Ford Ranger Now Even Smarter with award-winning Ford SYNC® with Bluetooth and Voice Control

PRETORIA, South Africa, February 2015 - Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa (FMCSA) has expanded the smart technologies offered in the Ranger with the addition of its award-winning Ford SYNC^® with Bluetooth and Voice Control.

Using the innovative hands-free technology of SYNC, customers are able to connect almost any mobile phone or digital media player to the vehicle’;s multimedia system via Bluetooth or USB connection.

By means of simple voice commands or the controls mounted on the steering wheel, drivers are able to manage the system’;s wide range of features, from selecting phone contacts and making calls to choosing an artist or track, and even listening to text messages.

“Ford SYNC has revolutionised the way drivers interact with their vehicles, providing intuitive and convenient control of the in-car communications and entertainment features,” says Tracey Delate, Ford Marketing Manager. “The system also makes an important contribution to driving safety by allowing the driver to focus on the road while using voice commands for a vast range of functions.”

SYNC has become an integral part of Ford’;s pioneering smart technologies that are developed to suit the modern, connected lifestyle. It is available across most of the current Ford line-up including the Fiesta, Focus, Kuga, Fusion, Transit and Tourneo.

“By introducing SYNC to the Ranger XLS, XLT and Wildtrak models at no additional cost to the customer, we are making the technology more accessible and ensuring that the Ranger stands out even further from the competition,” Delate says.

SYNC responds to and recognises up to 150 different voice commands, can store up to 12 phones and hold up to 1 000 contacts per paired phone – all of which can be dialled by voice once the phonebook is downloaded to the system, without the need to record voice tags for each contact as is the case with the current system. It can also read out incoming SMS text messages from compatible phones.

On the music front, the system fully integrates the user’;s portable media players or USB device. Using the Voice Control function now allows users to specifically select artist, album, individual tracks, genre or playlists by their actual titles, thereby providing much easier control of music choices.

FORD RANGER – Models with Ford SYNC®	INCL. VAT INCL. Enviro Tax
Single Cab	;
Ranger 2.2 (110kW) XLS Hi-Rider 6MT	R314 900
Ranger 2.2 (110kW) XLS 4×4 6MT	R369 900
Ranger 3.2 XLS Hi-Rider 6MT	R358 938
Ranger 3.2 XLS 4×4 6MT	R412 900
Super Cab	;
Ranger 3.2 XLS Hi-Rider 6MT	R386 900
Ranger 3.2 XLS 4×4 6MT	R435 900
Ranger 3.2 XLS 4×4 6AT	R449 900
Double Cab	;
Ranger 2.2 (110kW) XLS 6MT	R401 900
Ranger 2.2 (110kW) XLS 4×4 6MT	R454 900
Ranger 3.2 XLT Hi-Rider 6MT	R456 900
Ranger 3.2 XLT Hi-Rider 6AT	R469 900
Ranger 3.2 XLT 4×4 6MT	R504 900
Ranger 3.2 XLT 4×4 6AT	R515 900
Ranger 3.2 Wildtrak 4×2 6MT	R484 900
Ranger 3.2 Wildtrak 4×2 6AT	R494 900
Ranger 3.2 Wildtrak 4×4 6AT	R551 900

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Avoiding Distractions while Driving

Ford Ranger Now Even Smarter with award-winning Ford SYNC® with Bluetooth and Voice Control

AAA Study Says Hands-Free Voice Controls Boost Driver Distraction—Sometimes By A Lot

A new study on voice-activated infotainment systems has finally taken our rants and grumbles and turned them into cold, tough clinical analysis that says voice-recognition systems in all vehicles fairly much stink. In fact, they unnecessarily tax our brains and can pose much more of a danger than speaking on a cell phone.

The study, commissioned by AAA and performed by researchers at the University of Utah, involved 3 experiments with roughly 40 drivers aged 18 to 40. Every experiment — beginning with a blank computer screen, then progressing to a driving simulator and a public road course in Salt Lake City — assessed 9 different scenarios in varying complexity, from switching radio and HVAC to dictating and listening to emails and texts. To hold almost everything apples to apples, the researchers designed their personal voice control system modeled after a typical factory setup and compared human and computer voices, as well as a handsfree version that mimicked Apple’s Siri Eyes Free of charge. Random, frustrating errors have been thrown in the mix to maintain factors realistic. On prime of all that, researchers recorded drivers’ heart rates, brain activity, and reaction instances to braking and other inputs via a blinking light in their eye.

The outcomes: We get much more stressed dictating commands or messages than listening to them, and our mental capacity behind the wheel additional shrinks when a voice technique screws up, provides as well several alternatives, or takes also long to approach. Speech good quality from computerized voices didn’t seem to make a distinction. Siri, in spite of its reliance on natural language, was deemed the most complex and least intuitive of all. Similar commands at times achieved diverse results, dictated texts cannot be edited and call for the driver to commence all more than once more, and Siri’s “sarcasm and wit” wasn’t appreciated by the test drivers, especially surprising thinking about their typical age was in between 24 to 25.

“We already know that drivers can miss stop indicators, pedestrians and other cars even though utilizing voice technologies due to the fact their minds are not completely focused on the road ahead,” mentioned AAA CEO Bob Darbelnet in a news release. “We now realize that existing shortcomings in these items, intended as security attributes, might unintentionally lead to greater levels of cognitive distraction.”

When comparing factory systems on a 1 to 5 scale of increasing workload, AAA found Toyota Entune was the simplest and least distracting at a 1.7 rating. Following have been Hyundai BlueLink (2.2), Chrysler Uconnect (2.7), Ford MyFord Touch (3.), and Mercedes COMAND (3.1). Chevrolet MyLink (3.7) scored the worst of the automakers, but it was nonetheless well behind Siri at 4.2. (Even though no test like this is completely objective, if you read the entire study here and right here, you’ll see how nicely they attempted to level the playing field amongst several diverse drivers and systems.)

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AAA recommends automakers put a maximum of 4 or 5 selections when asking drivers to pick from preset menus, speed up the processing, and, in general, quit already with the draining, multistep voice controls that just compel far more drivers to fiddle with their smartphones to get what they want. The National Highway Visitors Safety Administration, which introduced suggestions for infotainment displays last year, intends to specify equivalent guidelines for voice-activated systems, even though no specific laws exist on the books.

AAA Study Says Hands-Free Voice Controls Boost Driver Distraction—Sometimes By A Lot