any way, causes death and destruction. The smartphone companies produce cheap consumer products that if they malfunction, causes some vapid "influencer" to not post their dumb instagram posts. Much as people like smartphones (myself included), smartphones don't have to work, and often don't.

I completely understand why the car manufacturers don't want to have Apple or Google as suppliers for their end products (cars). If you know how things like Car Play or Android Auto work, its been a very rough road to get them into the cars they are in, and not only that, the way those things are implemented are minimalist from the car manufacturers standpoint. ie, there is ZERO reliance on Apple/Google for the car to function. And this is the right approach, especially as dissatisfaction with cars is almost entirely related to electronics and controls these days (just look at dopey JD Power). The car manufacturers are responsible to make their customers happy, not Apple/Google. Apple and Google have proven time and time again that they are not reliable from a long term technology strategy standpoint, but the car companies need long term partners.

And I could see it now. This immature PAAK approach locks people out, causes cars to stall, prevents cars from starting, etc, and it makes the news that someone dies because the car stalled on a highway due to the key, and the manufacturer gets blamed and sued, not Apple. Or car company X (Ford for instance) has a huge problem with PAAK reliability (like they do now), and JD Power does a survey, which puts Ford at the bottom of reliability BECAUSE of the stupid PAAK, and the next thing you see, is the nonsensical news media running headlines about how terrible Ford is, but makes no mention of who supplies the digital key. This has happened time and time again over the past decade or so. (My Ford Touch anyone?)

You are obviously an Apple enthusiast, as many people (in the US at least) are. But not everyone cares about smartphones and want to use them for everything in their lives, heck, huge amount of adults don't even know what an App is! (been in the mobile software business for years, and yes, this is true). Fobs and the like aren't going anywhere any time soon, at least not until some large percentage of the population ages out and dies off.

 

[Sportymouse]

As far as PAAK goes, its been nothing but trouble on the Mach E. Its a terrible implementation. The car wakes up, flakes out, and gets confused often. The dealer gave us a second Fob, and we haven't looked back.

Its an interesting idea, but super hard to make reliable. Phones in general are simply not reliable (been in the mobile software business on and off for years). They might be fine for teenagers and their social media, but for actual industrial type applications, they always let you down when you need them the most. This was the case with the PAAK for more than a year.... good riddance.



Yes, I agree.



Nobody seems to actually have any answers on any of this stuff. Its the most frustrating thing about this whole Lightning process. The heated wheel is a big deal to me, especially on a ~$90K truck. We use the pickup as a ski car in new england, and the wheel makes a huge difference.

 

[Sportymouse]

Apparently part of the heating steering wheel is the heated mirrors. I really wanted that living in Florida and also spending over 90k. I emailed the dealership three days ago asking why I will have to pay for labor when the parts become available. Haven’t heard back.

 

[nanohead]

Apparently part of the heating steering wheel is the heated mirrors. I really wanted that living in Florida and also spending over 90k. I emailed the dealership three days ago asking why I will have to pay for labor when the parts become available. Haven’t heard back.

Yes, I think the CANbus controller that actuates the heated wheel, mirrors and probably rear window defroster is/are the same unit. So maybe the controller or the chips that enable the controller are in short supply

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