Here’s the latest reader question, along with my reply!
Todd asks:Â Am I able to start my car from my Android phone? Do I have to buy a remote starter? I have the 2018 EcoSport.
My reply: Ford offers remote start as standard or optional equipment on most of their new vehicles. If it came with the system from the factory, the system usually operates via the car’s key fob rather than the phone – but some of the newer systems also let you use an app to start the car using your phone.
If your vehicle didn’t come with remote start system from the factory, you will probably have to get an aftermarket install.
Ford has more info about their factory remote start systems here.
Hope this is helpful!
. . .
Got a question about cars – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!
If you like what you’ve found here, please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
 If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: EPautos magnets are free to those who send in $20 or more. My latest eBook is also available for your favorite price – free! Click here. If you find it useful, consider contributing a couple of bucks!  
Anyone needing or wanting a remote start for their car on a cold morning should not be allowed to drive. That person is lazy to the nth degree, is mentally and intellectually deficient, and is a danger to other road users. A true clover. Makes my teeth ache to see a question like this one. How we have descended into rot and laziness!
Hi Joe,
Mine also. I just don’t get the current fascination with gadgetry. I find most of it annoying, notwithstanding the “convenient” aspects. As an example: I got a sail fawn two years ago, after my wife left. Mainly because my life changed. At any rate, the phone does allow me to make calls outside, in the car – and so on. A convenience. But also a frustration – because the calls frequently drop and then you have to call the person back, resume the interrupted conversation… this almost never happened with land line phones. They just worked. And they didn’t barrage you with constant peripheral annoyances, either. Such as “updates” and the extremely pushy practice of forcing you to decline a sales pitch for some “update” or “app” you don’t want and never asked for but which nonetheless appears on your phone.
Eric, a lot of things are just broken today. Things that just used to work. Especially software. And the damn ‘smart’ phones are the worse. Websites are deliberately coded to force people into an app. Here’s a secret that sometimes works, tell browser to get the desktop version. And the constant OS upgrades….
Every time I turn around something that should just work is broken. And each little broken thing takes minutes to hours to never to find a work around or fix. And I seem to be the only frustrated by it all. Another reason why I am a ‘bad’ person apparently.
Hi Brent,
I was talking with my friend Graves – poster here – the other day about this business. He likened these unsought/unwanted “updates” to discovering, in the middle of the night, that the toilet in your bathroom was moved to a new location by some evil genie who decided on your behalf that it would “work better” over in the other corner or some such.
It’s all so got-damned peremptory. That’s what’s insufferable. Like being accosted by a pushy sales man everywhere you go and having to elbow them out of your way at every turn.
And this is why I hate computers. A mechanical thing is a physical thing under your control. My Quadrajet will not decide, on its own, to change the float setting or idle speed. Once set, these things are set. They may change as the result of wear over time, etc. But got-damned computers just randomly (or not) decide on their own to change the way they operate and you are left to figure out why and just accept the new regime.
There’s no reason for it but the way software people are. That’s why the ability to push ‘updates’ was created in the first place.
My Atari 8 bit computers can’t be updated remotely. If I turned them on they would behave exactly the same way as I last used them in the early 1990s unless something broke.
Just keep in mind, what you can start with a remote, so can someone else. Just as important as the fact that while your OnStar or equivalent “nav” system, allows information into your vehicle, it also sends information out. Once more of society gets comfortable with remote locks and information availability, don’t be surprised when everything you own and do is suddenly stolen from you without permission or provocation. Reasonable suspicion is not paranoia, but rather being informed about your so called “choices”.
Hi Graves,
The “Internet of things” makes my teeth ache. Even more so that a majority seems to welcome it; falls in love with whatever “app” or gadget comes out and just has to have it… and by dint of that, so does everyone else. May the buzzards one day feast on their marrow…