Purchased a Ford Mustang Mach E in June 2022. 6 months later, trading it in for a MYLR.
Looking back, this car needs to be rethought. Ford's custom configuration / dealer purchasing model creates huge disadvantages for buyers, the features / pricing isn't well thought out, the charging situation is patchwork at best, and the software is inferior to a linked cell phone. It strikes me as first generation technology that would benefit from substantial innovation.
For those considering buying one, educate yourself thoroughly before proceeding. There are many pitfalls along the way.
Purchasing Process - Never Buy from a Dealer
Let's dispel the myth the MME is a "hot" car. Scarcity on dealer lots results from the delivery process. This perception is used against buyers to justify additional dealer markups.
Typically, people reserve a Mach E and receive it 6 - 12 months later. Dealers get these cars when buyers refuse delivery on a reservation.
The trouble with this model is reservation fees are fully refundable. It costs nothing for a buyer to refuse delivery, which creates a situation where dealers are mostly stocking base configurations or maxed out feature packages no one actually wants. When I was buying, it was almost impossible to get a mid-range configuration package (called a Premium,) while Selects and top of the line GTs were abundant.
You start to see the problem when you consider someone buying from a dealer probably hasn't done any research on the full line. In my situation, my old car died and I had about a week to make a decision. I test drove an MME Premium on a Saturday and left without buying. Checked in the next day, the car I drove was already sold but the salesman said there would be another later in the week. He would not be able to hold it, but told me exactly when to be there to make sure I was first in line. Arrived at the dealership, after a brief inspection I moved forward with the purchase.
In retrospect, this was a mistake. The car I test drove was a Premium, the car I bought was a Select. In terms of differences, there was no 360 degree camera, no power lift gates, no heated seats, no front-facing camera, and more. My fault for not thinking this through, but I really wasn't aware of the differences between a Select and a Premium at the time. The lack of those features was consequential. Ford has an autopilot clone called BlueCruise, the lack of a front-facing camera means the car can never take advantage of this feature (incidentally, Ford advertised BlueCruise as a standard feature on all MMEs.) The hardware can't be upgraded.
The price was above MSRP. Had I reserved it, the price would have been $46k. With dealer add ons and optional service packages, the total price was $52k before delivery, taxes, title, and fees. While some of this could be chalked up to urgency, I spent about $6k more than I needed by going through a dealer. Had I custom ordered, the additional features in the Premium would have cost less than the difference.
Never buy an MME from a dealer. If you are forced to, educate yourself on the line beforehand. The Select is a technological dead end.
The MME was Subject to Recall
The day before I purchased the MME, Ford recalled it. While selling a new car subject to recall is illegal, they did it anyway.
I got a call 3 days after purchase telling me the car can brick when I charge it. Don't charge it and bring it back to the dealer until it can be fixed. They had no timeframe for a fix.
As it turned out, the fix took a week. I did receive a loaner during that time so it wasn't a complete inconvenience. But it was unsettling, buying a car and not being able to enjoy it for a week.
The Battery and the Patchwork of Chargers
Ford marketing gives you the impression the range is fine and you're well supported by a nationwide network of fast chargers. That's misleading.
The standard range battery for an MME is rated at 220 miles. The extended range for an MME is rated at 270 miles.
My experience was range did not translate well into miles travelled, my guess is it was about 10% lower on average in the summer. In the winter, the standard range battery drops to 160 miles, lower on really cold days. There were days this winter I was getting 1 mile per percent of range. Creates a massive amount of anxiety getting into your car and wondering what the numbers are going to look like today.
The charging network is a patchwork between Electrify America, Chargepoint, EvGo and a few others. You can find them in any dense urban environment, but they are few and far between as you get away from the coast. Ford offers a navigation app, superficially similar to Tesla's. It will list the closest chargers to your location, even if they are beyond the maximum range of your car. We relied instead on a mobile app called ABRP when we were away from home, which had a more complete list that includes chargers not in the network.
The time to charge is an issue. The maximum charge rate for the MME is 70kw. Even if you are on one that goes 300kw, the best you will ever do is 70kw. But I don't believe I ever saw the full 70kw, typically I was charging at around 40kw max.
Can't overstate how complicated the charger situation made road trips.
Travelling in rural PA, there were no chargers in the network anywhere near us. One morning, I had to get up at 2 while the family slept to charge on a level 2 charger behind a car dealership. It was the only one for 50 miles, and it took 15% off the battery getting there and back. On a trip to West Virginia, we found ourselves in a charging desert, again with no chargers for 50 miles from our cabin. To ensure we would not run out of juice, we just parked and didn't use the car. Anything beyond a few miles walking was out of reach for us.
For both trips, even when we found fast chargers, The amount of time spent at chargers dragged things out. In one case, a 4 hour drive turned into an 8 hour drive. My wife frequently asked what the point of a road trip was in this car.
Ford's Inadequate Technology
Ford overpromises with the technology. It's present, but we found it to be lacking.
The MME comes with dongles for different drivers to offer some personalization features. It has an interior camera which (I believe) does facial recognition. It also has an app that allows remote start and recognizes when you are present to automatically unlock the doors.
This never worked for us. Despite the fact we created individual profiles tied to each dongle / cell phone, the MME only ever recognized my wife as the driver. If I wanted personalized settings, I had to manually select them from the tablet. We devoted a fair amount of time to this feature before deciding it was unimportant because the only thing you can really personalize is drive modes. It's easier to just select a different one when you get in the car.
The MME comes with a number of apps. Most of them proved inferior to their counterparts on our cell phones.
The navigation app is the big one, it's supposed to give you directions and guide you to chargers. The directions suffer from the lack of real time information on traffic. The shortest route is often the most heavily trafficked, but also the maps did not reflect new development and road closures. The first time I tried using it, I was sent to a road that had been blocked off for construction for months. The charger listings are overwhelming. You either get a list of their in-network charging partners - who are often no where near you - or you get to sort through a list of every level 1 and level 2 charger by distance. This is probably the area with the most room for improvement in the whole car.
The energy app is the only one that doesn't replicate something from our phones. It breaks down how much power is being consumed by different activities. We found we didn't have much of a use for it, primarily because the range was so short. We were more interested in finding the next charger than optimizing our battery usage.
The voice command system is very basic and needs some improvements. First off, there are some commands it would suggest, like changing the volume, but not recognize. But the big issue was when the voice command entry would be triggered by someone speaking on a podcast. This happened frequently enough to be a problem, someone would say something and the screen would switch off the maps to a full screen voice command interface. To clear it, I would need to interact with the screen. When the podcast would start up, it would rewind a few seconds and repeat the process.
As I mentioned, BlueCruise is Ford's autopilot equivalent. There's no way to use it on a Select because you don't have the front-facing cameras. What you do get is Enhanced Cruise Control, which gives you lane assist and automatic breaking. This was not bad and the feature I used most often.
I could go on, but basically: we rarely used the voice commands and the only apps we really used were on our phones. Other than the enhanced cruise control, this car didn't do much for us from a technology standpoint.
"2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E EXT Range AWD" by Calreyn88 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Admin note: Image added for Blog feed thumbnail.
Looking back, this car needs to be rethought. Ford's custom configuration / dealer purchasing model creates huge disadvantages for buyers, the features / pricing isn't well thought out, the charging situation is patchwork at best, and the software is inferior to a linked cell phone. It strikes me as first generation technology that would benefit from substantial innovation.
For those considering buying one, educate yourself thoroughly before proceeding. There are many pitfalls along the way.
Purchasing Process - Never Buy from a Dealer
Let's dispel the myth the MME is a "hot" car. Scarcity on dealer lots results from the delivery process. This perception is used against buyers to justify additional dealer markups.
Typically, people reserve a Mach E and receive it 6 - 12 months later. Dealers get these cars when buyers refuse delivery on a reservation.
The trouble with this model is reservation fees are fully refundable. It costs nothing for a buyer to refuse delivery, which creates a situation where dealers are mostly stocking base configurations or maxed out feature packages no one actually wants. When I was buying, it was almost impossible to get a mid-range configuration package (called a Premium,) while Selects and top of the line GTs were abundant.
You start to see the problem when you consider someone buying from a dealer probably hasn't done any research on the full line. In my situation, my old car died and I had about a week to make a decision. I test drove an MME Premium on a Saturday and left without buying. Checked in the next day, the car I drove was already sold but the salesman said there would be another later in the week. He would not be able to hold it, but told me exactly when to be there to make sure I was first in line. Arrived at the dealership, after a brief inspection I moved forward with the purchase.
In retrospect, this was a mistake. The car I test drove was a Premium, the car I bought was a Select. In terms of differences, there was no 360 degree camera, no power lift gates, no heated seats, no front-facing camera, and more. My fault for not thinking this through, but I really wasn't aware of the differences between a Select and a Premium at the time. The lack of those features was consequential. Ford has an autopilot clone called BlueCruise, the lack of a front-facing camera means the car can never take advantage of this feature (incidentally, Ford advertised BlueCruise as a standard feature on all MMEs.) The hardware can't be upgraded.
The price was above MSRP. Had I reserved it, the price would have been $46k. With dealer add ons and optional service packages, the total price was $52k before delivery, taxes, title, and fees. While some of this could be chalked up to urgency, I spent about $6k more than I needed by going through a dealer. Had I custom ordered, the additional features in the Premium would have cost less than the difference.
Never buy an MME from a dealer. If you are forced to, educate yourself on the line beforehand. The Select is a technological dead end.
The MME was Subject to Recall
The day before I purchased the MME, Ford recalled it. While selling a new car subject to recall is illegal, they did it anyway.
I got a call 3 days after purchase telling me the car can brick when I charge it. Don't charge it and bring it back to the dealer until it can be fixed. They had no timeframe for a fix.
As it turned out, the fix took a week. I did receive a loaner during that time so it wasn't a complete inconvenience. But it was unsettling, buying a car and not being able to enjoy it for a week.
The Battery and the Patchwork of Chargers
Ford marketing gives you the impression the range is fine and you're well supported by a nationwide network of fast chargers. That's misleading.
The standard range battery for an MME is rated at 220 miles. The extended range for an MME is rated at 270 miles.
My experience was range did not translate well into miles travelled, my guess is it was about 10% lower on average in the summer. In the winter, the standard range battery drops to 160 miles, lower on really cold days. There were days this winter I was getting 1 mile per percent of range. Creates a massive amount of anxiety getting into your car and wondering what the numbers are going to look like today.
The charging network is a patchwork between Electrify America, Chargepoint, EvGo and a few others. You can find them in any dense urban environment, but they are few and far between as you get away from the coast. Ford offers a navigation app, superficially similar to Tesla's. It will list the closest chargers to your location, even if they are beyond the maximum range of your car. We relied instead on a mobile app called ABRP when we were away from home, which had a more complete list that includes chargers not in the network.
The time to charge is an issue. The maximum charge rate for the MME is 70kw. Even if you are on one that goes 300kw, the best you will ever do is 70kw. But I don't believe I ever saw the full 70kw, typically I was charging at around 40kw max.
Can't overstate how complicated the charger situation made road trips.
Travelling in rural PA, there were no chargers in the network anywhere near us. One morning, I had to get up at 2 while the family slept to charge on a level 2 charger behind a car dealership. It was the only one for 50 miles, and it took 15% off the battery getting there and back. On a trip to West Virginia, we found ourselves in a charging desert, again with no chargers for 50 miles from our cabin. To ensure we would not run out of juice, we just parked and didn't use the car. Anything beyond a few miles walking was out of reach for us.
For both trips, even when we found fast chargers, The amount of time spent at chargers dragged things out. In one case, a 4 hour drive turned into an 8 hour drive. My wife frequently asked what the point of a road trip was in this car.
Ford's Inadequate Technology
Ford overpromises with the technology. It's present, but we found it to be lacking.
The MME comes with dongles for different drivers to offer some personalization features. It has an interior camera which (I believe) does facial recognition. It also has an app that allows remote start and recognizes when you are present to automatically unlock the doors.
This never worked for us. Despite the fact we created individual profiles tied to each dongle / cell phone, the MME only ever recognized my wife as the driver. If I wanted personalized settings, I had to manually select them from the tablet. We devoted a fair amount of time to this feature before deciding it was unimportant because the only thing you can really personalize is drive modes. It's easier to just select a different one when you get in the car.
The MME comes with a number of apps. Most of them proved inferior to their counterparts on our cell phones.
The navigation app is the big one, it's supposed to give you directions and guide you to chargers. The directions suffer from the lack of real time information on traffic. The shortest route is often the most heavily trafficked, but also the maps did not reflect new development and road closures. The first time I tried using it, I was sent to a road that had been blocked off for construction for months. The charger listings are overwhelming. You either get a list of their in-network charging partners - who are often no where near you - or you get to sort through a list of every level 1 and level 2 charger by distance. This is probably the area with the most room for improvement in the whole car.
The energy app is the only one that doesn't replicate something from our phones. It breaks down how much power is being consumed by different activities. We found we didn't have much of a use for it, primarily because the range was so short. We were more interested in finding the next charger than optimizing our battery usage.
The voice command system is very basic and needs some improvements. First off, there are some commands it would suggest, like changing the volume, but not recognize. But the big issue was when the voice command entry would be triggered by someone speaking on a podcast. This happened frequently enough to be a problem, someone would say something and the screen would switch off the maps to a full screen voice command interface. To clear it, I would need to interact with the screen. When the podcast would start up, it would rewind a few seconds and repeat the process.
As I mentioned, BlueCruise is Ford's autopilot equivalent. There's no way to use it on a Select because you don't have the front-facing cameras. What you do get is Enhanced Cruise Control, which gives you lane assist and automatic breaking. This was not bad and the feature I used most often.
I could go on, but basically: we rarely used the voice commands and the only apps we really used were on our phones. Other than the enhanced cruise control, this car didn't do much for us from a technology standpoint.
"2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E EXT Range AWD" by Calreyn88 is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Admin note: Image added for Blog feed thumbnail.
