- An electric Mustang is an idea
that seemed almost unfathomable just a few short years ago,
but now it exists.
Ford went really far out on a limb here
by calling this thing a Mustang and you know what?
It's pretty good.
(upbeat music)
I'm not gonna beat around the Bush here.
The Mustang Mach-E is the most competent electric vehicle
not made by Tesla or Porsche on the road right now.
And in a few areas is maybe even a little bit better
than the EVs Elon Musk has been making for the last decade.
The Mustang Mach-E is really solidly built.
It's a lot of fun to drive.
It has plenty of range for daily driving and short trips
and it puts technology front and center
in a way that other automakers usually mess up.
It's not exactly cheap.
It starts at around $43,000 and this version
which I tested for the last week with all wheel drive
and the extended range battery pack costs about $55,000
but it can be more affordable than a Tesla Model Y
or even a Chevy bolt, depending on which version you buy
because Ford's cars are still eligible
for that full federal EV tax credit.
And it's certainly more attainable
than the luxury electric cars
that currently make up the EV market right now,
like the Jaguar I-Pace, the Mercedes-Benz CQC
and the Audi e-tron
but Ford dared call this a Mustang.
So let's start with a few Mustang things, like performance.
There are five total models with a variety
of ranges from 211 miles to 305 miles.
The model I tested had a range of about 270 miles
and could go from zero to 60 in just about five seconds.
That's not the quickest version Ford will sell,
that'll be the GT performance coming later this year
which can do it in 3.5 seconds.
There are three driving modes,
Unbridled has the tightest steering
and the quickest acceleration,
and is basically your best bet
for flirting with local speed limits.
Whisper is of course the quietest mode
and also offers the loosest steering
and really smooth coasting
when you pull your foot off the throttle.
Engaged is sort of a middle ground,
a mix of somewhat sporty driving
but without the oomph of unbridled mode.
I should say, this doesn't have the same kind
of heart-stopping acceleration that the Porsche Taycan
or Tesla's performance models offer.
If you want that from the Mustang Mach-E
you're gonna have to wait
and pay more for the GT performance or regular GT version.
But I found this had enough giddy-up
for me in an SUV of this size
and while I was comfortable with 270 miles
I wouldn't want to buy one with less.
There's another component to the Mach-Es Mustangness
that we should probably talk about
and that's it's looks.
I did think it looked a little bit strange at first,
especially with the grill less design
on the model that I tested,
but it really grew on me over time.
I don't love the metallic silver color that I had on this.
I would've much rather tried the really bright blue
that our video directors, Becca and Alex,
had for this shoot.
And I also like the sort of yellowish orange
that Ford's keeping for the highest performance models
that are coming out later.
I'm less in love with the look of the car
from the rear where it looks like
the Mustangs iconic tri-bar lighting is sort of trying
to escape from the back of a more pedestrian SUV.
Overall though, I think Ford did a good job
of making it just as different enough
that it catches people's eyes
without making it too strange.
I got a lot of thumbs up and questions about it
when I was driving and parking it over the past week.
And you can tell that people were really familiar with it
in a way that I wouldn't have expected.
- What are you driving?
- An electric Mustang.
- What the, that is so sweet.
I was like, it's got ponies on it, it says mach.
- That's a good thing for electric cars,
which Tesla aside have so far looked so different
that they're kind of off putting
or so similar, in some cases,
that it's hard to tell what's different about them at all.
One place where I think Ford has a leg up over Tesla
with the Mustang Mach-E is, shocker, build quality.
On the outside there aren't any big seams between the panels
and then on the inside, everything just feels
really well put together.
There's not a lot of road noise.
It's just pretty clear that this is coming
from an automaker that has spent a century
almost perfecting the car making process.
The interior is really comfortable without feeling so nice
that you wouldn't want to eat a cheeseburger in it
and it's just really spacious too.
There are also a bunch of USB-A and USB-C ports,
which is a nice touch, and a wireless charging pad
which I love except for the fact that my iPhone
kept sliding around while I was driving
which prompted a really distracting error message.
But the big draw is the main 15.5 inch portrait touchscreen
on the dashboard.
First, I love the physicality of it.
Despite the floating effect,
it really feels solidly bolted on
and better yet like you could sort of hammer away
at the screen for years without something going wrong.
The quality of the panel is great too,
the graphics are crisp and the colors are bright.
You really have to go hunting
to see any pixels or jagged edges.
Now the logic of the software
on the main screen feels a little bit fuzzy.
There's an almost webOSy card based system
that surfaces frequently used functions
but it doesn't offer quick access to deep menu settings
like drive modes or screen brightness
which I think would be more useful.
There are also just little quirks
that I couldn't really stand,
like how Ford's mapping system doesn't let you move
the map to repopulate search results
when you're looking for say, EV chargers.
And while this is a touchscreen
there's also a big silver volume knob at the bottom
which has pretty satisfying feedback
but I just use the volume button
on the steering wheel most of the time.
One more thing that I wish was a little bit different
about this user interface was just
a little bit more customization
on the instrument cluster screen like the ability to put,
say how many kilowatt hours per mile
you're using or other things.
Ford has a couple of different versions that will pop up
depending on which driving mode you're in
but there's no real customization as to what's
on that screen behind the steering wheel
and I kind of wish there was.
These are all things that could be changed
with over the air software updates,
which is something for as promised with the Mustang Mach-E.
It's something that Tesla has popularized over the years
but big automakers usually tend to get wrong.
So here's hoping Ford it actually gets it right.
There's one big feature that is still missing right now
on the Mach-E that I wish I could have tested,
which is that Ford's promising
a true hands-free driving mode.
It'll be the first in Ford's lineup
and it's basically comparable to what GM and Cadillac
have been doing for the last few years with Super Cruise.
In its place right now there's just
a more normal advanced driver assistance package
which does include things like lane centering,
but I did find it to be a little finicky.
Even when the true hands-free driving option comes out
it'll only be available on highways
that Ford maps ahead of time,
and there's a camera behind the steering wheel
that's actually on this version of the Mach-E already
that'll be tracking your eyes
to make sure you're paying attention to the road.
So don't expect this to be some fully self-driving car.
For the most part of the Mach-E is a really great experience
but the biggest drawback is the same drawback
of any EV that's not a Tesla right now.
Charging.
Charging in the U.S is just a mess.
There are all sorts of different networks
with different charging rates,
with different pricing structures,
different upkeep for those charging stations
and it's just a real hit or miss experience
that's difficult to navigate
even if you know all of that going in.
You have to be pretty highly educated
on what the different services are and what they offer,
and even then you can still run into problems.
For example, I went to an Electrify America station,
this is basically Volkswagen's version
of Tesla supercharger network, and still ran into problems.
I would plug the Mach-E into one outlet
and it would give me an error message.
I would plug it into another
and it would charge way slower than it should.
It's enough of a drag already to know
that you're gonna have to spend maybe 30 minutes,
40 minutes, maybe even longer at slower stations
but it's worse when you get there
and you have to spend more time doing this little do-si-do
between all the different charging stations
just to find one that's working.
And if Volkswagen's network isn't going to be able to do it,
then the smaller networks are certainly gonna
have trouble with it and even when they work well
they're charging your car more slowly.
This is a problem and it needs to be fixed.
It's not necessarily Ford's problem to fix.
Though I will say, Ford is collecting all of these networks
and sort of combining them into what it's called
the FordPass Charging Network.
In theory, it's a really good idea,
they're making all these charging networks easy to find
in the FordPass app or in the dashboard screen of the Mach-E
so that you have a one-stop shop for your nearest charging.
And Ford is also even trying to bundle some
of those services together into your Ford accounts
so that you don't have to have
all these different charging accounts and charging apps,
you could theoretically just pull up,
plug in and let it take care of all of the financial stuff
in the background that doesn't quite work really well
just yet and the problem that Ford's going to face with this
is that people are going to buy this car
and use those charging networks
and into some of those problems
and they might wind up thinking,
"Boy, Ford's charging network is a real bummer."
And so I hope that those charging networks
can improve really quickly and in fact,
a lot of them are all out there right now
raising a lot of money trying to do just that,
but even in a best case scenario,
it's gonna be another couple of years
before we have something that's really comparable
to the Tesla Supercharger network
or big enough to handle the market that these automakers say
they're gonna be able to create with electric vehicles.
Now, a few other things before I'm done here.
One, I didn't have much need for it during the week
I spent with this car but there's a lot
of good storage in the Mustang Mach-E,
the front trunk is especially big.
The car also just feels bigger on the inside
than it looks on the outside.
In our driveway, for example,
it looked comparable in size
to our Subaru Impreza hatchback,
but from the driver's seat it felt like
I was behind the wheel of a much larger full-size SUV.
Some of this comes from the fact
that you're riding above the battery pack,
which offers a more commanding view of the road,
but it's also because the Mach-E
has an all glass roof that offers more headroom in general.
I don't think people should underestimate
just how important the Mustang Mach-E could be.
The Mustang branding makes it instantly familiar
and the design is striking enough
that it gets noticed right away without being so out there
that it's uncomfortable or weird or alien.
It's the kind of car that in a couple of years,
if enough of them are on the road,
it can really make people take notice
and think about buying an electric car in a way
that the I-Pace or the Audi e-tron
or the Chevy bolt never have or will.
I think Ford is tapping into something only Tesla
really does well right now with the Mach-E,
which is trying to mix that modern design
with increasing ubiquity in a way
that could make people feel like they're missing out
on something, much like the effect a new iPhone can have.
There are definitely still hurdles, don't get me wrong.
Starting with the fact that the first big batch
of Mustang Mach-E deliveries has been delayed.
Ford's not the only company to face this problem,
Volkswagen, Audi and others have all run into issues
getting their first mass market EVs on the road
but it's still a problem Ford needs to solve.
Even when it does Ford will have other questions
to answer too, like around charging,
how receptive dealers will be to this car,
how Ford software updates will go
and how good and more importantly
how safe the hands-free driving feature will be.
But for now that it exists
is an achievement in its own right.
Three years ago, Ford set out
to make a new electric car as part
of a multi-billion dollar push into electric vehicles.
It originally wanted to make something
that was more like a Ford Focus,
but that was thankfully turned into something
that is far more exciting in the Mustang Mach-E.
Hey everybody,
if you have any questions, comments, thoughts, opinions.
I'm sure a couple of you out there
might have some thoughts about electric Mustang.
Let me know in the comments.
I'd love to hear what you've got.
Thanks for watching.