I picked up my 2025 Explorer ST last week, having had the previous 2021 Explorer ST.
I was surprised by what is no longer available, here's a short list, let me know if you have any questions:
No longer available:
Hands-Free, Foot-Activated Liftgate
Active Park Assist
Door Sill lighting
Leather Seats
Dash configurations when you switch modes
(Previously when you switched to say Sport Mode everything went red and the dash focused on sport related dials)
The PRNL & Mode Dials will keep spinning until you stop (Annoying)
Second-row Console
Not crazy about:
Seating material
Floor mats are cheap
Android based System is frustrating and distracting.
Limited amount of physical buttons to manage functions.
STILL NO RADIO Control other than volume from the steering wheel.
Dealer had no instruction available for BlueCruise
LJS
Interesting. I picked up a 2025 Explorer ST on Saturday evening. I had some similar thoughts but also some different takes:
1. Hands-free, Foot-activated liftgate would be nice to have.
2. Don't care about active park assist but i have a button that has a P on it and I don't know what it does (and haven't bothered to figure it out yet)
3. I like the FP door sills and I've got ST puddle lights, so I don't think I'm missing anything - there's plenty of interior lighting on this thing for me.
4. Leather seats would be nice to have. I'd have paid a lot extra to have them on the front row with heated/cooled seats and perforation, but solid on the second row. Or weatherproof and childproof vinyl, the bronco marine grade vinyl really seems to hold up pretty well.
5. Where the hell are my performance gauges and more RED when I go to sport mode? Ford took away the beautiful rolling-rocks-become-a-Bronco on the Bronco with the big screen but it still has the custom displays for the various modes, even if its just a color palette change for sport or eco, but there's some great additional, wide-dash displays for offroad modes so long as you don't have the lane-assist or cruise control enabled, etc. The Explorer has the equivalent of the splash video that was removed by OTA update but doesn't have mode-specific screens? That should be enhanced via OTA update and should have at least a performance view with lots of info, including boost pressure, trans-temp, oil-temp, tire psi + temp, etc etc.
I like the android based system so far. I had to get used to where to get things quickly, the ability to uninstall useless things, how to rearrange apps to prioritize the ones i want, and the like. The different user profiles are very nice, including the recall of not just seat/mirror position, but also display dark-mode, disabled lane-assist etc.
As always, Auto Start Stop (beautiful A.S.S. acronym here) should be a rocker switch or push-button w memory rather than a push button without memory.
I was given no explanation of BlueCruise either, but it seems intuitive. Got on the interstate with cruise enabled and lane-assist and it did its thing for me. I didn't realize it was a free trial of a subscription service, which I am not a fan of. I'd rather it be a pre-paid option of some $500-1,500 1x fee and its on 'forever'.