Ford's turmoil with Microsoft led to a remarkable product transformation and now it seems Nokia may be driving the same results; after all, nothing stirs innovation quite like getting sued for Millions by a business partner.

If you dig into recent industry news, Ford's ongoing relationship with Nokia seems to be on thin ice or in a barrel at the bottom of the lake depending how you interpret affairs in Germany.

"Nokia's licensing executives had repeatedly and aggressively threatened their counterparts at Ford with the immediate filing of an avalanche of lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions, and stressed that Nokia would pursue injunctions in different key markets".

http://www.fosspatents.com/2020/09/f...rm-patent.html

"Ford is being sued by eight owners of 4G mobile communications patents".

European news outlets won't list the 8 companies involved in the German filings but it's easy to conclude Nokia is likely a major part of it considering the exact same thing happened to Toyota, Nissan and Honda in Japan by the same players in recent history.

https://www.dw.com/en/ford-in-german...rts/a-61883684

I'm sure there is more to this drama behind closed doors, it's not difficult to find articles which label Nokia as a tech-industry patent-troll (which Apple did in the New York Times), but as far as I'm interested regarding Ford Sync systems, Nokia owns QT which Sync 3 and Sync 4 are developed on. Nokia also owns HERE Maps which provides a lot of navigation content and licensing for the offline navigation in Sync 3 & 4. Which brings me to the next major Sync iteration.

There's indication Ford Motor Co is transitioning Sync to the same development engine used by:

Volvo, Rivian, BMW, Mercedes, Audi / Volkswagen / Porche, GM... and yes, Fortnite.

A reputable user in the community has claimed Ford Motor Co is switching Sync development to Epic Game's Unreal HMI Engine and it makes sense in this context. Why would Ford want anything to do with Nokia at this point?

This may be a signal Sync 3 owners could get cut off from factory map updates sooner than later, but time will tell. Factory offline navigation content would be provided by Mapquest under the license arrangement with Epic and who knows what legacy support that might involve. It's worth pointing out Ford's contract with Google could supply offline map data for use in older Ford Pass connected vehicles, but I seriously doubt that would ever occur.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/01/ford...pps-cloud.html

Sync 4 might end up with a much shorter life cycle than previous generations. Perhaps the F150 will get a mid cycle refresh to a new iteration of Sync this generation. Sync 4 never felt like a true predecessor to Sync 3 in the first place. It still feels more like a step backwards than anything.

Remember when The Verge covered the Mach-E reveal?
Yeah, it didn't go very well. The Weakest Part of Ford is their Software

At least it seems there is brighter future ahead. APIM content supposedly being developed in the new Unreal Engine has the header NU5T-14G682-**. The latest Sync 4 build in our F150s is MU5T-14G682-JV (as of July 2022). There is no way to know this early if NU5T is considered Sync 4B, Sync 4.5 or Sync 5, but I'm looking forward to see whatever the developers are able to implement.

Rivian and GM have a significant head start, but this only means that projects will be more resourceful and competitive for pickup truck applications in the years ahead. Here is a technical outline from Epic explaining why their platform would be a major boost for any automaker.

Nothing I have written is monetized or sponsored. I just think it's an interesting topic to follow.

A newer version of Sync in the pipeline would be worth delaying a vehicle purchase for and I'm sure Ford understands that better than anyone.

 

Thanks! I can't say I am impressed with Sync4, especially after experiencing the numerous glitches... Here are my 2 cents:
- Given the circumstances, Sync4 may not get proper bug fixes and support (I really hope I am wrong on this one)
- Sync5 is at least 1 year away. Developing new software is one thing, getting it tested, making it stable, etc. - takes long time. And if it is a new code base, that definitely may slip to 2024 model year

 

People make car buying decisions based on the software revision of the radio?

 

This sounds like a reasonable timeline. MY21, MY22 and MY23 will all probably have Sync4 and then with the mid-cycle refresh will probably get the new infotainment system starting with MY24. I do hope that Sync4 will continue to get updates.

 

Ford kind of had this with the last Gen F-150. The 2015s had MyFord Touch, then the 2016+ got Sync 3. The MFT 2015s if I recall correctly never got anything significant and definitely didn't get an update to Sync 3 without buying the head unit and that off eBay from a 2016 truck.

I don't have any real issues with Sync 4, I know that's maybe blasphemous for some but it has worked great for me and where I have had issues I had issues with Sync 3 and that because they were usually more hardware related (like the USB ports on rare occasions not working properly).

I would like if Ford would modernize the vehicle architecture a bit to make OTA updates a bit easier to apply and manage. Tesla vehicles were basically built around being easy to software update, I don't think they have nearly as many individual modules and that (I heard, could be wrong though), so their OTA updates are inherently easier to develop, deploy, and test. While not directly related, if they did a Sync 5 I wish it would also come with a reimagining of how the entire vehicle network is designed.

 

You may get your wish in the coming years. The lightning is a retrofitted gas F-150. Ford intends to replace it with a purpose-built EV platform. When that happens, new electrical architecture is a near certainty.

 

Ford has already stated they are moving to Android Automotive in the Lightning, so I imagine that means this will be, or will be core to, the successor to Sync 4.

https://fordauthority.com/2022/04/20...inment-system/

As the article points out, there are still models, popular models, on Sync 3.

 

I'm assuming Sync is purely software. Maybe an incorrect assumption. What hardware/OS is in the F150 2021/2? Is it reasonable to think a new Sync major update could be downloaded to the current F150s in years to come if driven by these law suits? Or would the 2021/2/3 platform be a dead end?

 

SYNC 4, backwards? What the heck is OP smoking. I've had plenty of vehicles with SYNC 3, actually, our Explorer has 3.4. There is no comparison!

 

Agreed. Over the last year we've had to reboot Sync two times. Other than that Sync has been a pleasure to use!