Here鈥檚 What You Need To Know About The 2019 Ford Mustang Mach-E

Here鈥檚 What You Need To Know About The 2019 Ford Mustang Mach-E

We鈥檝e been hearing it for a while now - the future of cars is electric. Whether that鈥檚 music to your ears or the worst news ever it鈥檚 hard to ignore the massive change sweeping through the automotive industry. What started as a sprinkle of offerings in the EV market has now gathered momentum with nearly every major automaker planning to produce fleets of electrified cars. As a die-hard auto enthusiast, I get how this might not sit well with some. After all, wringing out a properly tuned V8, hearing that basso rumble reverberating through the cabin, a product of perfectly timed explosions that you can feel is a deeply hedonistic experience. It would seem then, that the enthusiasts have been forgotten and the auto industry is destined to crank out boring appliance after boring appliance and car culture as we know it is dead. But that isn鈥檛 exactly true and if you鈥檝e driven a modern EV you know what I鈥檓 on about.

While the sound might be gone there鈥檚 a benefit electric motors provide that no internal combustion engine ever could鈥攊nstantaneous torque. All of it available the second you push the go-pedal. In some powerful EVs, there鈥檚 so much torque and power that even the fastest gasoline-powered cars in the world struggle to keep up. Tesla was the first to take electric cars truly mainstream and even though most are expensive playthings, they made the EV cool and they made them desirable. And that was the shift the consumer needed to see to really get behind this new form of propulsion. 11 billion by 2022. And their first foray into the EV world seemed to come out of left-field. When they announced that their first EV was going to be a crossover inspired by their most famous sports car, the Mustang, it was hard to take them seriously. But Ford was serious and now the all-electric Mustang Mach-E is here.

And even if you don鈥檛 like the name or the fact that a historical nameplate has been slapped onto what is the antithesis of a traditional sports car, it sure got your attention. So without further ado, the following is what you need to know about Ford鈥檚 latest foray into the EV world. I鈥檝e seen this bandied about the internet: rumours that the Mach-E was a rebadged Escape, where the engineers modified the platform to work with the electric drivetrain, but that鈥檚 not the case. While that was the initial plan it was quickly scrapped. Apparently they couldn鈥檛 get the proportions and occupant space they were going for with the Escape platform so they went clean-sheet. This is one of those vehicles where pictures absolutely do not do it justice. They don鈥檛 capture the sheet metal鈥檚 flowing lines, muscular bulges, and the way light bounces of the curves. The design starts with the signature shark nose and Mustang-inspired pseudo-grille with the galloping pony emblem in the centre. The wheels have been pushed out to the corners and the wheelbase has been stretched, allowing for small front and rear overhangs. The Mach-E also gets the Mustang鈥檚 hips.

These sculpted rear haunches drive home the RWD bias of this electric crossover. In the back there are tri-bar taillamps that also get the signature sequentially lit turn signals. Size-wise it鈥檚 similar in proportion to a BMW X3 or Porsche Macan. There鈥檚 Mustang in here somewhere but it鈥檚 less obvious. The design touches, at first glance, reminded me of another electrified vehicle鈥攖he BMW i3. You get that same sense of lightness and airiness of that car but with a much more modern feel thanks to a giant 15.5-inch Tesla-like infotainment screen serving as the Mach-E鈥檚 command centre. A smaller rectangular screen serves as the instrument cluster and puts the most important readouts, like speed and range right in front of the driver. Look closely and you鈥檒l see the Mustang鈥檚 heritage in the design of the dashboard. They鈥檝e done a good job maintaining that essence but at the same time pushing it into the future. Spanning the length of the dashboard is a B& O speaker array set up to look like a soundbar.

Materials used throughout are all pretty good, with most surfaces soft to the touch. I tapped and prodded everywhere I could as I do with most vehicles in search of hard cheap-feeling plastic but came up empty-handed. Thoughtful features like a floating armrest can be raised to store bags or purses and all the materials are vegan-friendly, meaning that there is no option for leather seating surfaces. Not a bad thing as the synthetic material felt premium and supple. Two battery pack sizes will be available. Standard range models get a 75.7 kWh pack and Extended Range models get a sizable 98.8 kWh pack. The battery cells itself are fairly standard lithium-ion units manufactured by LG Chem. There are 288 of them in the standard pack and 376 in the extended pack. Range estimates are 325km on the low end all the way up to 475 km depending on how you configure the Mach-E. And that brings us to the next point.