Maybe voice command technology really doesn’t like me. I seem to have my share of problems with it. I bought a Ford Explorer over a year ago and was excited to have voice command through Ford Sync that wasnt available on my 11 year old Mustang. I think we all have seen the Sync commercials with the happy drivers which is what they promised us years ago.

The reality of what we have is instead a system that mimics something of a early 2000’s desktop with a microphone. Now maybe my car doesnt like me or has some nefarious motives to ignore me. Maybe it’s just my voice, people tell me it is really deep. Either way most of the time when I say “Call X” it quickly asks me to say a device, like phone or navigation. Thats the point at which I wish I could throw it out the window.

Once my wife and her friends were going to see the Atlanta Braves game. I was returning from the store and they were going to take the Explorer. I though I would be nice and setup the navigation for them.

Navigate to Turner Field

Now this was before Turner field was turned into a football stadium and the Braves moved to Cobb county. Turner field had been around for decades and was a landmark in Atlanta. “I cant find the address: Turner Field.” Now if this was the early 2000’s I would expect this type of response. But for a system that was supposed to be nearly brand new when I purchased the car I would expect it to have some basic landmark data on a navigation system.

I would love to see someone come out in the auto industry that has a fully integrated system with your phone. Car makers often try to have a completely separate system that is lightly tethered to your device. This makes playing music and making phone calls possible but it doesn’t fully integrate the capabilities of your phone with your car.

It would be great of you could have a full integration between the two. If I want to navigate somewhere the car could make use of navigation on the phone to provide the navigation with updated information. In addition my ideal setup would allow you to search the web for information using voice command. Contacts, data all synchronized between the two devices.

Ford and other automakers should adopt the ideas behind Software. Let someone else handle the stuff you’re not good at. You build the cars, let someone else build the human interface, mainly Google and Apple.