I had a points reservation for a full-size sedan at an HLE in Manhattan yesterday; I showed up at the scheduled time and was told the station was completely out of cars and that drivers were delivering cars from an airport location. I ended up waiting about an hour along with a few other irtate renters and when cars were finally delivered, three brand new T/FFAR 2025 Ford Expeditions showed up and it was take it or leave it. The one I was assigned had the Platinum trim package and NJ plates with only 16 miles on the odometer and still had fleet stickers and plastic coverings on pannels so it had been hurriedly put into service.

Here's a few observations after a few days of driving.

First, the vehicle has a metal oxide windshield that totally masks toll transponders from being read. I went through a set of toll plazas on the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway and got "TOLL UNPAID" messages. Reading online, there's supposed to be a safe spot to mount the transponder to the right of the rear view mirror assembly, but I tried several times wirthout getting a good read. I found a lot of posts online discussing this.

Second, Ford's new Digital Experience dashboard has a bit of a learning curve. Basically, everthing you'd want to adjust on and in the car is moved to menus in the center screen that are accessed by mini trackpads on each side of the steering wheel face or deeper menus from the center console touchscreen. I ended up spending a bit of time parked in the car and warching YouTube videos trying to figure out tasks like adjustig the steering wheel, deploying the running boards, resetting the trip odometer, adjusting the audio settings, etc. There's a lot of apps and integration with Google to deal with and it can be distracting while driving.

The BlueCruise auto drive function is a gimick that I tried for a short bit but I'm not a believer in self-driving tech. The tech I really liked were the blind spot cameras that engage and display on the wraparound dashboard screen when you use a turn signal and the top view 360 camera that made parking easier. The sound system was really, really good, I got an abysmal 15 mpg in mixed city and highway driving. Luckily, the HLE marked me out at 50% to appologize for the experience so I didn't have to refuel before I returned it (I put about 100 miles on the vehicle).

If I was given the choice to rent one, I'd have to think about how many tolls I might encounter on my trip. I certainly won't be looking to rent one in NYC.