Ford’s New Mustang Mach-E Owes a Lot to Tesla
By: Sam Abuelsamid
Tags: Automobile, Cars, Ford, Electric Cars, Tech

Ford’s New Mustang Mach-E Owes a Lot to Tesla

My ride in the company’s latest electric car

Photo: Ford

Among those of us who cover the auto industry, one of the biggest annoyances is a press release and presentation about a vehicle that is “all new” or “first ever.” But every once in a while, a vehicle rolls out that actually qualifies as both all new and the first ever, and the 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E is just such a unicorn.

In the 117 years since the Ford Motor Company started building vehicles, it has never produced a fully battery electric vehicle designed that way from the ground up. In the nearly 57 years since the Mustang debuted, the company’s cars have all been coupes or convertibles with internal combustion engines mounted up front, driving the rear wheels.

Not anymore.

Ford has previously produced three battery electric vehicles: a Ranger pickup in the 1990s and a Transit Connect and Focus in the early 2010s. All were conversions of existing products with batteries shoehorned into places they were never intended to be. The bestselling model of the trio was the Focus Electric, which wasn’t even developed by Ford, but was instead adopted from supplier Magna to fulfill a commitment made during the period following the great recession.

The Mustang Mach-E is an entirely different beast. While some assorted components, like switchgear and the steering wheel, are shared with other Fords, everything of substance in this vehicle is new. The platform is one of five flexible architectures that will underpin all Ford and Lincoln products going forward, and we will presumably see additional EVs that share hardware with the Mach-E, but it is indeed the first of its kind for Ford and about as all new as vehicles get today.

We first saw the Mach-E just about one year ago at one of the last auto shows in the world: the 2019 Los Angeles show. Ford held the press preview and public reveal in a hangar at the Hawthorne Municipal Airport. The location was not coincidental. That particular hangar sits next to the headquarters of a little rocket maker called SpaceX, whose CEO uses that same building for showing off new products from the car company he also runs. At the time, we got to ride shotgun in some prototypes with the engineers, taking a lap around Elon’s rocket factory, but we didn’t get to drive.

A different kind of Mustang

A couple months later than originally planned, due to some pandemic-related delays, we’ve finally been given the opportunity to take the wheel of this very different sort of Mustang. The staging point for our drive was the American Center for Mobility (ACM) in Ypsilanti, Michigan. ACM is a 326-acre test track created expressly for evaluating automated and connected vehicle technologies. While Ford is one of many companies that support and use the facility, the site also has some special meaning to the automaker.

In addition to being a totally new sort of vehicle for Ford, the Mach-E program ushered in a new product development process.

Willow Run, the site of what is today a cargo airport and advanced technology test facility, was farmland 80 years ago. When World War II created a demand for aircraft, Ford built an airfield and factory that eventually turned out a B-24 Liberator every 60 minutes. After the war, the factory was taken over first by Kaiser-Fraser and later General Motors. Vehicle assembly ended at Willow Run in 1996, and GM shuttered the transmission plant there in the wake of the company’s bankruptcy. After most of the factory was demolished, the site was redeveloped into ACM.

2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E

In addition to being a totally new sort of vehicle for Ford, the Mach-E program ushered in a new product development process. It initially kicked off in 2016 to develop an electric crossover with a 300-mile driving range. Then-CEO Mark Fields announced the program in January 2017. Jim Hackett replaced Fields in May of that year and reevaluated all of Ford’s product programs.

One result of that effort was the establishment of Team Edison, an organization set up to better understand the business model required to succeed with electric vehicles. By November 2017, the team scrapped the vehicle in development. That original design was conceived as essentially something like an electric version of the Escape. It would be okay, but it wasn’t going to excite anyone enough to look at Ford for an EV. Instead, the team decided they needed to pattern their efforts on what made Tesla successful. They needed an exciting product and a new customer experience around buying and owning the vehicle.

2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E

Ford decided to make the new EV an extension of the Mustang family, but in a form factor that had never worn the iconic badge. Thus, the Mach-E was born as a midsize crossover with a fastback roofline and some Mustang design DNA. But design cues from the pony car weren’t going to be enough. The Mach-E was made part of Ford’s new Icons group, along with the Mustang, GT, and Bronco, under Dave Pericak, the global director of the group. Pericak was the chief engineer for Mustang from 2007 to 2014 and oversaw development of the current-generation sports car.

When I spoke with Pericak at the reveal of the Mach-E in Los Angeles last year, he explained that the development team strove to infuse the EV with Mustang attitude. Obviously, a much larger, taller, and heavier vehicle isn’t going to have the same sort of driving dynamics as a coupe, but it needed to be nimble and engaging to drive if it was to have the pony badge.

The Mach-E will have four different propulsion configurations available. At the entry level is a standard-range 75.5-kilowatt-hour battery with a 266-horsepower motor at the rear axle. An extended-range 98.8-kilowatt-hour battery is also available; the extra power from the battery allows the rear motor to be boosted to 290 horsepower. An all-wheel-drive version adds a second, smaller motor to the front axle, bringing total output to 346 horsepower. Next summer, the Mach-E GT joins the lineup with the same larger motor at each axle and a total of 459 horsepower. The GT is expected to sprint from zero to 60 in about 3.5 seconds, nearly matching the supercharged Shelby GT500.

The Mach-E driving experience

Our driving experience started at AMC on an autocross course, where we got to try the standard-range rear-wheel-drive Mach-E. The Mach-E is neither a low-slung sports car nor a Wrangler/Bronco-style SUV, but it shares more with the former than the latter. With a strut-style setup at the front and a multilink independent layout at the rear, it quickly showed what it was capable of in the corners. Trailing the brakes into a tight hairpin helped the front tires bite down and turn in, while easing off the accelerator mid-corner allows the back end to loosen up a bit and come around just like a Mustang should. The Mach-E is by no means loose, but you can manage the yaw rate through front-rear weight transfer, just as you would expect from any Mustang built in the past 57 years.

When you first approach the Mach-E, one of the first things you notice is the absence of any sort of conventional door handles, flush-mounted or otherwise.

The Mach-E body rolls a bit more under lateral load than you would find in a modern Mustang, although it’s nowhere what you would expect in a high-riding SUV, especially through the slalom. Having nearly 1,000 pounds of lithium-ion battery under the floor helps offset the extra height and keeps the center of gravity low. While 266 horsepower may not seem like a whole lot these days, the instant torque right off the line means that even the base Mach-E still feels quick despite it curb weight of more than 4,000 pounds.

2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E

For our on-road drives, we had access to examples of the Mach-E First Edition, which has the extended-range battery and dual-motor all-wheel drive. When you first approach the Mach-E, one of the first things you notice is the absence of any sort of conventional door handles, flush-mounted or otherwise. Ford incorporated an electromechanical access system to help keep the flanks clean for smooth airflow.

The lower rear window frame of each door features a flush round button similar to the old iPhone home button. A light press on the button causes the door’s rear edge to emerge a couple inches from the surrounding body, thanks to a presenter system installed on the inside. A square piston embedded in the door emerges, pushing the door away from the frame. Inside each door is an accelerometer: If you open the door very slowly, the presenter remains extended. The advantage is that if you lean on the door once it pops open, it won’t close, preventing your fingers from getting pinched in the door. As soon as the door motion exceeds a modest acceleration threshold, the presenter automatically retracts, allowing the door to close.

The front doors feature a small hook just below the button to pull the door open with a couple fingers. The hook is within the air wake of the side mirrors and reattaches about halfway along the rear doors and thus has no effect on the Mach-E’s aerodynamics. The rear doors feature a black plastic panel inside the trailing edge, just below the button—perfect for grabbing the door after pushing the button with your thumb.

Inside, the Mach-E is unlike any prior Mustang—or any other Ford, for that matter. While the layout isn’t as Spartan as a Tesla Model Y, Ford has clearly found inspiration from the Silicon Valley upstart. A portrait-layout 15.5-inch touchscreen hangs in the center of the dashboard. Unlike Tesla, Ford has not completely eschewed switchgear. A large volume knob is centered at the base of the touchscreen, easy to reach and find without looking.

2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E

Since Ford is a company that makes many other vehicles, it would be foolish not to borrow at least some bits from the parts bin. The rotary transmission shift on the center console will be familiar from other recent Fords, and the headlamp control on the left end of the dash has also been used before, as has the steering wheel. But that’s about it. The dash itself looks relatively sparse. Slim horizontal vents span the width and feature conventional directional controls that you can adjust using a fingertip, without digging into a touchscreen menu. Thankfully, Ford decided that as a driver’s machine, the Mach-E should retain a display for vehicle information directly in front of the driver, where it belongs, so you don’t have to look at the center screen to see how fast you are going.

With the decision to adopt the big touchscreen, the Mach-E design team realized they needed to completely rethink the user interface to make it work without being distracting. The approach they developed splits the display into three main zones. At the bottom on either side of the volume knob are climate controls that can also be managed by voice. Most of the upper half is one large window showing whatever application is currently selected, such as navigation, media controls, or smartphone projection. Just below this is a carousel of cards representing the six most recently used apps, with three shown at a time. A swipe left or right will take you to the other three. Tapping a card will bring that app into the main zone, sending the current app into that card’s former space. This makes it simple to toggle between apps. The whole interface is incredibly fluid and operated flawlessly during my drive. The touch targets are large and easy to hit, and there is plenty of room so you don’t hit the wrong thing. I’m not a fan of touchscreens in cars, but this is probably the best execution I’ve experienced yet.

Unlike Teslas, which support only basic Bluetooth audio streaming from your phone, the Ford Sync 4 infotainment system also supports wireless Android Auto and Apple Carplay, which occupy the primary zone when in use. A Qi wireless charging pad sits just below the screen, along with USB-A and USB-C ports. On the First Edition and all trims but the base model, a pod on top of the steering column with the infrared driver monitor system will work with the hands-free Active Drive Assist, coming next summer. The hardware is built in—it’s an extra-cost option on the base trim—and Ford will deliver the software via an over-the-air (OTA) update in mid-2021.

The Mach-E and 2021 F-150 are the first vehicles equipped with Ford’s new electronic architecture that enables full OTA update capability for all systems in the vehicle. Ford has an update roadmap that should see customers getting new capabilities about every six weeks or so. Among the first should be an update for the system that allows the front trunk to be opened from the inside in the event someone gets trapped.

When we first saw the Mach-E last year, one had a full-size cooler inside, and another had multiple suitcases in its 4.8 cubic feet of volume. Vehicles being shipped from the factory at launch, however, have some built-in partitions that would limit the ability for a child to hide inside the trunk. The software for the interior release system needed some changes to ensure reliability, so Ford is installing the partitions, which still leave room for multiple grocery bags. Once the company distributes the OTA update, Ford will provide instructions for owners to remove the partition if they want, or they can have a dealer do it. Anyone who is reasonably handy with a screwdriver or putty knife should be able to figure out the removal procedure in a few minutes.

2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E

Overall, the Mach-E has way more interior room than anything previously wearing a Mustang badge. In addition to the front trunk, there’s 29 cubic feet of space behind the seats. Before heading out to drive, we got a briefing on Sync 4 from chief engineer Ron Heiser. I sat in the back, which has ample head- and legroom for my 5-foot-11-inch frame. The flat floor, thanks to the battery, also means three can sit across in the back seat.

Another nice detail of the Mach-E is the roofline, which extends almost horizontally to the rear spoiler. Using contrasting colors with the black roof and the sloping rear pillar allowed the designers to emulate the fastback coupe while retaining interior space. Adding the fixed-glass panoramic roof dramatically increases the feeling of openness, with light flooding in from all directions.

Our driving route took us from ACM, through the city of Ypsilanti, and then north and west of Ann Arbor along some of the area’s more pleasing roads. Despite its roomy interior, the Mach-E is still a reasonably sized package. The overall length is almost three inches less than an Edge, and the roofline is more than five inches lower, contributing to its surprisingly sleek profile. Despite the utility form factor, this is not an off-road vehicle: Its 5.7-inch ground clearance is 2.5 inches less than the sporty Edge ST and less than half an inch more than a Mustang coupe.

That package size makes the Mach-E relatively easy to maneuver around town, which will be handy as a daily driver. At least in First Edition form, the suspension isn’t as aggressive as what you’ll find on a Mustang GT, but it is comparable to something like the Edge ST. It’s comfortable on less than ideal Michigan roads and while traversing railroad crossings. At the same time, the body control is surprisingly good. Through corners, it stays flatter than expected, and the steering is precise, with the Mach-E going right where you point it unless you start manipulating the attitude with the accelerator pedal mid-corner.

The Mach-E has three driving modes: Whisper, Engage, and Unbridled. Each mode adjusts the accelerator tip-in and tip-out response, steering effort, and the noise it produces. As an EV, the Mach-E is naturally quiet, but sound is part of the visceral experience of driving a Mustang. Ford created a soundtrack for the Unbridled mode that augments the experience of driving fast but without simply playing the soundtrack of a V8 engine. It’s nowhere near as loud as a V8 Mustang yet has a pleasant rumble to it that, while clearly synthetic, does somehow feel authentic to the experience. The intensity is tied to the driving experience, getting a bit more aggressive as you accelerate and backing off when you release the accelerator.

Speaking of releasing the accelerator, Ford has fully embraced one-pedal driving in the Mach-E. All three modes default to one-pedal mode, which uses regenerative braking to slow the vehicle when you back off the accelerator. The regen goes from modest in Whisper to most aggressive in Unbridled. Heiser explained that the goal is to let drivers who are new to EVs get accustomed to the experience and build up as they go through the modes. In any of the modes, regen will bring the Mach-E to a complete stop without using the brake pedal, although pressing the left pedal will blend in friction braking as much as the driver commands. For those who don’t like the one-pedal experience, it can be turned off in the settings, which allows the vehicle to coast when the accelerator is released, but that will likely cost some range.

With a curb weight ranging from 4,100 pounds for the rear-drive standard range to 4,800 pounds for the dual-motor extended range, the Mach-E isn’t a lightweight, but it’s actually only a couple hundred pounds heavier than a comparable Edge, which isn’t bad given the amount of battery that’s being hauled around. In combination with the instant torque, the dual-motor Mach-E feels quick off the line and responds instantly when accelerating hard out of a corner in Unbridled mode.

2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E

The combination of torque responsiveness and regenerative braking makes for a wonderfully fluid driving experience on rural back roads. The speed and vehicle attitude are seamlessly controlled simply by steering and modulating the right pedal. The First Edition is not as brutally rapid off the line as a Tesla in Insane or Ludicrous mode, but unless you spend your time hanging out at drag strips, there is no reason for any vehicle, including a Tesla, to be that absurdly quick. I drove the high-revving Shelby GT350 on these very same roads only about a month earlier and the Toyota Supra the prior weekend, and I take my 31-year-old Miata out there regularly.

While the roar of a flat-plane crank V8 at 8.000 rpm is an unmatched experience and the joy of top-down driving in my old roadster can’t be surpassed, the Mustang Mach-E brings its own unique take to the party. Previously, my favorite EVs to drive were the Jaguar i-Pace and the original Tesla Roadster. The open-air experience of the Roadster is still unmatched, but the Jaguar now falls behind this new kind of Ford.

Compared to the Supra or any of the other gasoline-burning machines, the Mach-E is a very different sort of experience, but certainly not a lesser one. No, it’s not as nimble as the Supra or Miata, but having driven many different Mustangs over the past 35 years, I no longer have any qualms about Ford using the badge on this machine. It’s not a replacement for the traditional type, but it expands the meaning of the brand while retaining much of its DNA. Based on driving the First Edition, I believe the upgrades to the Mustang Mach-E GT should be quite superlative.

The company knows it can’t afford to screw up this launch.

Ford had to meet some very high standards, both internal and external, with its first purpose-built battery electric vehicle. Tesla has done much to demonstrate what’s possible with electric vehicles and has shown the world how the industry can change in terms of design and business model. Ford seems to have internalized those lessons for the Mach-E. Where Ford should have an advantage over the California upstart is in manufacturing and customer service.

Ford has had some notable stumbles while starting production of new vehicles, most notably last year’s problematic launch of the new Explorer. The company knows it can’t afford to screw up this launch. If Ford can avoid major issues over the next several months, the Mustang Mach-E has the potential to be a major success and a harbinger of excellent things to come for the brand. If Ford screws this up, it could destroy the remaining confidence people have in Team Dearborn.