MUSTANG MACH-E
Building a four-door EV is nothing new for Ford, but calling it a Mustang?
How much is at stake with Ford’s upcoming all-electric 2021 Mustang Mach-E?
A solid case can be made that this will be the single car that proves either consumers truly crave electric cars and will pony up to buy them, or that battery power is the answer to a question no one asked.
“We’ve pushed all our chips to the middle of the table,” Ford’s chairman, William C. Ford Jr., told the New York
Times. “I hope this will show we are now deadly serious about electrification.”
That’s how important the Mustang Mach-E truly is. Just given the fact that Ford chose to bestow its newest vehicle with the Mustang name speaks volumes about how much it’s counting on this car to succeed.
No, Ford won’t sell one million of these in the first 18 months like it did with the original Mustang in the mid-1960s, but it needs the Mach-E to be a success. Remember, Ford has killed off its Focus, Fiesta and Taurus sedans, as well as the Flex wagon, with production of the Fusion sedan also winding down. Soon, the traditional Mustang will be Ford’s only passenger car.
And remember that this isn’t Ford’s first EV: The company offered the Focus Electric .
On paper, most of the Mach-E seems to have the right ingredients. The top-of-the-line 459-horsepower Mach-E GT Performance Edition will hit 60 mph (96 km/h) from a standing start in a claimed 3.5 seconds, which is in supercar territory. Electric range, depending on options and trim packages, is claimed to 325 to 475 kilometres, depending on the model.
The Mach-E is loaded with Ford’s most advanced technology, including a huge 15.5-inch (39.5-centimetre) touch-screen on the dashboard that certainly is reminiscent of the touchscreen found in Tesla vehicles. And Ford is working on building a network of more than 12,000 charging stations nationwide.
On the flip side, the Mach-E is positioned as a utility vehicle, so how does it stack up for space? Compared with the Honda CR-V, the Mach-E is behind in most key dimensions (especially rear legroom), but has slightly more front legroom.
The Mach-E’s cargo space behind the rear seat is 29 cubic feet (820 litres) versus the CRV’s 39.2 (1,110 litres), which is a huge difference. The shortcoming is even more eye-popping when one considers the Mach-E is 15 centimetres longer than the Honda, but it does have a small front trunk.
The Mach-E is not inexpensive either, with prices starting from about $50,500 in Canada, topping out at more than $83,000.
All of which raises many questions, starting with who is the buyer for the Mach-E? Is it existing Mustang owners? Is it existing SUV owners? Will Ford be able to capture Tesla buyers? And given the price and limitations of battery power, is there a real market for electric vehicles in North America?
According to Edison Electric Institute, a trade association of U.S. investor-owned electric companies, the market share of electric vehicles in the United States was 1.8 per cent in March 2019, up from 1.6 per cent in March 2018, which is hardly a huge spike. The EEI estimates that number will rise to eight per cent by 2025, which still is a small percentage. And right now, about 80 per cent of U.S. EV sales come from Tesla.
In Canada, about 42,700 EVs were sold in 2018, according to Statista, part of total vehicle sales of about 1.9 million. That works out to about 2.2 per cent. Despite Ontario eliminating its provincial rebate program, EV sales were tracking upward in 2019, although the final tally is not in yet.
Can the 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E move the dial?
Will the familiarity of the names “Ford” and “Mustang” significantly drive those numbers? Will the quality, technology and features of the Mach-E turn skeptics into buyers? Will people pay $80,000-plus for a fully optioned Mach-E, or even $50,000 for a base model?
Maybe, maybe not. But with the start of the rollout of the various Mach-E trim levels and packages still at least a year away, chances are we won’t know for quite some time.