How reliable is that digital gauge?

The CAN BUS is the nervous system of your car and the display is the dumbest part of that system. This article has a great intro video on the subject.

https://jalopnik.com/sometimes-you-just-need-to-see-a-good-explainer-of-the-1822934751

^^that

And the software in cars or any kind of vehicles are completely different things compared to software in your day to day computers, the hardware too. There are redundancy in the design so you don’t need to be too worried about it breaking, especially considering the most common reason of computers breaking is due to human error. And remember the computer in cars are designed to do one thing and one thing only, you can’t just install new software on it to make it do different things, this also increases the reliability of it.

Kevin08 said:

Press the settings button on your steering wheel (2 gear icons), press "View Trip/Fuel Info", use the up and down arrows to cycle through the 2 trip screens and view instant/average MPG.

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Yes, that used to work but not now.

You can reset a frozen or glitching Sync 3 by holding down the power button and the right arrow button. It shuts it down like you had the vehice off for awhile. Try it the next time you're in your car. It's worked for me.

ktp1598 said:

You can reset a frozen or glitching Sync 3 by holding down the power button and the right arrow button. It shuts it down like you had the vehice off for awhile. Try it the next time you're in your car. It's worked for me.

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By right arrow, you mean the forward/skip button? Just making sure!

I believe so. I haven't done this in a while but it works. You won't mess anything up by trying.

Anything electronic has a potential to fail, over time.

How long it last or put another way, how quickly it fails is not known right now.

I'd be shocked if most digital gauges start to fail within the first 10 years of its life. Doesn't mean that some won't crap out.

The way I see it, it just needs to last for as long as I have the car, 8-10 years or 150,000 miles.

I ‘ve just read that there are people who experience issues with their digital dash, such as the dash going black while driving. Actually there is already a recall from Ford on that. There is a guy on FB who has been waiting for several weeks for the problem to be fixed. Problems that early would get me worried, especially if the dash goes black while driving.

MakStang said:

I ‘ve just read that there are people who experience issues with their digital dash, such as the dash going black while driving. Actually there is already a recall from Ford on that. There is a guy on FB who has been waiting for several weeks for the problem to be fixed. Problems that early would get me worried, especially if the dash goes black while driving.

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I believe the recall you’re referring to had to do with shutting off the car while not in park.

Maybe, I don't know. But the problem of the dash going black while driving is real and has affected a couple of people, as I describe above (there may be more unreported incidents).