Range Finder: 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E

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Ford’s Mustang Mach-E has now been with us (just) long enough to gain a little perspective. For many, I suspect that perspective will mean eating a heaping plate of crow. Predictions of Mustang owners storming Dearborn for sullying the great pony car’s good name have proven, shall we say, just a tad ‘trigger’ happy. Ditto for predictions that it would cost a fortune, handle like crap and be way too expensive. And I don’t remember anyone speculating that the Mach-E would be the first legacy automaker to take it to the Model Y , but judging by the sales of the First Edition, Tesla’s littlest ute may finally have a little competition. Oh, to be sure Lord Elon is hardly quaking in his boots, but Ford’s momentum seems to be building and judging by the reaction of the Model Y owner who followed me home the other day, the first chink in Tesla’s hegemony on the EV market may be the — just like the factory said — the Mustang name and heritage.

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Or it could be that the Mustang’s traditional values — things like a decent interior, paint that doesn’t flake off at the first sign of salt and wildly exaggerated range claims — are finally challenging the allure of Silicon Valley. Driving has dealt with the first two subjects in our original test of the Mach-E , so here is Range Finder’s take on how far you can go between ChargePoints and how long you’ll have to stay there before you can continue on your merry way.

Like most electric vehicles, the Mach-E is available in a number of models that mainly vary in the size of their batteries and the number of electric motors attached to their axles. Rear-wheel drive models, for instance, have but a single motor but are available with standard range (370 kilometres) and extended range (483 km) batteries. All-wheel-drive versions gain an extra motor in front so the same two batteries are rated for 340 km (Standard-range eAWD) and 435 klicks (Extended Range eAWD models).

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One thing that is different is how Ford rates and advertises its batteries. As we discussed in the Tesla versus Taycan Range Finder , unlike legacy automakers, Tesla doesn’t tell you how many of its kilowatt-hours are kept in reserve to prevent damage to the battery. Other automakers, on the other hand, are quite specific; Porsche, for instance, rates its top-of-the-line Taycan at 93.4 kWh, but isn’t particularly shy about the fact that it only allows you to use 83.7 kWh to prevent overcharging and/or completely running out of juice.

Ford takes this truth in advertising one step further. So, for instance, even though an Extended-Range Mach-E actually has 98.7 kilowatt-hours of lithium-ion on board, Ford only rates it at 88 kWh, the maximum amount of charge the owner actually has access to. Likewise, Standard Range models are listed by the 68 kWh they are actually allowed to use rather than 75.7 kWh they actually have onboard. Congratulations to FoMoCo for doing something the entire electric vehicle industry should emulate.

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But, how well does the Mustang Mach-E use those 88 kilowatt-hours you ask? Well, to answer that question we once again rumbled out on Ontario’s completely-empty-these-days Highway 407 with a freshly “tanked-up” battery and ran ‘er dry. And to remind everyone, the reason that Driving only tests highway range is because the chances of anyone using up more than a couple of hundred kilometres of electrical power in purely urban motoring are fairly remote. On the other hand, the amount of range one can eke out in an extended extra-urban road trip is the very anxiety that limits mass EV adoption.

And at a steady 125 kilometres an hour, we extrapolated that our Extended Range eAWD Mach-E’s 88 kWh battery would run out of electrons after about 332 kilometres. That’s not hardly the 435 kilometres promised by the EPA and Natural Resources Canada, but it’s not far off the 342 klicks we eked out of a Porsche Taycan 4S or the 355 kilometres a 2019 Tesla Model S 100D managed. As for efficiency — the equivalent of an ICE’s L/100 km — that works out to around 26.5 kilowatt-hours of energy consumed every 100 kilometres. It’s also worth noting, that like the first two cars, there’s a refreshing consistency to these consumption figures. Just as the Tesla and Taycan’s maximum range varied little between two separate tests, the Ford returned similar numbers — 335 km — in a test we conducted last fall. With just three cars tested, it’s a little soon to be discussing generalities. But, so far, EVs have proven more consistent in the kWh/100 km consumption than most gas cars are in the litres per 100 kilometres department. Indeed, our own Justin Pritchard averaged an almost identical 26 kWh/100 km on a trip to Sudbury.

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What does this all tell us about the new Ford Mustang and, perhaps more importantly, about electric vehicle range? Well, the most obvious observation — to me, at least — is that despite widely disparate range ratings, the three cars tested so far — again, 2019 Tesla Model S 100D, 2020 Porsche Taycan 4S and Ford Mustang Mach-E First Edition — have remarkably similar real-world ranges. Officially, the 2019 Tesla was rated for 539 kilometres, the Mustang for 435 klicks and the Porsche for 323 km, a difference of 212 kilometres between Tesla and Taycan. In the real world, however, the Model S managed 355 km, the Porsche 342 klicks and the Mach-E 332 kilometres, a difference of just 23 kilometres from best to worst. As I have mentioned before, a 216 kilometres range advantage is a reason to buy one brand over another; 23-km is not.

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Another thing worth noting — and it should be noted that our sample group remains fairly small — but there’s a surprising homogeneity the “fuel consumption” of the three large EVs test so far. Work through the numbers and the Mustang Mach-E has the worst numbers so far. Its range is but 332 kilometres and its energy consumption 26.5 kWh per 100 km. But the most efficient of these three large electric vehicles — the Taycan 4S — is not that far removed with its 24.5 kWh/100 km average. That’s but an eight per cent difference. Were these ICE-powered vehicles with a similar disparity in horsepower — 346-hp for Mustang and 562-hp for the Taycan — not to mention that one is a bulky-bodied SUV and the other a sleek, aerodynamic four-door coupe, we’d expect a much wider variance in fuel consumption.

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Indeed, where the Ford seems lacking, this time against the Taycan, is on charging. Frankly, its 150-kilowatt maximum charging rate is starting to look a little dubious. Porsche, thanks to its 800V architecture, is already boasting 270-kW charging. Ford says a charge to 80 per cent takes 45 minutes. Ford will need to do better if it is to sustain the gains it’s made so far at Tesla’s expense.

My last observation will be regarding the various readouts detailing range and battery life. Simply put, some are religious in their devotion to the truth, some tell a few little white lies, and others are, well, Trumpian in their reporting on range. The Taycan’s onboard computer will tell no lies, the trip meter’s displayed consumption rate always coinciding with how much battery remains and the range still left in the “tank.” For instance, calculator in hand, you can double check all its numbers by, for instance, using the percentage battery remaining and the distance travelled to figure out if the consumption rate it’s displaying is accurate. It is. Always.

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The Mustang is almost as trustworthy, the odometer, battery percentage remaining and consumption figures always — more or less — in agreement. The Ford, however, will lie about how many kilometres remain, the number only becoming accurate when the range remaining dips below 50 klicks and the computer realizes it can’t go on lying.

Not the Tesla. Pretty much all the numbers displayed save for battery percentage seem figments of a pretty wild imagination. No matter how many times and ways you crunch the numbers, the energy usage, battery percentage, and number of miles the computer claims remain, never add up. Unlike almost every other EV I’ve tested, the Model S’s consumption — again the equivalent of L/100 km — was off by as much as 20 per cent. As we test more cars, we’ll start to tabulate our results, including comparing the difference between what the range readout promises and what the batteries actually manage to deliver. Perhaps we’ll call the E exaggeration factor.