Ford's Buggy Infotainment System Referred To By Engineers As 'Polished Turd' and 'Unsaleable' (computerworld.com)

Lucas123 writes: A class-action lawsuit against Ford and its MyFord Touch in-vehicle infotainment system -- originally based on a Microsoft platform -- has brought to light corporate documents that show engineers at the Dearborn carmaker referred to the problematic technology as a "polished turd" that they feared would be "unsaleable." The documents even reveal that Henry Ford's great grandson experienced significant problems with MyFord Touch. In one incident, Edsel Ford was forced to wait on a roadside for the system to reset and could not continue to drive because he was unable to use the IVI's navigation system. The lawsuit describes an IVI screen that would freeze or go blank; generate error messages that wouldn't go away; voice recognition and navigation systems that failed to work, problems wirelessly pairing with smartphones, and a generally slow system. Ford's CEO Mark Fields even described his own travails with the SYNC IVI, referring to it as having crashed on several occasions, and that he was so frustrated with the system he may have damaged his car's screen out of aggravation. The civil suit is expected to go to trial in 2017.

Comments

I own one, it's horrible

[skaag]

It's really pretty bad. I wish it was easy to replace, and that there was an open source project to replace it. The moment I saw that Microsoft bezel under the infotainment system, I knew it was trouble. Hopefully this lawsuit forces Ford to replace every single one of them with something more usable.

Re:I own one, it's horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably breaking an NDA here, but here's what's happening: Ford's autonomous vehicle division (AVD) has signed a 10-year exclusive partnership with the division at Microsoft that's developing the MyDrive system. That means all Ford vehicles for at least the first two product generations, probably more, will be running embedded Windows and using Microsoft cloud services for real-time video processing and sensor fusion (GPS, accelerometer, gyros, wheelspin, etc.)

The codename for all of this is an ominous-sounding "PodBay." You've been warned. Cover the driver camera when you talk about it, this bitch can read lips.

In fact, cover both cameras. There's one in the steering-wheel hub and one in the rearview mirror.

Re:Wrong company for the job

[Smerta]

It's even worse than Microsoft -- actually some hack 'n' sack firm called BSquare (was a publicly-traded company, I think they're swirling the drain) did the initial version of Sync Gen 2. Oh, but BSquare is a Microsoft "Gold Certified Partner", whatever the hell that means.

There was a story on Hacker News a couple years ago, an embedded systems engineer (inside Ford) was lamenting upper-management's choice of Windows CE and BSquare for the system.

Interesting that the 3rd generation of SYNC (out since 2016 I think) is based on QNX and appears to very well received. No Microsoft, no BSquare, no Windows CE. QNX is a real-time operating system. Windows CE purports to be, but a) all the middleware crap that comes in MS Auto is so buggy and full of priority inversions etc,, give me a break.

Someone (maybe the Hacker News article?) said something along the lines of "the decision to use WinCE in MyFord Touch was a handshake on a golf course, and Ford has felt the pain ever since."

Re:Microsoft...

[Gr8Apes]

True - MS products aren't known as stable reliable systems. Hell, MS OSes even left a whole Navy ship disabled, so why would you think an entertainment system nearly 20 years later would be any better? Their OS hasn't changed measurably underneath the covers, other than lots of bandaids.