I sat down tonight to watch the (cringey) live unveiling of the new Ford Mustang Mach-E, and here are some thoughts I have on the product. As an up-front disclaimer, I saw the specs leak onto Reddit on Friday and bought some stock in Ford.
the name, performance, and range
I’ve seen and heard countless enthusiasts complain about the name. “How could an SUV wear the Mustang badge? Why not revive the old Lightning nameplate? Why not just Mach-E?” The good news is that enthusiasts don’t run the marketing teams at Ford. Mustang is an incredibly strong brand, and it stands for (among other things, since brands always mean slightly different things to different people) performance and freedom. For most people, the Mach-E will deliver on both of those measures in spades. The slowest Mach-E does 0-60 in the mid 6-second range, so that combined with the instant torque means that the Mach-E will feel absolutely quick to any normal person. The fastest Mach-E does 0-60 in the “mid 3 second range”, which is more or less the same text that Ford uses to describe their GT500 Mustang. I’m not trying to suggest that it’ll be the same speed on the track as a GT500, but for 99.9% of driving for 99.9% of the population, the Mach-E will in every respect be blisteringly fast. In no way, shape, or form can anyone reasonably argue that the Mach-E won’t be quick. Even compared to the upcoming Model Y, comparably-priced trims have comparable 0-60 performance.
In terms of freedom, the Mach-E doesn’t offer a single trim that gets under 200 miles of range, and the longest-range Mach-E will hopefully get around 300 miles on a charge. If that last number sounds familiar, that’s because that’s the exact range of the Model Y RWD Long Range. The Mach-E, funnily enough, also achieves their 300 miles with a long-range, RWD model.
So the Mach-E will be exactly want many, many people want: a Mustang SUV that happens to be electric.
pricing and unit economics
Perfection. To get a sense of comparison here, the Mach-E is more or less the size of an Escape (granted, it’s a slightly different body style, but the Mach-E’s dimensions are 186” x 74” x 63” [1] while the Escape is at 181” x 74” x 66”), while earning significantly more revenue per vehicle than an Escape. The cheapest Mach-E will be a hair under $44k, compared to about $25k for a base Escape. Meanwhile, the highest-end Escape starts around $33k, and the highest-end (non-GT) Mach-E is around $60k. So Ford is going to be earning revenue hand-over-fist with these cars. Taking a look at the competition, Tesla is pricing their Long Range Model Y at $48k/$52k for the RWD/AWD versions, which compares favorably to the $52k-ish pricetag of the 300-mile range model of the Mach E. As far as performance models are concerned, the GT and the Model Y Performance are both around $60k. Tesla and Ford are usually earning similar amounts of revenue per car.
That doesn’t mean it’s a competitive fight, however. Thanks to the way that EV incentives are structured (which I’ve written about here), Tesla customers won’t get a tax credit when they buy a Model Y, while I’d imagine that every single Mach-E buyer in 2020 will get the full $7,500 tax credit [2].
Unfortunately for Ford, revenue isn’t profit, and we need to look at the other side of the equation. In terms of costs, I’d imagine that similar dimensions to the Escape means that, excluding the powertrain, the Mach-E will cost roughly the same as an Escape would for the body-in-white, and that we’d need to add a bit more for the interior, since the Mach-E will be nicer overall than an Escape [3]. The elephant in the room, however, is the battery. How much is Ford paying for the battery? We already know that Ford only plans on producing two battery sizes: one 75.7 kWh and one 98.8 kWh version. While I can’t confidently give cost estimates for how much Ford would spend on producing (or buying) a battery, my gut feeling tells me that they’ll start off just breaking even on the lower, cheaper trims, a feeling that’s reinforced by the fact that only the First Edition and Premium trims (both of which sticker for above $50k) will be released before 2020 is over.
they’ve copied tesla where it counts…
From what I can tell, Ford did virtually everything correct in learning from Tesla when it comes to the vehicle’s design. There’s a front trunk, a nice amount of space inside the car, quick acceleration, driver assistance features bundled in, OTA software updates, a giant 15” touchscreen for controlling virtually everything inside the car… and then there’s also a display right in front of the driver for checking speed, and an actual, physical volume knob. Ford didn’t make the car butt-ugly like GM did with the Bolt; they didn’t neuter the range like Audi did with the e-tron, and they didn’t make something overly ambitious like the hundreds of startups that will likely never see the light of day.
Ford made an SUV first. SUVs are what’s selling nowadays, and Ford’s bread-and-butter is SUVs and pickup trucks.
…except charging.
The only thing that stands out to me as being inadequate with the Mach-E is the fast charging ability. Ford claims that you can get 47 miles of range in 10 minutes using a 150kW DC fast charger, but that seems a bit off. Some quick number-crunching I did says that Ford is getting about 3 miles per kWh (300 miles / 98.8 kWh on the battery), and a charge rate of 150 kW translates to a peak charging speed of 450 mph. If Ford can sustain 150 kW of charging for 10 minutes, that alone should be 75 miles of range gained. Perhaps Ford’s battery can’t sustain fast charging for that long - but I struggle to understand why, given that most of their competitors can do that. Perhaps there are some inefficiencies I’m not factoring in, but I don’t see how that would account for a 37% discrepancy. Those lower numbers combined with a lack of a first-party charging network mean that (at least, in my opinion) the Mach-E’s weak point will be long-distance charging infrastructure.
but who cares?
Seriously, the Mach-E should sell incredibly well. It’s a solid EV (good) that’s an SUV (great) and wears one of the most famous brands in automotive history (amazing). It looks like Ford has a mostly-great product on their hands.
[2] The best information I can find seems to indicate that Ford has already sold about 116K plug-ins through June 2019, and that they would have sold another 3K from June until now at their 2019 average rate. While Ford won’t be able to hold onto incentives forever, they’ll get to enjoy the benefits for the start of the Mach-E launch. Source: https://evadoption.com/ev-sales/federal-ev-tax-credit-phase-out-tracker-by-automaker/
[3] We have to start somewhere, but I don’t like not being able to put concrete numbers on this.