Ever since OBD-II ports started to become the norm in the early 2000s, cars have become easier to tune, with hundreds of companies specialising in altering engine control unit (ECU) software.
There have been cases of ‘untunable’ cars, with Nissan even being as bold when it launched the R35 GT-R to claim its ECU could never be cracked – a challenge which was taken on and beaten less than a year later.
However, with car systems becoming more complex and owner’s data now caught up in it all, some brands are making it even harder for owners and third-party firms to squeeze more power.
Talking on The Verge’s Decoded podcast, Ford CEO Jim Farley detailed why the brand has locked the ECUs on a majority of its cars, including performance models such as the Mustang.
“This is a real dilemma for us, and there’s no easy answer. We want people to modify their cars, but we also have to take quality and privacy really seriously.
“I think he [the person who asked if locked ECUs are impacting Mustang sales] was talking more about the performance of the vehicle, and over time, our approach would be to give people the option to digitally adjust their vehicle from Ford, so that we can maintain quality but still let the user have their own idea of performance.
“That’s different for everyone, and I think that vision will come to life in the coming years.
“The aftermarket is a real opportunity, but it’s also a big challenge for us because a lot of people like to write software in the control module that controls the powertrain to get better performance. But what they don’t know, and what the user may not be aware of, is that all the reliability and the quality issues that might come up are very expensive.”
Farley provided a very specific and personal example of how Ford’s decision to lock its ECUs is impacting customers, even those close to him.
“My daughter’s boyfriend is one of these people. He bought a brand new F-150, he’s got a supercharger on it,” Farley said. “He recently got a bunch of error codes because he updated the ECU against Ford’s standards, and now he needs thousands of dollars of expensive repairs because the vehicle has started chewing its camshaft.
“It was great that he could get 650 horsepower out of his EcoBoost F-150. He didn’t think about what he was doing to the reliability of the vehicle, but we have to at Ford.
“All I would say is that it’s a tough problem to solve. We always want to give customers a chance to tune their vehicles, but we actually know a lot about the reliability of the vehicle.
“Are we as a brand going to let our quality reputation suffer to give a person the ability to modify the vehicle? I think that’s a hard compromise for us to make.”
Farley’s comments about Ford wanting to keep tuning in-house should come as no surprise.
In 2022, following the launch of the now-current S650 Mustang, the car’s chief engineer Ed Krenz told Ford Authority changes to the pony car’s electrical architecture would make it “much more difficult” to tune, though he added the brand was “open to collaborating with tuners looking to modify vehicles”.
Since then, Ford has launched its own tuning options for the Mustang, including a factory-backed supercharger kit and relevant engine tune.
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