1 week review:
Well, after a week of ownership, the L2 charging is a hard requirement. I based my thoughts that we could live with L1 for a little bit based on my usage cyles and not my wife's usage cycles, she clearly drives a lot more than me. And not only that, I based on a differnt vehicle with a bigger battery. At first I thought the Mach-E was just a lot less efficient than the ID.4, but then I found the features in the center screen that record the trip efficiency and it's pretty similar for both vehicles, in the mid 3-s for kw per mile or miles per kw, I forget which one it is.
It's fine, whatever, I have a 40A QO GFCI breaker and 6/3 Romex on the way from the jugle river site. I already ordered and had delivered a 30A breaker and 10/3, but then I went out to the main panel on the outside of the house and saw my garage subpanel was 80A and not 60A like I thought. So I sent the 30A breaker and 10/3 back to the jungle and ordered the bigger stuff. Based on my load calculations I probably could have gone 50A if we only charged at night, but, I'd rather stick to the 40A for my comfort level. I'd also rather go with a hardwired EVSE if we were going 50A, I have seen some stories with people melting their Leviton 14-50 outlets when trying to charge at 40A with them. So just all around, for cost (the 50A hardwired EVSEs are expensive), safety, and load comfort level I'd rather stick with a 40A breaker and 32A charging for now. I think if we go with a hardwired EVSE in the future, it may be because we bought a 2nd EV and in that case I will probably call an electrician to run a 2nd subpanel off the main panel with big amperage.
Bottom line - if you are buying an EV for the first time, do yourself a favor and be ready with the L2 charging ahead of time, you can thank me later. We did have to take it to a public charger the 2nd day we owned it because my wife is commuting about 50 miles a day currently to her temp job and after getting it down to 25% the prior day when she came home, it wasn't going to charge enough overnight on L1. It was down to 22% Saturday night so we just drove the Navigator yesterday and had it up to 76% this morning after about 36 hours on the L1. On another instance, I grabbed it from her work and took it to my office as we have ChargePoint in our parking garage, it is not DCFC rather L2, but it is super cheap, less than my electricity cost at home. I think ChargePoint has some kind of deal with Austin Energy to increase EV adoption, but that's neither here nor there for purposes of this discussion, and we live in the sticks anyway. 29kwh for $2.60, yay,
I also don't think I would recommend the standard range battery with the AWD to others. I think it will be fine for us once we get the L2 charging installed in the next couple of days, but, if you're coming into this fresh, I don't know that I would go this particular drivetrain + battery route. I don't think with other OEMs coming out with base models above 300 miles of range (Tesla Model Y RWD, Chevy Equinox) that this particular configuration will remain competitive.
That said the AWD is a hoot to drive, and I'm glad we have it. Doing a DuckDuckGo web search indicated that the automotive media found acceleration in the 4.7-5.1 second range for this exact configuration. It changes the way you drive because you know that you have the guts to pull out in tighter spaces and confidently accelerate extremely quicky to and beyond the speed limit, if necessary, with absolutely zero drama/gear shifts/noise/whatever. It's also nice to have the AWD for reasons you'd traditionally want AWD, just for the superior traction in all weather conditions. I feel good sending my wife and kid off in it.
Overall, I would say the drive is a bit more sporty than my parents ID.4, but not at the expense of ride comfort. It's actually very comfortable riding and we have received compliments from others about how smooth riding it is from others that have ridden with my wife. It goes over small irregularities and large bumps like road humps very well. Ford did a suprisingly good job with chassis tuning on this vehicle, at least with the trim level we have. I don't know on the GT and California Route 1, the two trim levels above ours, if the ride is just as good. But at least on the Premium trim with 19" wheels and tires, it is surprisingly good considering how good the handling is. The car also came with Michelin Primacy 225/55R19 tires if you were wondering, 540AA UTQG, definitely in the all-season category.
Contining on the ride theme, if you turn on the 1 pedal driving on the center console, the drive becomes more similar to the Model Y in terms of pedal modulation with the acceleration and braking, but without the harsh ride or rattles experienced on the Model Y. The regen braking works extremely well and I only have to use the service brake every once in a while. I also turned off the creeping forward function that was the default upon delivery, I guess for ease of use for people transitioning from automatcs. With our current settings, when you stop, the car is stopped and it doesn't try to creep forward. But it does keep the brake lights on even if you don't have your foot on the brake, I noticed this from the grill reflections off of cars directly behind me. Both the 1 pedal function and the stop creeping function are in the same general settings area in the center screen.
Which btw we love the 15" center screen, on the very first test drive we weren't sure about it because the knob is multi-function, but it really works out pretty well. It's super easy to choose Android Auto or Apple CarPlay depending on who's phone we want to use. The only things you really need the knob for is to adjust the volume or the climate control, but in actual usage it defaults to volume, and then the climate we rarely adjust anyway. So all in all it was super easy to adapt to, and for things you don't use the Android Auto or CarPlay for, the menus are extremely logical and well laid out. There is a talk to the car button on the steering wheel, which is great if you want to use the built in navigation and we have tested this to navigate home the first night we had it. It went right to our house which we weren't sure about was going to work because it is only a few months over a year old in a new home neighborhood, but it worked perfect. I don't know what else you can do with the "Talk to the car" button and it's probably not that likely we would try, because we are "Ok Google and Hey Siri" people.
Other controls of note...the car has a start-stop button on the dash, which as compared to my parents ID.4 and other EVs, seems a little superfluous. My experience with the ID.4 and the Telsa is that the car just turns on when you approach it as long as you have the keyfob or your phone paired with it, and that all you have to do is sit down and put it in "gear" so to say. The way the Mach-E does it, requires an extra step, but maybe Ford's focus groups indicated that people preferred more traditional controls, who knows.
Speaking of "putting it in gear" the Mach-E has a round knob on the center console like other vehicles these days. I prefer the ID.4's dashboard mounted toggle switch, but whatever, the knob is not really that bad and I know a lot of other gas and hybrid vehicles have them. The other thing that seems superfluous about the knob is that it has a low range. Um, what are you going to do with a low range in an EV? I can understand with an auto or even a CVT for Sport mode, but on an EV?Perhaps they did it like that because the knob was already in the Ford parts bin and it got purposed for this car as well.
One really nice feature is the Blue Cruise, at least on the Mach-E, if the salesperson is to be believed, it is included on all trims. It only works on the freeway, but, while using you can take your hands completely off the steering wheel, which is a cut above everything else I have driven that isn't Tesla FSD. (note: haven't tried GM Supercruise) There is a blue steering wheel that will light up on the dash when the car can be put in BlueCruise, and it seems pretty eager to take control. The car does a really good job of keeping it centered in the lane while using it. If you want to change lanes, you give it a slight input to the left or right and it will say "preparing lane change in the dash" and then change lanes. If you steer it all the way into the other lane it will cancel Blue Cruise, but it doesn't also cancel the adaptive cruise control, if you had that set. If you canceled it by steeering all the way, in a few seconds it will try to resume Blue Cruise. The system does require that you keep your eyes forward and it does have a sensor to check that. I looked over at my wife at one point and it started nagging me to observe traffic on the driver's screen. LOL well we all know it is not FSD, so that is fine. It's a lot more relaxing on freeway drives. If you are going under a series of bridges like you might hit downtown in a major city, it does ask you to take back over for about 5-10 seconds, so you do need to pay a little more attention in urban and suburban situations while using BlueCruise to make sure it's not going to ask you to take back over.
The adaptive cruise on secondary roads is also pretty nice, it does have lane centering as well, so you can kind of loosely hold the wheel and it will keep you in the lane and keep a good distance from the cars in front of you. The car has a button for adjusting the following distance, which is nice as it's simpler to use than the control on the ID.4 that you have to use 2 buttons to adjust. You will want to adjust this frequently, for rural roads with stop lights you will want to put it to max distance, otherwise you will run up on stopped traffic at an uncomforable range before it decides to stop. In freeway traffic you will want to reduce the distance otherwise it will start braking every time someone changes lanes in front of you.
The glass roof does not come with a shade built in, but in practice it really isn't bad at all. Ford does make an accessory shade, which so far I don't feel like we really need. We'l see on that. I have a full head of hair despite not being a spring chicken, if I was bald I might feel differently. The other thing that mitigates the need for the shade is the remote climate capability on the FordPass app. We have turned on the AC ahead of times a few times now and the car is already comfortable when we get in.
Overall we are happy with the Premium trim. Ours also had Group 300A which comes with a bunch of additional stuff beyond the Premium trim. One thing that might be worth looking at the GT trim for is the upgrade to the Recaro seats. The seats we have are fine and feel plush when you first sit down, but after driving the car for a while say around 45 minutes they feel like they might not be supportive enough for a longer trip. I'd personally prefer a little more side bolster both on the seat and the seatback. Then again, with the relatively limited range of 230 miles at 100% battery, we'll be getting out a lot on a longer trips, so maybe it won't be such an issue.
I fit pretty good in this vehicle and I am 6'7", however, there's not a ton of legroom behind me. Fine for my 8 year old and my 6 year old step-grandson. It's only a 3 year lease, so, if my kid has hit 6' by then we might have to throw it back at the end of the lease.
Overall, would recommend, except maybe for the AWD and standard battery. If you want to get the standard battery, get the RWD, that bumps range to 250+. Some car magazine, I forget which, got 263 with a RWD standard battery when they ran it all the way down. If you can live without the Premium trim, the Select trim will also save you some coin, about the only useful thing you give up IMO is the power liftgate.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
