Living with an electric horse - 2021 Mach-E Long Range AWD

In line with the other "living with" threads on EVs, I hereby present Sally.

Sally is our 2021 Mach-E Long Range AWD, delivered on December 3rd after a rather long wait. We ordered the car late March and the original delivery date was around June (but even then I had severe doubts).

We have been wanting an electric daily for some time now, but especially me and my daughter are a bit single minded in the choice of brands...the blue oval is strong in these ones :-) 

It´s not so strong that we order blind folded though, the test drive tour Ford made in March 2021 was the tipping point for us. Yes, the car felt good. Yes, we left with an offer and proceeded to order.

There never was any discussion about getting anything else than a long range awd - if a job's worth doing...

But unlike most others we did not tick all the boxes. In the Swedish spec the LR awd basically only has two option packages. The first is the "technology package" that contains the B&O sounds system, power tailgate, 360 camera etc. The other one is the "plus" that also gives you the panoramic roof and memory side mirrors.  For the rwd things are a bit different but on the awd, it has most stuff from the start.

While the memory mirrors would be nice (and the roof surely adds a special feeling) I did not feel like it was worth the 3000 USD extra and I was also a bit sceptic about the glass roof in our climate.

Initial delivery plans were for sometime around June or July but that was never something we expected. And then the real component delays started to creep up. By early July the car was built and then awaited shipping from Mexico to Antwerp where is goes through some inital checks before being sent off to Sweden.

Sometime in September it finally left Mexico and took the scenic route to Antwerp. On November 15th is was reported as being in Sweden. December 3rd, we could finally take delivery.

In the left seatpocket I think we found one reason for the delay;

"Special order" the well known fact from when I ordered the Focus back in 2017. Apparently not having the pano roof means you get in a different line.

Anyway, finally, it was home. Greeting you first EV with snow and minus 25 degrees C - will that test the relationship from the start?

At least we got mugs for the entire family of 3 to drink soothing hot beverages from!

Gustaf

Congratulations! I'm intrigued by the Mach-E. I'm even more intrigued by it's performance in your climate. 

Congratulations and thanks for posting this. I will be following this one closely and I'm another one who is very interested in how it adapts to life in the cold. 

Since it looks like you've had the opportunity to find out, how well does it clear the windows and condition the interior while connected to the charger at those temperature?

Also, I experienced a failure mode unique to electric vehicles when I had my i3-- it sucks to have the vehicle charging outside when an ice storm comes through and the locking mechanism for the charging cable is frozen solid, leaving you tethered to the charger. 

I have enjoyed following the Bolt and Tesla "living with" threads and look forward to hearing about your experiences as well. 

Extremely interested in this. There's a better than 50/50 chance that one of these will be replacing the Fusion some time in 2022.

Oh, more interest than I anticipated!

So far, the climate control inside the car and the pre-conditioning has been pretty flawless given the conditions. That said, the European (or at least Swedish?) Mach-E has a heated front screen - ISTR that the US ones don't?

Of course you still have to brush off heavy snow but otherwise, it has been fine.

So far, we have only had "real winter" meaning several degrees below freezing and that also means that the charging door and cord only has been subjected to cold snow that doesn't form ice. It is one thing I am a bit curious about though. We have prepared with a silicone anti-freeze lubricant (!) for the seal. But I might also consider a 12V heat fan as a backup.

Last night my wife proclaimed that she loves her new car (yes it formally is hers, well, practically too I guess), it's nice to hear she has given it her blessing :-)

Cool car, I'm also interested in these. Our Volt almost never runs it's gas engine and that's only 30-40 mile range. I like the color, do I see some blue in that gray? Hard to tell online. Our Volt is ice blue.

I'm curious to follow along on this too.  There's a chance, in a couple years, that we'll "upgrade" sleepywife from dailying Tom's Leaf, and shuffling cars so that becomes my daily... and the MachE is on my shortlist for that upgrade.

Cool!!

The colour is "Infinite blue" but apparently it wasn't as infinite as Ford thought since they stopped providing it this summer :-)

It really does change depending on the light, from dark blue to light to grey to...well ;-)

In reply to therealpinto :

Will it live outdoors 100% of the time, or will eventually find its way into the garage?

This is an outdoor toy ;-)

The garage is full of Sierra and Capri, getting the Kuga (Escape) into the garage for a wheel swap is a tight fit and the Mach-E is even wider. So I doubt I´d be able to get it in there. The double garage is built as a "very big garage in Sweden" by 1988 standards when a Volvo 740 was seen as the biggest car someone would ever need.

Some notes about the car as a car. So far we use "Whisper" driving mode, the "soft" but comfortable setting, with one pedal driving activated. I tried it during the test drive and all three of us (Kajsa has driven it once, she´s only training for the license still) have quickly grown to like it. Driving dynamics I think is fine for what it is, a rather large and heavy thing. But on the studded winter tires it is not really possible to put it to any real tests. It will wiggle the tail a bit if you floor it in the "right" moment, something I don´t object about at all.

Automatic front seat heaters is nice although they stay on a bit too long. Almost risk of bacon smell :-)

It has the active matrix LED headlights and supposedly it can keep the high beams on and not blind other cars. It feels very strange to drive behind someone, or meet someone, keep the high beams on. So far nobody has really flashed their lights at me so I hope it works (and not just that they are stunned by the car...).

Things that we miss? It really should have heated rear seats, that is a strange choice to not have that available. You can´t really use Android Auto and FordPass at the same time (I think), and the phone as a key is not 100%. 

But no car is 100% anyway. I like having the physical controls of many things, I like the small display in front of the driver.

Thanks for posting! Please keep the updates coming. As others noted, Keith's Tesla thread and Tuna's Bolt thread have been great! I'm very interested in your experience too. 

Wow, I didn't expect our first Mach-E owner to come from Sweden! But maybe I should have. I took a quick look at sales figures and it looks like full EVs are really popular there - 25% of the market during this past summer. And a very different mix of vehicles, one of the top sellers is an MG!

Can you share why you decided to go with the Ford? They're only just appearing here, I've seen a couple on the road by this point. I think they're the best looking of the current crop of EVs in North America.

Great name for the car :)

I had the pleasure to climb around in one at the woodward dream cruise.  I was impressed.  Curious to hear what living with it is like as I'm doing my first winter in a Tesla M3P.

The main reason for the MG sales is that it has been a crazy deal on private leasing, ISTR that you have been able to get it leased for around USD300 a month with no down payment and lots of stuff like insurance etc. included. Plus, according to the reviews, it really is a decent EV with acceptable range.

As for choosing the Ford it is to a very large extent a question of "taste", I/we like the Fords for not always very rational reasons (perhaps like you can like a special kind of wine over another). 

I had thoughts of others as well, Tesla M3 or Y of course, possibly Polestar 2 and the Skoda Enyaq was also in the back of my mind. The Koreans too.

Tesla and Polestar lack any kind of local dealer and I really like to have that. The Tesla almost had me on the charging network though, something that at the moment can outweigh a lot of other parameters. But since I also knew that we'd have to keep the ICE Kuga for towing I also knew that we would have options for going where charging stations are non-existant.

Had the Ioniq 5 or Kia EV6 been available when we ordered it might have been a closer call. But Kajsa has also stated that as long as she's living with us, she does not accept anything else than a Ford...

The other day we started talking about the Christmas trip. We need to go to my mother in law, and she is 800 kms away. Can we take Sally? I have been twiddling with ABRP and using an estimated 300 Wh/100 km with rain and snow. It makes for quite a lot of charging stops along the way, but seems doable. We would want to divide the trip into two days anyway (to be able to leave after work). At the moment, unless the weather forecasts say it is going to be minus 25 C again, we are prepared to try it out. I think...

Gustaf

I'll be following along too, the Mach-e will be on my short list for replacing the i3 whenever that needs to happen.

I was talking to a Ford tech nearby recently, and he said he has been frustrated fixing a lot of little glitchy issues with the Mach-E. 

In reply to therealpinto :

You should be able to manage that trip without too much drama, and if you can find an overnight charger there's one less stop. I hope you try!

We had a couple of days of "warmer" weather (around 0 degrees C or just below) and consumption dropped considerably. Looking at the forecasts for Christmas it looks to be a bit colder again but I still think we will take the Mach-E on the trip. You have to start sometime :-)

Right now we are trying out a system where we really only charge at work. The charging target at home is set to 60% and at work it is 80% (I think). so far it has worked good. Charging at work is included in the monthly fee for parking and while the load balancer means we should not blow fuses at home (hasn´t happened yet) it is nice to reduce the load on the house electrics, I think.

The car is still plugged in at home for the pre-conditioning (and that reminds me to set up the "leave from work time" for today).

Gustaf

Well, tomorrow is the day.

The plan is to leave after work (I have a meeting scheduled until 5 pm but hope to be able to end it a bit before that). First stop after roughly 150 kms or almost 100 miles, to have dinner and charge from around 27% up to as much as we can, at least 60%. The plan here is sort of connected to the most suitable 50 kW charger being available. If we need to use the 22 kW...well, we're gonna have to eat a fair bit.

Then we should make it to the hotel another 111 kms south with at least 10% charge. There are according to the maps a couple of 22 kW chargers in a nearby garage that would suit us fine. If they work... Well, there are some other options close by too.

As we move further south then the chargers are easier to find so there are more options. I´m a bit weary about the holiday traffic though and the risk of waiting times but I guess we will just have to try.

Reports to follow :-)

Is 50 kW the most common option for you, or is that just because of the area? I don't know what Sweden's infrastructure looks like but 350 kW chargers are not unusual on major routes.

This is a tough first test!

Right around here it seems 50 kW is the most common but along the main road(s) further south more and more 350 kW chargers are listed.

Actually the routing for day 2 has 3 stops that are all on 350 kW chargers.

We have to remember I live just under 2 hours south of the Arctic Circle ;-)

Gustaf

From what I'm reading, the secret to long battery pack life is temperature management...which seems to be the reason that Tesla's products seem to be approaching 100K miles of pack life. And why cars with less sophisticated pack temperature control like the Nissan Leaf are suffering from range degradation as they age.

Logically I would expect that fast charging would be more of a challenge to control pack temperature than standard charging (22-50 kwh), and thus would put you at more risk of range degradation.

I would want to know where any manufacturer stood on their pack temperature control technology before I would consider doing routine high speed charging.

This is true in theory, but data collected by owners indicates that occasional fast charging does not affect battery degradation. Tesla packs are looking to have a lifespan of 300,000+ miles, and I expect that would be the case for any other EV that has active temperature management of the battery pack. The Leaf is the sad exception.