New Ford Expedition Tremor Review and Off-Road Test

This is the all-new Ford Expedition Tremor. It's a full-size, three-row, body-on-frame SUV that's packing a turbo V6, autonomous driving tech, and a long list of off-road ready accessories. But before we get into all of the details, I want to show you the interior. Yeah, this interior, it's a choice. Where the previous Expedition had an F-150 inspired interior, this one takes a lot of design cues from the Lincoln Navigator. We have the swept, curved display. That's actually the gauge cluster up there. And then down here, we have the easily accessible touchscreen. And yes, we cannot ignore the squircle steering wheel. Now, I'm not against square circle steering wheels in general. However, this one is so small, it just feels like a toy, which is kind of ironic considering the size of this vehicle. Now, on either side, we have these little touchpads that let me control various features. Even though these do reduce the number of buttons on the steering wheel, the fact is you're still hitting button zones. You're just doing it with a fancier touchpad. So, I don't really see the benefit here. Now, beyond the silliness of the steering wheel, the rest here is actually pretty straightforward. You got the touchscreen here running the latest version of Sync. Down below that, we do have the transmission controller, which is typical Ford. They've been using the dial in a lot of things, expedition right there to remind us what we're driving. And on the right, we have some easily accessible buttons, including the auto start, stop, enable, disable cameras, and the off-road trail control button. Now, aircon, yes, it's all integrated into the screen, which I think is a little disappointing for a vehicle of this size. It's a huge vehicle. You got lots of space here. Give me one more row of physical buttons. But now, instead, we have the integration here. It does work pretty well. It's pretty quick. It's straightforward. It does minimize the number of clicks to get certain things done. We do have a rear view camera here with tracking lines. In fact, it's a full surround view camera system. We'll play a little bit more with that later when we hit the trail. Another cool feature, yes, the entire console slides to give you access to this massive storage bin down there. We got a phone charger right here, and then we also have a pro trailer controller for if you have a trailer hooked up. Oh, yeah, massive, massive sunroof. Actually, it's a full panorama glass roof, which is cool. The seats are very comfortable, lots of adjustments. If I do want to adjust my steering wheel, yes, I do have to dive into the touchpad, hit adjustments, adjust steering wheel, and then at this point, I can go up and down. I personally think that's kind of obnoxious. Again, what are you really saving here? You're not saving time, that's for sure. You're just saving, what, one less button on this vehicle that already has lots of buttons? I just don't get it. Okay, well, those are the basics. Now it's time to take this for a drive, and then we're going to bring it back here to our Peninsula Proving Grounds to put its off-road features to the test. The powertrain is a high-output turbocharged 3.5-liter V6 producing a peak 440 horsepower and 510 pound-feet of torque. The transmission is a 10-speed automatic. Power goes to all four wheels with a dual-range four-wheel drive system that has both locked and auto settings. EPA rates economy at 15 miles to the gallon in town and 22 on the highway. Let's see how quick this thing can accelerate. We're going to switch it to sport mode. I'm just going to stop here. Switches into four-auto in three, two, one, punch it. Whoa, there's the kick. Okay, that is going to be plenty fast for most buyers. I understand why Ford went with a squircle design. It's so that you can better see the gauge cluster up above. Even this slight less rounded top does bring down the overall steering wheel diameter and makes it easier to see. That said, I don't like this one, and it is simply because it is so incredibly small. Now, the Subaru Trail Seeker has a squircle. Don't have a problem with it, and they do it for the exact same reason. The new Jeep Cherokee has a squircle. That's one of the few things that I didn't mind about that vehicle, even though it does have a standard gauge cluster, so it was a little weird to go squircle on that one. This one just doesn't feel right for the vehicle. I want a bigger, beefier steering wheel with lots of buttons. Don't give me this little joystick Mario Kart controller. It just doesn't fit this vehicle. It's weird and unnecessary. Also, at night, these illuminated buttons, I cannot figure out how to turn them down that much. Very bright, in my eyes, do not like. On the road, fairly comfortable. Visibility is quite good. Seats are nice and supportive. They're both heated and cooled at this trim level. This squircle steering wheel is also heated as well. No massage at this price point though. Wouldn't like that. While driving, we can turn on some of the cameras. We can look at the rear view camera. What else can we look at? A hitch camera for towing. And we can also do side view. Now talking about towing, this can pull up to 9,600 pounds. And then as for payload, you're looking at 1,360 pounds. So essentially, you can load this up with seven, you know, average size guys and that is your max payload, which I think is actually probably fine. Although I would expect a little bit more for a vehicle of this size, but you know, it is what it is. Ah, a little video screen there in the gauge cluster for turning. It is kind of funny though that it just kind of is like slapped on top of all the other gauge cluster information. It seems like it was a feature they added and they just didn't think about it. Like, oh yeah, we need to put the video somewhere. Let's just put it on top of the weather. Like, what the heck? That's kind of weird. I can change one of the panels up here while I'm driving, go between fuel economy, which 15.7 is what we've been averaging, various gauges, media. I like the customizations, but I feel like we could probably fit a couple more displays in there. I don't know why we're only doing one. Like, I feel like I should be able to drag this up here and get more. Like, if I want crammed information up there, let me have crammed information up there. Now that we've got some painted stripes, let's go ahead and try adaptive cruise. So this of course does come with the Blue Cruise hands-free autopilot system. I have used it pretty extensively and it is quite good. I would say it's more conservative than Chevy's super cruise system. Ford, for example, doesn't even cover this road. It's not part of their geofenced network. Chevy allows this road. Chevy is also more aggressive with its auto passing. Ford, more conservative. Even when you're not on a road that is qualified for hands-free, we can do hands-on autopilot. And this does a really good job of tracking down the middle of the lanes, which is kind of what you would expect in a system that can also pull full autonomous duty. So if I were to take my hands off the wheel here, you can see that it's doing just fine cutting this corner. It will tell me to put my hands back on the wheel in a moment because this is not part of the geofence network. Come on. Anytime now. Anytime. There we go. Hands back on the wheel, and they are. In addition to the adaptive cruise and hands-free, this also has, of course, collision mitigation, blind spot warning, rear cross traffic alerts, and this also comes with a full surround view camera system at this trim level. This, of course, is a tremor edition. You don't buy this simply because it looks good. Okay, maybe you do, but I would like to think that the off-road kit that comes standard on this vehicle is actually usable. So let's go back to our Peninsular Proving Grounds where we'll put it to the test. Now that I'm hitting gravel, I could manually switch into 4-auto, but instead I'm going to use the drive modes and go to off-road. That automatically switches me into, oh interesting, 4-high and it locked my rear diff. Don't want that. So I'm going to go ahead and keep it in that mode, but turn off the rear diff. Let's go. So steering is still numb, but I think the suspension is doing a decent job of soaking up the irregularities here on this gravel entrance road. Not bad. Because this is the tremor edition, it does come with a mild lift and off-road tuned suspension. Here you're looking at 10.6 inches of ground clearance. Tires are 33-inch General Grabbers in a 275-70 R18 fitment. They are wrapped around these really cool looking alloy wheels. This also gets a rear locking differential, usable tow hooks, and multiple skid plates. Drivers also have access to a rock crawling mode and an off-road one-pedal driving mode. The rear gate has a clamshell design reminiscent of the 200 Series Land Cruiser and Range Rover vehicles. Lots of room back here, up to 108.5 cubic feet with all the seats folded flat. Price as you see it here, including the Blue Cruise hands-free driving tech, glacier gray paint, and some extra underbody protection, $86,695 including destination and a couple options. But now the big question. This is obviously a very big SUV, but is it too to get through our trails here at our Peninsula Proving Grounds? Time to put it to the test. This episode of Driving Sports TV is brought to you by Onyx Off-Road. Click the link below to save 20% off your new membership using the code DSTV. We love Onyx Off-Road for planning our off-road adventures. Which trails to drive? How hard are they? Are they even open? Onyx Off-Road provides all that information in addition to tools to help plan and organize your next adventure. Have you watched one of our mini road trip videos? We use Onyx Off-Road to plan and navigate every adventure. And right now you can get 20% off your premium or elite membership to Onyx Off-Road with the code DSTV. That's of course an abbreviation for Driving Sports TV. Look for the link in the video description below or click this QR code. We're basically going to navigate some boulders here and then we're going to have a small climb at the end which will take us over some phone poles, rocks, and if we go to the outside we'll even drive over some tires. This is really going to test the camera system and then also the clearances. Is this thing so big that we couldn't do a fairly simple course like this? Let's find out. So ground clearance on this is over 10 and a half inches which is pretty good. Approach angle is a little bit more than 28 degrees and the wheel base here is a little bit more than 122. This is a rock garden so I'm going to go ahead and set the drive mode to rock crawl. It is telling me I need to put it into neutral to shift them to the four low. Transfer case kicks in, automatically applies that rear locker which is not a surprise. So I'm going to use the one pedal drive system, kind of the equivalent of doing two pedaling in an older vehicle. I like how as soon as I go to an off-road mode I get the off-road status up on the right there. That's pretty cool. You get wheel marks here along with vehicle width. Okay just crawling along here. So the crawl ratio isn't great. It's a little surgy but this isn't really a dedicated rock crawler. See I think we got plenty of clearance here. I am a little concerned about the departure angle. Sometimes trucks will scrape on the back side. Of course this isn't a truck but it is a truck-based chassis. So let's see what it does. I'm just trying to inch forward. That's why I'm using the one pedal. It's just on off on off. Then turn off those parking sensors and go up here. I'm going to keep a wheel on the rocks on the left here because that traction will be better. We don't have a front lock. Oh yeah I'm rubbing that back. We don't have a front locker so it's going to use traction control on the front. Basically it'll apply brakes to a wheel that's slipping to shift the power left to right. I'm just trying to crawl up here. I don't want to bump it because I don't want to break anything. I have to bump the logs a little bit because it's logs surrounded by gravel. Just a little bit here. Forward just a little bit. Oh there we go. Sometimes you just need to add a little extra throttle. I didn't hear any banging on the underside. Clearances were good. So right here we have a fairly steep hill. What I'm going to use is the trail control system. I basically hit set put it in drive and now I can set my speed based on the buttons on the left here. It'll go from you know one two three with half mile per hour increments. I don't need my rear locker. I'll go ahead and turn that off and use my tracking lines here. Just go down the hill. I'm going to take my foot off the brake off the gas pedal and we're just going to let the vehicle drive us down. This is kind of like crawl control on the Toyotas and then I will use both throttle as well as braking. Though obviously on the hill here we are just using braking and that is a about a 19 18 19 degree tilt there. It's pretty steep. Okay now at this point I can go ahead and increase the speed and it'll keep on driving. We're just going to keep on going all the way up to the mogul course. Now the point of course of a system like trail control is when you're not worried about your throttle or your gas you can focus on your line and of course you can override it anytime with the brake pedal or with the gas. So continuing on into the moguls. I am just going to go at one mile per hour in four low. No locker yet. First wheel in the hole. Okay we're going to teeter totter a little. Does a good job of shifting that power. And there we go. Almost. Yeah. Longer wheelbases hit different. Okay now let's do sand slide. Keeping trail control going. We will go as high as we can on this. Okay maybe it's a little too quick. So now we're going to try one pedal trail mode because I need a little bit more finesse in this spot. And what this will do is basically when my foot's off the throttle it applies the brake. As I roll my foot onto the throttle it'll then remove the brake. What's going on? Why why isn't this going forward? Okay what's going on here? That's weird. Okay so we got a little mud there. Got a little dirt here. Up. Got a wheel off the ground. So basically wheel off the ground and mud. It's not figuring out how to move us forward. Now that's interesting because I feel like the Toyota system would get us through this. Let's turn off all funky features. We'll turn off single pedal. Just add a little throttle. Wheels are straight. Oh it does. It sorts it out there. Okay interesting. Okay let's continue on. A little tilt and out we go. I thought it was interesting that trail mode couldn't get us out of that little muddy patch but regular throttle could. I guess it's just a matter of learning the vehicle. It's, you know, pluses and minuses. I still feel though like Toyota's crawl system would have gotten us out of that no problem. Okay got a deep ditch here. At this point I am going to turn on the rear locker. Lock the rear axle to make both wheels work at the same rate. Doesn't care if it's slipping or not and of course just walks us through. A little throttle. Yeah up and out no problem. Well cool. I'd say overall this is a pretty impressive package if you need something this large. So how does it compare to something like the Toyota Sequoia? I feel like this vehicle uses space a little bit better in the back because with all those batteries hogging all the room. I prefer the Toyota's powertrain though. Both these powertrains I think are actually quite good but that hybrid system, oh it is so just punchy. It just drives fantastic. And then of course you have Toyota's traction control systems which I think are superior to Ford's. I think the Sequoia delivers a better driving experience even if it is lacking in terms of rear cargo space. But we're not done yet. We have a little water left in our water crossing. I'm going to use it. For Driving Sports TV, I'm Ryan Douthit. Thanks for watching. Be sure to like, subscribe, share videos. We make them for you. I hope you enjoy them. I hope you enjoyed this look at the new Ford Expedition Tremor. Oh it's fun.