What Exactly Is The Mach-E?
LOS ANGELES 鈥?The 2021 Mustang Mach-E announced here Sunday night in Elon Musk鈥檚 backyard is a compact crossover that runs on electricity, for as much as 300 miles. There is no gasoline-engine option. More than that, Mach-E is Ford鈥檚 bet on the future shifting away from combustion engines, toward electrification, and toward driver assistance that becomes self-driving if the driver wants it and the technology is ready. Mach-E is also the answer to the question of what Jim Hackett has been doing at Ford since taking over as CEO 30 months ago. Turns out he was rebuilding the company and chose to use the most beloved Ford name of the past half-century to be Ford鈥檚 stalking horse for electrification. It worked: There would not have been 500 journalists and fans in attendance if this was the 2021 Ford Escape Electric. Which is what this new vehicle might have been called before Hackett found Ford鈥檚 EV plans to be timid.
If this electrification push sounds like Ford is going all California and sucking up to environmentalists, relax. 2 Mustang sport coupes. Just not forever. And be warned that an electrified Ford F-150 is in the offing. What Exactly Is the Mach-E? Here鈥檚 the nitty-gritty on the Ford Mustang Mach-E. It is a compact SUV able to fit four or five adults fairly comfortably in both rows of seats. It bears some Mustang styling cues from some angles. It. Does. Not. Replace. It is in prototype form now, solid and numerous enough to allow journalists to take part in test drives, but not numerous enough to let them drive on the test drives. 65,000 plus options, every Mach-E will have significant driver assists, and some higher trims will have Level 2 self-driving on par with Nissan ProPilot Assist, possibly on par with Cadillac Super Cruise, the industry standard. On a brief ride around Hawthorne Airport, the prototype rode well on city streets.
There was an occasional harsh jolt when the Mach E traversed a piece of less-than-smooth California highway. Ford probably should offer an adaptive suspension but will not. It is reasonably roomy in the back seat, about what you鈥檇 expect from the current generation of compact SUVs that don鈥檛 cramp second-row passengers. Here鈥檚 how the Mach-E compares. While a vehicle鈥檚 size class is usually based on cubic feet of passenger and luggage space, a vehicle that鈥檚 180-190 inches long is generally seen as a compact vehicle. Ford Mustang Mach-E: 186鈥?long (117鈥?wheelbase) x 74鈥?wide x 63鈥?high, 32.5 cu. Ford Mustang: 188鈥?L (107鈥?WB) x 75鈥?W x 55 H, 13.5 cu. Ford Escape: 181鈥?L (107鈥?WB) x 74鈥?W x 66鈥?H, 33.5 cu. In 2003, the tears of Porsche traditionalists fell heavily and stained their tassled loafers when the Porsche Cayenne landed here. SUVs now are two-thirds or Porsche鈥檚 US sales (sales shown for 2019鈥檚 first three quarters). Will an Electric Mustang Ruin the Pony Car Mystique?
Can Mustang fans gain solace from fans of competing sporting marques? Others have suffered imagined slights and survived: Porschephiles feared Armageddon in 2003 when the Cayenne SUV joined the family of Porsche sports cars. The Cayenne and Macan, the compact SUV that arrived in 2015, rank 1-2 in Porsche sales in the US while the cars run 3-4-5 (chart above). Without SUVs Porsche might be little more than an R&D company for other automakers. At BMW, SUVs are 47 percent of sales through the first three quarters of 2019, up from 36 percent the year before, as sedan sales shrink in the US. No, none of these comparison cars are battery electric vehicles. Electrification won鈥檛 make a Mustang worse. It makes the Mustang faster. 鈥?said executive chairman Bill Ford Jr., speaking of the Mach-E Mustang, which looks like a Mustang from some angles and also bears some resemblance to a BMW X4/X6 or Mercedes-Benz GLC coupe/SUV.
2 coupe powered by electricity. 150,000 EV sports car, generally say it is the quickest, best-handling Porsche. Originally, Ford planned to build a front-drive 鈥渃ompliance car.鈥?Then-new CEO Jim Hackett pushed Ford to be bolder. Black lines were the original design. Red lines are the Mach-E: lower and longer hood, sleeker windshield, longer wheelbase. And plenty of room for people and cargo. If this was a Ford Escape EV intro, The New York Times wouldn鈥檛 have put the story on Page 1 Monday. Making this vehicle a Mustang is a stroke of genius by Ford management. What became the Mustang Mach-E started out as, essentially, an electric Ford Escape, a 鈥渃ompliance vehicle鈥?to keep Ford on the good side of environmentalists and government. CEO Hackett early in his tenure reportedly decided an Escape EV wasn鈥檛 inspiring enough and pushed the company to shift direction well into the design process and create a sleeker battery-electric crossover/SUV that would carry the Mustang name. Focus, for its part, has three versions with the 2019 fourth generation: gasoline combustion engine, hybrid, and (for 2020) plug-in hybrid with up to 30 miles of battery-electric range.
