that seemed almost unfathomable just a few short years ago,

but now it exists.

Ford went really far out on a limb here

by calling this thing a Mustang and you know what?

It's pretty good.

(upbeat music)

I'm not gonna beat around the Bush here.

The Mustang Mach-E is the most competent electric vehicle

not made by Tesla or Porsche on the road right now.

And in a few areas is maybe even a little bit better

than the EVs Elon Musk has been making for the last decade.

The Mustang Mach-E is really solidly built.

It's a lot of fun to drive.

It has plenty of range for daily driving and short trips

and it puts technology front and center

in a way that other automakers usually mess up.

It's not exactly cheap.

It starts at around $43,000 and this version

which I tested for the last week with all wheel drive

and the extended range battery pack costs about $55,000

but it can be more affordable than a Tesla Model Y

or even a Chevy bolt, depending on which version you buy

because Ford's cars are still eligible

for that full federal EV tax credit.

And it's certainly more attainable

than the luxury electric cars

that currently make up the EV market right now,

like the Jaguar I-Pace, the Mercedes-Benz CQC

and the Audi e-tron

but Ford dared call this a Mustang.

So let's start with a few Mustang things, like performance.

There are five total models with a variety

of ranges from 211 miles to 305 miles.

The model I tested had a range of about 270 miles

and could go from zero to 60 in just about five seconds.

That's not the quickest version Ford will sell,

that'll be the GT performance coming later this year

which can do it in 3.5 seconds.

There are three driving modes,

Unbridled has the tightest steering

and the quickest acceleration,

and is basically your best bet

for flirting with local speed limits.

Whisper is of course the quietest mode

and also offers the loosest steering

and really smooth coasting

when you pull your foot off the throttle.

Engaged is sort of a middle ground,

a mix of somewhat sporty driving

but without the oomph of unbridled mode.

I should say, this doesn't have the same kind

of heart-stopping acceleration that the Porsche Taycan

or Tesla's performance models offer.

If you want that from the Mustang Mach-E

you're gonna have to wait

and pay more for the GT performance or regular GT version.

But I found this had enough giddy-up

for me in an SUV of this size

and while I was comfortable with 270 miles

I wouldn't want to buy one with less.

There's another component to the Mach-Es Mustangness

that we should probably talk about

and that's it's looks.

I did think it looked a little bit strange at first,

especially with the grill less design

on the model that I tested,

but it really grew on me over time.

I don't love the metallic silver color that I had on this.

I would've much rather tried the really bright blue

that our video directors, Becca and Alex,

had for this shoot.

And I also like the sort of yellowish orange

that Ford's keeping for the highest performance models

that are coming out later.

I'm less in love with the look of the car

from the rear where it looks like

the Mustangs iconic tri-bar lighting is sort of trying

to escape from the back of a more pedestrian SUV.

Overall though, I think Ford did a good job

of making it just as different enough

that it catches people's eyes

without making it too strange.

I got a lot of thumbs up and questions about it

when I was driving and parking it over the past week.

And you can tell that people were really familiar with it

in a way that I wouldn't have expected.

- What are you driving?

- An electric Mustang.

- What the, that is so sweet.

I was like, it's got ponies on it, it says mach.

- That's a good thing for electric cars,

which Tesla aside have so far looked so different

that they're kind of off putting

or so similar, in some cases,

that it's hard to tell what's different about them at all.

One place where I think Ford has a leg up over Tesla

with the Mustang Mach-E is, shocker, build quality.

On the outside there aren't any big seams between the panels

and then on the inside, everything just feels

really well put together.

There's not a lot of road noise.

It's just pretty clear that this is coming

from an automaker that has spent a century

almost perfecting the car making process.

The interior is really comfortable without feeling so nice

that you wouldn't want to eat a cheeseburger in it

and it's just really spacious too.

There are also a bunch of USB-A and USB-C ports,

which is a nice touch, and a wireless charging pad

which I love except for the fact that my iPhone

kept sliding around while I was driving

which prompted a really distracting error message.

But the big draw is the main 15.5 inch portrait touchscreen

on the dashboard.

First, I love the physicality of it.

Despite the floating effect,

it really feels solidly bolted on

and better yet like you could sort of hammer away

at the screen for years without something going wrong.

The quality of the panel is great too,

the graphics are crisp and the colors are bright.

You really have to go hunting

to see any pixels or jagged edges.

Now the logic of the software

on the main screen feels a little bit fuzzy.

There's an almost webOSy card based system

that surfaces frequently used functions

but it doesn't offer quick access to deep menu settings

like drive modes or screen brightness

which I think would be more useful.

There are also just little quirks

that I couldn't really stand,

like how Ford's mapping system doesn't let you move

the map to repopulate search results

when you're looking for say, EV chargers.

And while this is a touchscreen

there's also a big silver volume knob at the bottom

which has pretty satisfying feedback

but I just use the volume button

on the steering wheel most of the time.

One more thing that I wish was a little bit different

about this user interface was just

a little bit more customization

on the instrument cluster screen like the ability to put,

say how many kilowatt hours per mile

you're using or other things.

Ford has a couple of different versions that will pop up

depending on which driving mode you're in

but there's no real customization as to what's

on that screen behind the steering wheel

and I kind of wish there was.

These are all things that could be changed

with over the air software updates,

which is something for as promised with the Mustang Mach-E.

It's something that Tesla has popularized over the years

but big automakers usually tend to get wrong.

So here's hoping Ford it actually gets it right.

There's one big feature that is still missing right now

on the Mach-E that I wish I could have tested,

which is that Ford's promising

a true hands-free driving mode.

It'll be the first in Ford's lineup

and it's basically comparable to what GM and Cadillac

have been doing for the last few years with Super Cruise.

In its place right now there's just

a more normal advanced driver assistance package

which does include things like lane centering,

but I did find it to be a little finicky.

Even when the true hands-free driving option comes out

it'll only be available on highways

that Ford maps ahead of time,

and there's a camera behind the steering wheel

that's actually on this version of the Mach-E already

that'll be tracking your eyes

to make sure you're paying attention to the road.

So don't expect this to be some fully self-driving car.

For the most part of the Mach-E is a really great experience

but the biggest drawback is the same drawback

of any EV that's not a Tesla right now.

Charging.

Charging in the U.S is just a mess.

There are all sorts of different networks

with different charging rates,

with different pricing structures,

different upkeep for those charging stations

and it's just a real hit or miss experience

that's difficult to navigate

even if you know all of that going in.

You have to be pretty highly educated

on what the different services are and what they offer,

and even then you can still run into problems.

For example, I went to an Electrify America station,

this is basically Volkswagen's version

of Tesla supercharger network, and still ran into problems.

I would plug the Mach-E into one outlet

and it would give me an error message.

I would plug it into another

and it would charge way slower than it should.

It's enough of a drag already to know

that you're gonna have to spend maybe 30 minutes,

40 minutes, maybe even longer at slower stations

but it's worse when you get there

and you have to spend more time doing this little do-si-do

between all the different charging stations

just to find one that's working.

And if Volkswagen's network isn't going to be able to do it,

then the smaller networks are certainly gonna

have trouble with it and even when they work well

they're charging your car more slowly.

This is a problem and it needs to be fixed.

It's not necessarily Ford's problem to fix.

Though I will say, Ford is collecting all of these networks

and sort of combining them into what it's called

the FordPass Charging Network.

In theory, it's a really good idea,

they're making all these charging networks easy to find

in the FordPass app or in the dashboard screen of the Mach-E

so that you have a one-stop shop for your nearest charging.

And Ford is also even trying to bundle some

of those services together into your Ford accounts

so that you don't have to have

all these different charging accounts and charging apps,

you could theoretically just pull up,

plug in and let it take care of all of the financial stuff

in the background that doesn't quite work really well

just yet and the problem that Ford's going to face with this

is that people are going to buy this car

and use those charging networks

and into some of those problems

and they might wind up thinking,

"Boy, Ford's charging network is a real bummer."

And so I hope that those charging networks

can improve really quickly and in fact,

a lot of them are all out there right now

raising a lot of money trying to do just that,

but even in a best case scenario,

it's gonna be another couple of years

before we have something that's really comparable

to the Tesla Supercharger network

or big enough to handle the market that these automakers say

they're gonna be able to create with electric vehicles.

Now, a few other things before I'm done here.

One, I didn't have much need for it during the week

I spent with this car but there's a lot

of good storage in the Mustang Mach-E,

the front trunk is especially big.

The