2025 Ford Expedition Tech Review: Does the Shiny Tech Justify the Cost?

• What's new: We bought a 2025 Ford Expedition late last year for nearly $100,000.
• Why it matters: With a price like that, this sucker needs to deliver the goods.
• Edmunds says: Let's hear what our team has to say about the Expedition's tech.

Manager of written content Cameron Rogers concurred: 

"One of the few annoyances I noted on my First Drive of the Ford Expedition was with the hands-free BlueCruise system. Don't get me wrong — the adaptive cruise and lane-centering functions are wonderful and make driving super easy. When the system works as intended, that is. See, there's something going on with the eye-tracking sensor, and it's constantly reminding me to watch the road while I'm staring straight ahead. Not only is the persistent beeping annoying, but it also disengages BlueCruise after a few seconds of diligent attention-paying.

"In my original article, I theorized that the sensor that tracks eye position and movement isn't firing at my face at the right angle. I didn't have a ton of time then to troubleshoot, but now that we have an Expedition in our One-Year Road Test fleet, I played with the steering wheel position to see if that solved anything (the eye-tracking sensor is perched on top of the steering column).

"Sure enough, tilting the wheel higher — notably, at an angle I didn't find comfortable to hold — seemed to solve the problem. No more false pings or BlueCruise deactivations, though my arms have to be raised in a way that works out my delts and feels fatiguing after a while. Since the column is power-adjustable, maybe I'll experiment with using different driver memory settings for 'around town' and 'using BlueCruise.'"

That big digital instrument panel works pretty great

"The big dash display is actually kind of nice," wrote Will Kaufman, video manager. "I appreciate the redundant map in a vehicle this big with this much dash. But it suffers the same issue as a lot of other Ford digital dashes: It gives the impression you'll get a ton of customizability, but in practice it's actually incredibly limited, to the point where I find myself wondering why they bothered with a big screen instead of just analog dials and lights. Other OEMs give you way more options for customizing the look and content of their digital gauge clusters."

Brent Romans, director of written content, mostly agreed with Kaufman's assessment. 

"I pretty much agree with Will's earlier comment regarding the big digital instrument panel," Romans wrote. "Before driving our Expedition, I would have thought that extra map display would be superfluous. But I've actually come to find it pretty useful. Two reasons why: 1) Having the always-on map display allows you to use the touchscreen to display something else, like your music app. 2) I've also found that I like having two map displays up. 

"I usually use Apple Maps or Waze for navigation. The Expedition's extra map display is based on Google Maps, but it can interface with the destination I set from a different app. So this way I can have a map display on the touchscreen that's fixed with a 'north is always up' orientation, then supplement that with the Expedition's Google Map display for a directional 'up is the way I'm headed' orientation. This has proved useful when I'm driving in a city or location I'm unfamiliar with. I can get a general sense of the route from Apple Maps and then a more detailed turn-based view from Google Maps."

A reminder to heed manufacturer's warnings in your motorized vehicle

"So, uhh, I burned my iPhone's case with the Expedition's wireless phone charger," wrote Romans. "My phone case is plastic, and it has a detachable back that holds credit cards. Here's what happened. I had put my phone on the charging pad. I didn't intentionally put it on the charger to charge, but in the Expedition, there's no other convenient place to put your phone down. 

"Anyway, I was driving along one day when I noticed a strange smell, like something burning. I picked up my phone, and whoa! It was really hot. And, I had unknowingly put a parking receipt between the phone and the wireless charger. That receipt now had a big brown burn spot on it. OK, so, that was not good. I looked at the back of my phone, and the detachable part of the case had melted slightly where my credit card's metal chip is. And sure enough, my credit card was (literal and figurative) toast. Public service announcement: When automakers warn you not to put metal on a wireless charger, it's best to believe them."