According to a Wednesday disclosure made by Ford Motors' Mark Fields - Ford's president of the Americas - to the reporters at the 2012 Los Angeles Auto Show, the warranty on the automaker's MyFord Touch controls is being extended from three years to five years.

The extended warranty on Ford's much-criticized MyFord Touch infotainment system is apparently an upshot of users' complaints about quality-related problems with its touch-screen dashboard controls.

In fact, the problems-plagued MyFord Touch infotainment system was the key reason why Ford received a low ranking on annual customer satisfaction surveys carried out by Consumer Reports and J. D. Power and Associates. The results of the October-released J. D. Power annual reliability survey revealed that Ford's namesake had plunged to the `last but one' position.

About the issues affecting MyFord Touch, the some of the surveys' respondents said that the voice-recognition software mostly failed to understand certain commands. With the users of the original MyFord Touch version having complained about the lack of conventional buttons for controlling temperature, the radio or other features, these issues have been addressed in newer models.

Revealing that Ford is coming up with a software upgrade which will improve voice commands, navigation functions and connection of a mobile handset to the car's controls, Fields said that earlier, spring-introduced MyFord Touch version had - as per Ford's surveys - "increased our customer satisfaction by over 20 points;" and added: "We expect to see another improvement as we introduce this version."