It's the kind of nice UI touch that ford isn't known for. I've always assumed some programmer stuck it in there in the dead of night, and nobody noticed until it would cost too much to take out. But they're certainly not going to make it easier to use (or really even document its existence).
Now Now, don't be tryin to educate the "experts" on here with silly things like facts. We are blessed to have em and don't wanna piss em off ?It is documented:
I use it daily. Living in the mountains, there's frequent need to stop the trans from constantly shifting to 10th gear. It LOVES 10th gear. The transmission's goal in life is to live in 10th as much as possible.
My transmission acts a lot different after I put it into racing mode "R" while going 75MPH down the highway.
Assuming FMO’s manual is accurate which we know it’s not.
I know! I swear mine goes Faster when I put it in "Stop" mode!
Yes, it's buried in the back of the manual under "progressive range selection". It's not documented as "so you're curious about what gear you're in, here's how to get an informative display" and as far as I can tell isn't mentioned at all in the instrument cluster/displays section that seems to cover every possible light and warning message. Hence "not really documented" vs "not documented at all". Yeah, it's a matter of semantics, but my interpretation is that Ford isn't really trying to provide a "what gear am I in" display but happened to provide one as a side effect of providing the lockout mechanism. (And that's why it isn't just there all the time.) The way that many people seem to use it, as nothing but an information display, doesn't seem to be an expected/intended use. The surprising part for me (that I gleefully choose to interpret as some programmer subversively wanting to make things useful) is that it actually stays around if you're not locking out a gear, vs going away if that functionality isn't actively being used. This would be consistent with the general lack of detailed information on the dash (witness the popularity of add-on gauges and hatred for the right hand panel on the lariat dash). On the other hand, lane keep assist is also surprisingly poorly documented, so maybe the person responsible for documenting the instrument cluster just wasn't very good at doing so. (In other cars I've owned you can look in the book and there's a picture of all the stuff that might be on the screen and reference to what page tells you about it. This seems remarkably more useful for someone trying to understand what's on, or could be on, the screen than scattering bits and pieces around the manual like a scavenger hunt.) Anyway, this is opinion/speculation, and opinions can vary on the level of information ford provides in the dash display. Or whether the manual should be interpreted as providing insights into Ford's intentions or written off as a badly edited collection of typos.It is documented:
