Ford dumps MyFord Touch name in revamp of infotainment system

With Sync 3, Ford hopes to resolve the bugs and complaints that turned MyFord Touch from an industry-leading feature into a liability. Raj Nair, Ford’s product development chief and chief technical officer, said the company incorporated more survey data and feedback into Sync 3 than it has when rolling out any new vehicle.

Nair said Sync 3 -- so named because it’s the third generation of Sync, with the second being MyFord Touch -- is designed to be more intuitive and quicker than the current system, which Ford introduced in 2010 to make its vehicles stand out among technology-craving, smartphone-carrying consumers. He said it’s designed to be “device agnostic,” working with any type of smartphone, though it does include Siri Eyes Free capability for more seamless integration with Apple Inc.’s iPhones.

“We don’t want you making a purchase decision about a $30,000 automobile based on your $200 smartphone,” Nair told reporters at a demonstration this week.

The 8-inch screen is the same size as MyFord Touch, but text is larger, touch zones are larger and background colors are brighter. Voice controls respond to more conversational language and return simpler prompts if the system fails to understand what was said.

“Simplicity has value,” Parish Hanna, Ford’s global director of human machine interface, said in a statement. “Reducing the number of things on-screen also makes control easier, and is designed to limit the number of times a driver has to glance at the screen.”

The system can automatically update itself using an owner’s home wireless network, whereas Ford had to fix past glitches by mailing out upgraded software or asking customers to visit a dealership. Vehicles equipped with MyFord Touch will not be able to upgrade to Sync 3.

Ford said pricing for Sync 3, which will be standard on the Titanium trim level, will be comparable to that of MyFord Touch and MyLincoln Touch, which cost about $1,000 when elected as an option. Ford won’t have a distinct name for the Lincoln version of Sync 3, though the system will have a different visual theme when installed in Lincolns.

Base level

The base level of Sync without the touch screen will remain available and continue to use Microsoft’s operating system. As the new system is rolled out, Ford dealers will be selling all three generations of Sync simultaneously.

The move from MyFord Touch to Sync 3 -- and from Microsoft to Blackberry -- comes as Chrysler Group and other competitors offer touch-screen systems that have been more positively received. Ford already has brought back many of the buttons and knobs it had replaced with capacitive sliders and switches that drivers and reviewers said were more distracting and difficult to use while driving.

Consumer Reports was among the most outspoken critics of MyFord Touch, unleashing its harshest words in a 2012 blog post titled “Why the MyFord Touch control system stinks.” The piece concluded: “We wouldn’t recommend dealing with the frustrations of MyFord Touch on a daily basis even to an adversary.”

Whereas MyFord Touch divided audio, climate controls, navigation and phone connectivity into four quadrants on the screen, Sync 3 has a menu bar along the bottom of the screen with six options, adding “apps” and “settings” to the original four. In that way, it’s similar to Chrysler’s Uconnect system, which features seven large icons along the bottom of the screen so a user can easily switch from music to navigation or a phone call.

Benchmarking

Mark Boyadjis, an analyst at the consultancy IHS Automotive who has been briefed on Sync 3, said Ford officials told him that they heavily benchmarked Uconnect. He said Ford’s main goal with Sync 3 was clearly to fix the mistakes of MyFord Touch.

“The focus here was not on creating a brand-new platform full of features that no one else had -- it was on creating something that would be exponentially easier to use than the old system,” Boyadjis said.

“I’m convinced that this will be a better solution than their current platform. Will it be something that makes people drop everything and run to the nearest Ford dealer? I’m not so sure of that.”

Lower rankings

In 2010, the year that MyFord Touch made its debut, Ford was the top mass-market brand on J.D. Power and Associates Initial Quality Study and ranked No. 5 overall. Just one year later, the automaker had plunged to No. 23.

Taking a leadership role in dashboard computing “is going to be good for Ford in the long term, but it is a short-term hit,” David Sargent, Power’s vice president of global vehicle research, said in an interview upon the release of the 2011 report. “They’re feeling the pain of taking risks while others wait to see what Ford learns.”

In developing Sync 3 over the past 18 months, Ford was influenced by some 22,000 comments and suggestions from users, Nair said. It had thousands of MyFord Touch users test various prototypes at 30 clinics and on Ford’s virtual driving simulator, then adjusted the system based on their feedback.

A Ford spokesman said the MyFord Touch name was killed not over negative associations with it but because consumers in testing tended to refer to the system as Sync. The company officially calls the current version “Ford Sync with MyFord Touch” in the U.S. and Sync 2 in Europe. Referring to the system as Sync 3 follows the same protocol that Apple and many other smartphone makers use to differentiate each version of their models.