Ford's Mustang Mach E

When you regularly drive, and work on cars from 40-100 years old, there's a lot to be said for a daily with infinite torque, no real maintenance and smooth silent running. Not all drives need to be exciting and combustion powered.

In theory. We'll see how I get on with it!
 
Sandy likes it so much, he is buying one to tear down:

 
ID4 and Mach E still have a lot of legacy stuff from the corporate parts bin.

Would be better to integrate more modules and move to 48v systems.


In this episode Sandy Munro sits down with the gentlemen from 3IS Inc. to discuss the differences between the electrical architectures of the Tesla Model Y, Ford Mach-E, and Volkswagen ID.4.
 
ID4 and Mach E still have a lot of legacy stuff from the corporate parts bin.

Would be better to integrate more modules and move to 48v systems.




if VW or Ford need support on upgrading to 48v, I have just the company that may have some knowledge on the the matter.

 
Sandy shocked at state of Ford plumbing:
 
?
Bu3iXPX.jpeg
 
^According to MunroLive you can still drive it if you take all the doors off ;)
 
I’d love to get a rental and try that.
 
Frank Stephenson, analyses the Mustang Mach E!
 
 
While ripping apart they the Mach-E they found out something silly about the ID4!
(so far eleven videos on Mach E)
 
Just test drove one of these briefly with mom, who suddenly discovered it's a thing and is interested. We both liked it quite a lot.

Ofc 30 minutes is not enough to put together a proper opinion, but the first impressions are really rather positive. I've test driven many EVs recently, and this has felt by far the most solid and well-designed, apart from my own car - although I guess I've been driving that for over 2 years now and might have some difficulties comparing objectively :) But it definitely shines in my opinion compared to, say: a Merc EQA, an ID.3, and an e-tron (the SUV).

Put shortly, all of these cars feel like they have a mix of "traditional" elements and functionality from the manufacturer's "legacy" cars, blended together with the "new" EV stuff. In almost all of them, this mix feels very off - stuff like the screens still talking about "ignition" when you have to turn on the car before driving off, or the charging port being in the fuel filler cap opening with a million extra covers that make sense for a hole that seals highly flammable liquid but not a charging port that you have to access multiple times per day sometimes, or a huge motor space in the front used up by the AC compressor, power steering pump and other "engine room" things that still belong on an EV, but with a cubic meter of air remaining because of a missing motor and not used for anything sensible like a front trunk (looking at you, EQA).

In the Mach-E, this "mix" just feels right. There's a modern cockpit with two very nice screens that offer a ton of functionality, and they are decently responsive and fast. And there's physical controls for the "traditional" things like mirror and steering wheel adjustment, gear shifter, parking brake, etc - and it blends together well, instead of feeling off like it does in many others. It feels well designed and very nicely usable.

And it drives great. One-pedal mode is very close to the Tesla driving feel, the RWD variant we test-drove obviously is not as punchy as my 3P but nowhere near slow. It's smooth, the steering feels nice and solid, the ride is comfortable but not wallowing like the e-tron... overall a very well put-together package, I really can't find much I don't like about it.

Doing a longer test-drive on Wednesday, and getting some lease calculations done in the meantime to see how it compares to some other options mom looked at. But judging from the first impressions, very high chance that she'll end up with an RWD one of these - unsure whether with the standard or extended-range battery.
 
Just test drove one of these briefly with mom, who suddenly discovered it's a thing and is interested. We both liked it quite a lot.

Ofc 30 minutes is not enough to put together a proper opinion, but the first impressions are really rather positive. I've test driven many EVs recently, and this has felt by far the most solid and well-designed, apart from my own car - although I guess I've been driving that for over 2 years now and might have some difficulties comparing objectively :) But it definitely shines in my opinion compared to, say: a Merc EQA, an ID.3, and an e-tron (the SUV).

Put shortly, all of these cars feel like they have a mix of "traditional" elements and functionality from the manufacturer's "legacy" cars, blended together with the "new" EV stuff. In almost all of them, this mix feels very off - stuff like the screens still talking about "ignition" when you have to turn on the car before driving off, or the charging port being in the fuel filler cap opening with a million extra covers that make sense for a hole that seals highly flammable liquid but not a charging port that you have to access multiple times per day sometimes, or a huge motor space in the front used up by the AC compressor, power steering pump and other "engine room" things that still belong on an EV, but with a cubic meter of air remaining because of a missing motor and not used for anything sensible like a front trunk (looking at you, EQA).

In the Mach-E, this "mix" just feels right. There's a modern cockpit with two very nice screens that offer a ton of functionality, and they are decently responsive and fast. And there's physical controls for the "traditional" things like mirror and steering wheel adjustment, gear shifter, parking brake, etc - and it blends together well, instead of feeling off like it does in many others. It feels well designed and very nicely usable.

And it drives great. One-pedal mode is very close to the Tesla driving feel, the RWD variant we test-drove obviously is not as punchy as my 3P but nowhere near slow. It's smooth, the steering feels nice and solid, the ride is comfortable but not wallowing like the e-tron... overall a very well put-together package, I really can't find much I don't like about it.

Doing a longer test-drive on Wednesday, and getting some lease calculations done in the meantime to see how it compares to some other options mom looked at. But judging from the first impressions, very high chance that she'll end up with an RWD one of these - unsure whether with the standard or extended-range battery.

Excellent, similar to my own experience! If you have any ownership questions drop me a message and I'll try to answer what I can. 2500 miles on mine now, so fairly well versed with the practicalities of one. ?
 
Excellent, similar to my own experience! If you have any ownership questions drop me a message and I'll try to answer what I can. 2500 miles on mine now, so fairly well versed with the practicalities of one. ?
Thanks for the offer :) Today's test drive has been positive as well, and mom has taken a liking to one of the cars the dealer actually has sitting in the showroom - a "pearl white" (weird off-white grey-blue-ish color) extended-battery RWD with the Tech 2 package. It's been reserved for now, pending formalities working out some time next week... yeah, she moves kinda fast once she finds something she wants to have :D

On today's test drive, I've actually been very impressed with the consumption - it's averaged 16 kWh/100km (aka 160 Wh/km) over some 90 minutes with mixed city and highway, three people in the car testing various sorts of driving including acceleration :), and AC running as normal. Pretty sure my 3P would've shown at least 17-18 in the same mode. How has your consumption been in practice over the 2500 miles?

Also, how good is the built-in nav's routing for long distance including chargers? That's something mom will probably use, since getting her to pre-plan a trip using ABRP or similar... would be difficult, I guess. We briefly tried to plot a few routes across Germany on the test drive, but the car was fully charged and so it only planned a single Ionity stop wherever we would go... which seemed plausible, but not really representative of a real-world scenario.
 
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