I saw this commercial recently
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmAU8MJoJU4

"I used to have a Mustang, back when cars made sounds"

Classic.

I didn't realize it was a ford commercial initially and was a bit angry when it turned into that lol

In general, I like the design of the Mach E better than any Tesla I've seen. Not crazy about the dash configuration though.

What I would really want is the Mach E 1400 though! Starts at about 5:12 in this video.

1400HP, 2300lbs of downforce at 160 MPH. The electric engines sound like the Batmobile when it's all wound out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0OTPQFHRkA

After driving by and seeing it sitting in front of my local Ford dealer for a week, I couldn't take it any longer. MomHawk and I stopped in today and took a test drive in a Mach-E Premium AWD Extended Range (Photos below).

Bottom line, first its a nice car EV or no. If you are looking for an EV in this size/class it is worth taking a look at if you have the opportunity.

We got to do a test drive by ourselves which was nice.

The Good:

1. Well appointed, very comfortable.
2. There is plenty of room for four with luggage for an overnight trip or two for a much longer trip.
3. It is definitely a torque monster as you would expect. It pushes you back in your seat, and MomHawk just giggled like a schoolgirl the first time I floored it.
4. 0 to 60 was quick enough I couldn't time it effectively
5. It handles well. With the low weight it took curves at near twice the posted curve speed with no sweat and punching it coming out the end was fun.
6. It's nice it has a display behind the steering wheel, and it carried everything you would want to know. Still, it was a very boring and "minimalist design" like an afterthought
7. The regenerative braking worked well, you could stop using it almost exclusively.

The Bad:

• It's a crossover, a very good one from what you can get out of a 10 mile test drive, it's not a Mustang.
• The middle screen is too large, to the point it was a distraction.
• The seats are comfortable, but don't hold you in. The first time I did a power takeoff I almost slipped out of it.
• On the brake, if you have regenerative braking on and hit the pedal, there is no compensation for it. It becomes almost a panic stop in the first bit of pedal play.
• The range is not enough. Some models barely make 300 miles, and that's if you don't drive like I do. (See next bullet)
• We drove 10 miles, but used almost 30 miles of displayed range. That is most likely from doing multiple pedal drops and driving like we stole it!

Conclusion:

I liked it, it will flat out get up and go, and it turns in both directions well, but the negatives above kill it for me. If they had put a "normal" dash setup in it, I might be more tempted but as it is, it's just not for me.

MomHawk, hated it as a car. It was too big, too Soccer Mom and too not a Mustang. She liked the big screen even less than I did. Its a definite "Hell No Unless You Plan to Drive It" from her.

I think it's priced well. The one we drove was in the mid 50s. No markup, but no discount either, that's online ordering for you.

Lead time right now is 4 months or more apparently, and no news at all on when the GT version will be available.

Any Questions?

Why does it seem like the just mounted a giant iPad and then just called it a day.

That pretty much is it. You can think Tesla for that.

Becuase that is exactly what they did!

Where the hell am I supposed to install my tape player?

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/77/86...887e2f1634.jpg

cuz its the EV way.

The Eighties called. They want their gauge cluster back.

https://www.ft86club.com/forums/atta...1&d=1612836304

MomHawk pointed out that despite all the tech built into this car, it still thinks a door is a jar. <Insert rimshot emoji here>

lol... *sigh* Dadhawk jokes

The inside of the last Tesla I drove, which was yesterday, because a friend just bought one and let me drive it, lacked a lot of imagination on interior. Which is the same case in this one.

I member when I had to buy a tape-style aux cord in order to play music in my first car. Good ole Radioshack days.

Ahhh but does it actually TELL you it is ajar like the 80's ones did?

Bing
THE DOOR IS AJAR
THE DOOR IS AJAR
THE DORR IS AJAR
Bing

Sadly, no.

They used a lot of imagination...imagine if we did nothing and saved all that cost but charge more!?!

Plus it's all very retro...

http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/411944/457588.jpg

Plus that glare seems like it would get on my nerves real quick.

This car or Volvo XC40 Recharge as my 2nd car. Both is about same price (Recharge is $2k more) & interesting design.

There’s no door handles on Mache E is both interesting & con for me.

Wow! What a rookie mistake!

When this picture was taken the driver door was open. I really didn't notice any glare at all in driving.

It's definitely worth a consideration. Between the Recharge and Mach E, the exterior styling of the Mach E gets a little bit of an edge for me, but I way more prefer the interior of the Recharge (below).

Nicely appointed (adding the heat pump, the "Climate Package" (basically rear heated seats) and the Advance Package (Adaptive Cruise Control, 360 camera, etc) I come out list right at $58K. The Recharge is closer to the GT in power, so really you are getting more car for the money with the Recharge.

The range falls a bit short on the Recharge though at 208 miles, a trade-off for the horsepower I suppose.

Yeah that’s pretty much sums up my debate in my head currently having

Where you are I think the heat pump is a must have to help protect the range. Without it, the Mach E range may fall down to close to the Recharge anyway, at least during your colder months, so range may be a wash.

Personally, in this particular class, the one I really prefer is the Jag iPace but by the time I get it configured its an $80K+ car!

Yeah... can’t really get I-Pace of Taycan.

Also Mach E can’t tow vs Recharge can. I was totally expecting Mach E to able to tow at least 1,000. Even Kona EV or Niro EV able to tow.

Why? Easy. Because it's 1) so much cheaper than designing, engineering, and building a real instrument panel/dashboard with buttons, knobs, style, etc.; and 2) it's trendy. People see a giant iPad and think, "Oooh! Tech! Futuristic!".

But what might look gee-wizzy neato on the showroom floor might not translate as well into the real world.

I might be the only Luddite curmudgeon on this, but for me putting certain key functions exclusively into a touch screen, like heater/A/C and radio controls, is an absolute deal-breaker. Here in New England, it gets cold in the winter. We wear gloves when we drive. It's awfully hard to use a touch screen wearing gloves (and no, those fancy-shmancy haptic touch gloves aren't anywhere near as warm as the real L.L. Bean deal and don't do it for me).

I'll get on my soapbox once again and preach about how touch screens are a safety hazard. I can adjust mechanical knobs by feel, heater and radio, without taking my eyes off the road. It's hard to do that with a touch screen while hurtling down the road at 100 feet/second (at least for me it is). A lot can happen in the few seconds you have to take your eyes off the road to hunt for the right spot to poke on a touch screen.

I was thinking about a new Legacy for a while, as a possible more 'practical' replacement for my WRX as a daily driver. It was enough of a setback and gutpunch when Subaru replaced the unique naturally-aspirated 3.6 flat-6 engine with yet another ubiquitous bland 2.4 turbo-4. But I could have lived with the diminished personality of the new engine in exchange for such mundane things such as better fuel economy. But putting the heater controls exclusively in the touch-screen was an absolute non-starter. Shame on Subaru.

Then there's this:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/...takes-75238906

The one in the Mach-E is not only massive (at 17") but very poorly designed IMHO from playing with it while driving. I guess the one advantage to its size is the buttons are so big (about 1" across) they were hard to miss.

I could get used to it, but as you say, there are distinct advantages to actual buttons and knobs.

At least it had a real volume knob.

Follow up article. Eventually Tesla was forced to issue the recall.

This is one of the dirty little secrets about battery electric cars that many people don't appreciate. I've watched the travails of a good friend of mine who bought a Nissan Leaf not long ago. His is a tale of fantasy vs. reality.

He's a hard-core, very old-school gearhead. Builds hotrods for the fun of it. He's probably built over 200 amazingly crafted machines in his life (I used to help out in his garage pre-pandemic). His wife is a staunch environmentalist, and insisted he get an electric car as his ’transportation’ (to counter-balance all the gas-guzzling V8's in his hot rods). So, he got a Leaf, with the biggest battery available. They advertise it as having a ‘250 mile range’. When it’s fully charged the range gauge usually shows around 260-264 miles.

Last winter, they needed to take a trip, about 150 miles each way, for his wife to attend to some business They thought, no problem, 250 mile range should make 150 miles easy. He’d charge it at a Nissan dealer while she took care of business, and then back home. In a gas car it’s about 3 hours each way. They thought it would be the same, 3 hours each way, plus 1 hour for her business. Leave at 8 am, home by 3 pm.

Their experience was different. The reality of batteries is that range depends on a lot of things. Cold weather reduces range. Using heat (or air conditioning) reduces range. Accelerating hard reduces range. Steady highway driving at high speed (with no regenerative braking) results in lower range. The advertised ‘range’ seems similar to the EPA mileage ratings for gas cars, with a system gamed to get numbers that are sometimes unattainably high.

On the day they went, it was the trifecta of being in the winter (cold = reduced range), they used the heat so they wouldn’t freeze to death (= reduced range), and it was all highway driving, no regenerative braking (= more reduced range). The ‘advertised’ range of 250 miles, and the range gauge that showed 260-ish miles when they left, translated into a real-world range of about 110 miles.

Yep. From 250 miles claimed, to 110 miles in reality.

He was panicking as they drove, because the range gauge was dropping 2 or 3 miles for each mile they drove. By the time the range gauge showed 20 miles left - and they were still 60 miles away - he was in total meltdown (but his wife was whining at him the whole time about not wanting to be late, didn’t want to stop, etc. etc. etc.).

Long story short, he ended up stopping to charge (or attempt to charge) 7 times that day. He stopped twice on the way there; three times while she was at her meeting (which she was very late for); and two more times on the way home. He couldn’t get a full charge at any of the stops, which is why he had to keep stopping again and again for partial charges. I don’t remember the exact order, but some of the problems he experienced included:

Charging station was broken when he got there.

Charging station wouldn’t accept any of his credit cards, or the ‘charge card’ the car came with.

Charging station was low-output (110 volt) which would take 36-48 hours for a full charge, and would only add about 5 miles of range for each hour charged (he ran into this problem more than once).

The charging station limited the charge to 45 minutes on any one day (he ran into this problem a few times, and had to go to another charging station to get another 45 minutes worth of charge - which used up charge to get from one charging station to another).

Charging station only had one plug, and there was a car already there - with the owner nowhere in sight to move it.

The Leaf’s navigation system has locations of charging stations programmed in, so he went to them. But it didn’t show which ones were out of order, or limited to 45 minutes of charge per day, or were low-output 110 volt systems.

He repeatedly called an 800 help line, and a couple of times they were able to take his credit card over the phone and enabled the charge - but it still limited him to 110 volts of slow charge, or the cap of 45 minutes per day.

The bottom line, what should have been a total 7 hour day and getting home by 3 pm, turned into a 22 hour day. They left at 8:00 am, and finally got home at 6:00 am the next morning.

So much for the advertised ‘250 mile’ range of the Leaf. He complained to the dealer and of course got the usual ’they all do that’, ’that’s to be expected with your personal kind of use’, ‘your mileage may vary’, etc. etc. etc. Since then he consistently found that real-world winter driving range (highway driving) is no more than 110 miles, and in the summer, about 150 miles (batteries hold more of a charge at higher temperatures, but are still constrained by high speed highway driving and lack of regenerative braking, and if you use air conditioning).

He ended up giving his wife the Leaf, and got a Toyota Yaris for himself (it was economical enough to pass his wife’s environmental purity test).

A friend of my wife also bought a Leaf, with the basic ‘100 mile’ range battery. She thought it would be plenty. Her experiences have been that the real-world range in the winter in our area is about 40 miles.

The situation is no doubt very different in California, with a much more temperate climate without sub-freezing temperatures, and vastly more charging stations. But this was one person's real-world experience here in New England.

The laws of physics are very strict. Gasoline has about 100 times the energy density of a lithium-ion battery.

https://www.topspeed.com/cars/warp-c...-ar185365.html

Of course there will continue to be incremental improvements in batteries. But there is a limit as to how densely you can pack electrons together (again, those pesky laws of physics). Those same laws of physics govern charging time. It’s difficult to cram electrons in so fast as to fully charge a 300 kWh battery in the same 3 minutes it takes to fill a gas tank. First you'd need a battery that could accept inflow that quickly. Then, unless you’ve invented room-temperature superconductors, there are limits as to how much current a given size cable can transfer (resistance, heat build up, etc.).

As with most things, YMMV.

Nissan Ariya? Certainly looks both interesting but also a decent drivetrain.

I was looking into Ariya as well... but they haven't really shown Ariya other than concept. Also IDK if Nissan gonna survive, kinda like Mitsu. lol

Well it's been here in the UK in production form:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4Qg...nel=AutoTrader

Well shit... I've been under the rock then. Thanks for the vid! :thanks:

I dont want an electric car for this reason (and various others, it gets real cold here, infrastructure where i live is slow to grow, cars are expensive, theres nothing particularly interesting to me as an EV, etc).

Its like the MPG rating of a turbocharged car. It gets good mileage IF you dont bag on it and get the turbos spinning, which is never mentioned. Leisurely cruising keeping the turbos in check so yeah it can get the advertised real good mileage. But get on it and you cant beat physics. All that air needs its proportional amount of gasoline...and your mileage tanks.

IN any case i know EV's are inevitable and i will make the jump at some point in the future. Right now my first choice for an EV is the new VW ID.Buzz new-age hippy wagon :)

Interesting, hadn't seen the Ariya. In the end, I'm just not into the crossover/SUV look as my Daily Driver, and I'm not ready to have my "family road trip" car be electric.

I have heard of Ariya last year... but didn't really think of it til now.

I'm not really into CUV/SUV, but I might need daily drive back and forth to work (36~40 miles round trip) PLUS I need back seat for baby (which due next month). So to check off those 2 requirements, EV CUV/SUV was looking nice.

As for my BRZ, I'll still be driving that around. Just don't wanna add pointless mileage from commute to work.

90% of the 180,000 miles on my FRS are commuting miles, but I wouldn't say they were pointless, I enjoyed them all! :)

I love driving my BRZ and enjoy every sec of it... BUT I feel that commuting to work mileage have a bit more pointless feel to it. I don't mind driving to work. Just I rather drive my BRZ to other things like date w my wife or just drive around to clear my head.

I'm in a similar position. I'm looking to replace my GT86 with a Giulia QV but the family E-Pace will get replace next year and it makes sense to go electric. I need something as big, or ideally larger than the Jag. EVs work as they can be more accommodating without being larger in size. So far, I think the Mach-E is OK, but can't quite see me wanting to buy one (or indeed the wife, who's car it would "be") and the only cars that seem to fit the "not too expensive or too small" categories are:
- VW ID4
- Nissan Ariya

And that's about it at the moment, or any others that appear on the horizon, so it may well end up being a PHEV as there's way more options and for most part you get the daily running costs - not sure how many PHEVs you get there though. I think it's daft that the Model 3 isn't a proper hatch, which is a let down for a family car, perhaps as it would take sales from the Model S. Plus I echo the sentiments that I just feel uninspired despite their lead in the tech field. I'd quite like a Taycan or the new E-Tron GT and hopefully they depreciate enough that they are withing budget quite quickly.

It will be interesting to see if the new Bolt EUV being announced on the 15th is in that same size range.

I have a buddy with an ID4 on order that he's about to cancel because they won't give him a build date and it's been months.