(upbeat music)
- Hey everybody, this is Sean from The Verge
and I'm standing in front
of Ford's first mass market all-electric vehicle,
the electric Mustang Mach-E SUV.
Now we've known about this vehicle for a little while.
Ford first teased at the Detroit Auto Show in 2018.
And since then there's been almost two full years
of speculation about what exactly this
first mass market electric vehicle was going to be.
And it wasn't until recently
that Ford started talking about
how the vehicle was gonna be Mustang-inspired,
and then turned due about a week or so ago,
and Ford said, hey it's not just gonna be Mustang inspired,
this is going to be a Mustang.
This is going to be the second Mustang ever,
and it's going to be electric,
which is a pretty radical move for Ford.
Now, Ford announced tonight five different versions
of the Mustang Mach-E,
and all of them go across an entire array
of price, range, performance,
all starting with the Select Mustang Mach-E,
which starts at $43,895.
That goes all the way up to the Mach-E GT which is $60,000
and that can go about 250 miles but it's all wheel drive,
zero to 60 in a little over four seconds.
And there's even a performance trimmer
that can do zero to 60 in a little more than three seconds.
Ford is teaming up with electrify America,
which is the charging network
that Volkswagen is building out.
So there will be a big network of electric vehicle chargers
that you can plug right into.
This car is gonna be able to charge up to 150 kilowatts,
the base version, the Select version
will only get up to 115 kilowatts.
It's not built out as much
as Tesla's supercharger network right now.
But honestly, right now electrify America looks like
the next best thing over the next couple years.
When it comes to electric vehicle charging in the US.
Inside it's a pretty simple experience.
We're talking a 15.5 inch touchscreen in the center dash
with not too many buttons around it
just one big volume knob at the bottom.
And then one 10.2 inch digital instrument cluster
behind the steering wheel,
which I actually really like.
I've seen a lot of digital instrument clusters
in newer cars,
especially in electric vehicles
and this one's just very simple, it's horizontal,
really slender and it just presents only the amount
of information that you really need.
Just some speed, what mode you're driving in,
things like that.
Another thing that I really am happy to see in here
and I think is gonna be really important
is there's a driver monitoring system
just above the steering wheel.
Ford says that this is gonna be equipped the second version
of its Co-Pilot 360 advanced driver assistance system,
and that it eventually wants
to allow for hands-free highway driving.
And if they're gonna be offering that feature,
it's good that they're gonna have something in the car
that's gonna make sure that drivers
are paying attention on the road.
One of the biggest problems right now
with these advanced driver assistance systems
is that people get overconfident with them,
they think that they're gonna be able to do more
than what they can actually do.
And when they take their attention away from the road,
and the car needs them to take back over.
There's a disconnect there
and it can lead to really bad things.
This is something that Tesla doesn't even have on its cars.
Elon Musk has said that he doesn't think we need it.
A lot of other people disagree
and I'm happy that Ford included it here.
Now Ford called this thing a Mustang,
so it's promising Mustang performance,
and with the GT version which goes zero to 60,
in either three or a little bit more than four seconds,
that sounds pretty comparable.
But the rest of them are gonna be a little bit slower.
I got a ride in a prototype version
of the Mustang Mach-E the other day.
It was one of the premium trim, so it wasn't the fastest,
but it felt pretty fast.
It was fast enough to push you back in your seat
a little bit.
It had that exciting feeling
of the instant torque you get from an electric motor.
But honestly, I was just more impressed with the sort
of cohesive feeling of the inside of the car.
There's a lot of headroom,
a lot of legroom, even in the back.
And especially when you have
the panoramic glass roof above you
it feels even more open.
This is not a cramped car, like some other sort
of crossover or small SUVs can feel.
This has got a lot of room inside.
And Ford's really promising that this is going
to be a five seater with a lot of room for a full family.
The whole deal here is to give Mustang-style performance
with the ability to throw your entire family in the car.
Now one thing that's probably gonna be pretty divisive
about this car is that there's no traditional door handles.
There are buttons on the B-pillars and C-pillars
that you push that pop the doors open.
They also unlock as you sort of walk up to the car
as long as you have your smartphone with you.
There are little sort of like winglet handles
on the front doors that you can grab
to open the door once you've unlocked it.
But it's just definitely a different approach.
We've seen some other cars do stuff like this,
where door handles present themselves or things like that.
But this is definitely a bit of a different take
that we haven't really seen here in the US
and especially from a company like Ford.
One of the most remarkable things about the Mustang Mach-E
is that it basically didn't exist
in pretty much any form two and a half years ago.
Ford was actually working on what they call
basically another compliance car,
something based on the Ford Focus,
but the company's new CEO came in
and he took a look at the landscape,
looked at all the other automakers moving
into the electric vehicle space, trying to chase Tesla
and said, no, we need to come up
with something more exciting.
They put a team together and that team came back
to the company and said, let's make a Mustang.
They actually convinced them to do it
and two and a half years later,
we're here with the Mustang Mach-E,
it's pretty remarkable to see that quick
of a turnaround from a traditional automaker.
They have a lot of work to do on the software still
and I'm sure there's a lot more work to do on the tuning
to make sure that the car really does feel like a Mustang.
But it seems like Ford's on the right path of this.
And honestly, they better be
because they're calling this thing a Mustang
and people aren't going to take that lightly.
Hey, everybody, thanks for watching.
Make sure you like and subscribe
and let me know in the comments what you think of this car.
Do you hate the front end?
Do you hate that there is no door handles?
Do you really love that there's an electric Mustang coming?
I wanna hear about it, let me know.
Thanks for watching.