OP here, thought I'd come back for a report on our first trip with the new tow vehicle (2019 Ford Expedition Max) pulling our trailer. The short version: I'm really REALLY liking this vehicle a LOT!
A little more about the trip:
The non-towing highway mileage increased from approximately 17 (on the previous 2010 Expedition) to 25 MPG. I was hoping the towing mileage would see a nice increase too. There was an increase, but pretty small: From 7 to 9 MPG.
It was hard to believe I was even towing! This machine pulls like a dream! Even going through construction zone with head-to-head traffic and staring down the 18-wheelers coming against me, the rig just didn't budge! Everything about pulling the trailer was as smooth as butter!
Well, almost everything. We had a tire blow out on the trailer about seven miles into the return trip. Can't blame that on the Expedition, though. But that's a story for another day (or my next post). :-/
Other things I like:
* Hands-free parallel parking. (Without the trailer, of course!) Hands-free perpendicular parking didn't go as well, but I can still do that on my own.
* Integrated brake controller. I really like my stand-along brake controller, but it's nice to "just go" and not have to remember to hook up another thing.
* The dashboard is heavily digital, but in a clean way that's not annoying.
* It appears that just hooking up the trailer also does an automatice light check. I can't confirm that yet, I'll still send my son to the back to do the visual check, but that appears to be the case. (Some car wash water appears to have gotten into the 7-pin connection and temporarily caused some electrical wackiness, causing the system to think the trailer was hooked up, and then reporting that one of the trailer lights wasn't working.)
* I thought the seat massager was way over the top, but when I sensed a drowsy moment coming, turning on the massager got enough movement in my body to keep my drive going in the right direction.
* The sunroof will rarely be open, but when it is ... oh my goodness that's a huge piece of glass to look through!
* And worth repeating: The power and mileage are amazing!
Also worth noting, I'm working through the learning curve of using the assisted back-up. The tiny knob is no steering wheel replacement, but I think I'll get to like it. It didn't do so hot on cranking out a hard turn to back into my driveway, but I did notice that if I have enough space to get a roughly-right aim at my back-up target, I could fine-tune pretty nicely with the assisted back-up, and then once I had fine-tuned it enough to have the trailer lined up to go straight back I could just go hands-free on the assisted back-up and let the Expedition get the trailer in exactly the right place, even if the Expedition was at a crazy angle compared to the trailer.
