1000 Miles Update and First Long Road Trip [Rather Detailed Post But Lots of Positives]

rachitsh

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Hello to all the amazing people on this forum.

I recently took delivery of my Grabber Blue Mach-E4X California Route 1 and wanted to share an update for people who are waiting eagerly for theirs. Often there are negative posts on this forum which might make a new or prospective owner anxious and I wanted to share my experience so far so that prospective owners have more data points and know what to expect while and after taking the delivery.

Buying Experience: First of all, I wanted to give a big shout out to my dealer Midway Ford, Roseville MN. Our experience from booking to taking delivery has been nothing but seamless. They never asked for ADM, honored price protection, adjusted $500 deposit, and offered 0.9% APR 4 year financing without any need of negotiation. Also they didn't try to bundle me with any extras so I just had to pay for my car and extended warranty on which they gave me an extra $200 discount. In a pre-pandemic scenario, one would have expected all this but after reading numerous dealer horror stories on this forum, I certainly was a bit nervous about the whole buying process before walking into the dealership. Our delivery took exactly 6 months from the date of online order, dealer gave us a call the same day they received it and we completed the purchase the next day.

The Car: Now coming to the car itself, let me tell you, my wife and I just fell in love after we saw it for the first time at the dealership. Also, ever since we have taken the delivery, we have received countless compliments about it including some from Tesla owners as well. We were without a car for past 6 months and this is currently our only vehicle. We do a lot of camping at state parks in Minnesota and neighboring states which are roughly within our 250 miles radius. We did not care much about some of the luxury features like power liftgate and ambient lighting etc. but AWD and longest range was important to us. That is why we went with CR1. So far we have been getting about 220-230 miles on highways while driving with 2 people and a 90 lbs dog, hauling all our camping gear at 70 mph speeds and ambient temperatures still being below 45 degree F. We precondition the cabin and then keep the heat off for the most part and it feels like the car is pretty good at retaining heat. So far we are happy with the range but we do hope that we get a better range in the summer. This should give new owners a relatively good idea on what to expect of range while driving in a realistic situations in a cold weather. So far we have put about 1000 miles on it and still learning a lot about it everyday. One thing to note is, there is a LOT to learn. We had watched a zillion videos before taking delivery but still we learning something new every time we get into the car. We are facing this problem though, as others have also noted. Also thanks to @PalsyWalsy for writing these tips. It made our mach-e initialization process a lot easier.

The Road Trip:

Preparations: After seeing a lot of such posts popping up on the forum in the last couple of months, we bought a 12V jumper pack and kept it under the center console of the car, should we ever need it. We also familiarized ourselves with the towing procedures before we started the roadtrip. We also had a 20 ft wall outlet extension cable, just in case we needed to charge from a wall outlet which was farther away. We purchased pet seat cover from @Tesmanian and mudflaps from @AOSK which have been great so far. We have not done the PPF yet which made us constantly worried about the paint. Hopefully, we will be able to afford it someday as all the quotes we are getting are $3k+ :(. We plan to do it ourselves if we don't find an affordable professional.​
Conditions: We completed our first road trip from Minneapolis to Union Grove State Park in Iowa which is about 240 miles one way. The temperature during the whole trip was around 40-50 degree F but there was terrible 40 mph wind gusts throughout that weekend. While going, we got a headwind which really sucked up the range and threw away our range estimates a bit which gave us a bit of range anxiety. We got around 2.5 miles/kWh while going. However, we reached our destination with 30 miles remaining. While coming back, we had a tailwind which made things really easy (I learned how much I love tailwinds on this trip) and we got around 2.9 kWh. The ride is pretty quiet without the winds but, boy, do those high wind gusts throw a wrench in the wheels (not literally, thankfully).​
Charging:
- While going, we had to charge once from 44% to 85%. There were no ultra-fast chargers (like EA) on our route. The first DCFC charger we stopped at was a 50 kW ZEF charger which was free. We tried to start it but it just wouldn't start. I called the customer care number on the charger but they were of no help. A tesla owner saw us struggling with it and tried to help us but there was nothing we could do. So we went to the next nearest DCFC which was 15 miles down on our route. This was a Chargepoint 125 kW charger shared between 2 ports. However, this was not free and for some reason it did require activation from chargepoint app so I don't know if it qualifies for a successful plug and charge or not. We got around 40 kW power as we were sharing the port with a Polestar.​
- We reached our campsite with about 14% battery. We noted that we might have taken about 75 mins extra compared to an ICE vehicle while going. Our campsite had a NEMA 14-50 plug with which were able to charge the car back to 100% overnight.​
- While returning, we just stopped once at the same Chargepoint charger for a quick charge and a snack break and swiftly headed back to Minneapolis. This time we were the only car charging so we got around 75 kW power and charged much faster. I'd say, while returning, thanks to the aforementioned tailwind and faster charging, it did not take us any extra time as compared to an ICE vehicle, which was pretty impressive.​
- The total "fuel" cost for the trip was $37 which includes $18 for the campsite reservation which we booked as safety net. The total trip distance was 525 miles and a quick calculation shows a fuel cost saving of approximately $40 for the whole trip compared to a purely ICE vehicle of similar size and Minneapolis fuel cost. The savings could have been more had the free DCFC worked for us.​
BlueCruise and Navigation:
- We have had bluecruise ever since we have taken the delivery. It came preinstalled with our car. I'd say this is the most fun feature of the car. My wife and I just love it. Almost 80% of our trip was handsfree and sometimes it disengaged due to very high wind gusts but for the most part it was just brilliant. We did not face any "eye-nanny" or "lane-drifting" issues which other people have posted.​
- We planned the whole trip on FordPass as well as on abetterrouteplanner.com and picked the route that was most reliable. Then we manually navigated to each checkpoint using either apple maps or ford's navigation. We use apple maps along with Carplay but we had some trouble with Wireless carplay because of which we had to use Ford's navigation system for a significant part of our trip. I must say, it worked very well and now I stick to it most of the time.​
- We also got seriusXM free trial with the car, which upon combining with the bluecruise, makes up for a very entertaining ride. We also got the 3 months trial of ATT in car wifi hotspot which was really handy while going because my wife had to take some work meetings from the car while I drove. It did cause some issues with wireless carplay though. We are still learning how to use it optimally.​
- The intelligent speed detection worked great except for once when it glitched and a message started to appear saying something like "intelligent speed recognition not available". This issue resolved itself when we stopped and restarted the car. We have not seen it again ever since.​

Positives from the trip:
- Bluecruise is fun and operates as expected.
- Wifi hotspot is great.
- Usually the best looking car around anywhere you go.
- Really smooth and comfortable ride without the wind/rain.
- PAAK works OK most of the time. We do not carry our fobs and have not needed to so far.
- Good heat retention. Heated steering and seats help a lot.
- Projection pony blows away everyone who sees it.

Negatives:
- Slow and glitchy software (both infotainment as well as Fordpass). Ford really needs to work on this.
- Wireless Carplay keeps failing. Hopefully someone can suggest a fix for this.
- Walk away feature doesn't lock the car always. We have to manually lock it from the app which is really laggy sometimes.
- A couple of times our infotainment system just switched off.
- Ride is loud with high winds.
- Memory seat recall doesn't work seamlessly.
- Chargers are not always reliable or readily available. This could add up the trip time but hopefully should improve as charging network expands. I'd say, right now, charging network is the biggest drawback of this car as compared to a Tesla.
- It is really hard to switch connectors on the mobile charger.

For me, the positives still outweigh the negatives in this car and I am enjoying every minute of it. I am happy with the range given my use case but do hope that it will increase with the ambient temperatures.

Apologies for a rather long post (possibly with typos) and thanks for reading. Hopefully this will help someone in the same manner as many other posts have helped me. Also, please do share any feedback you might have for me. Here are some pics from the trip:

Ford Mustang Mach-E 1000 Miles Update and First Long Road Trip [Rather Detailed Post But Lots of Positives] 309998C5-4701-4EBB-B68F-A2722EED0746_1_105_c


Our Security Solutions Expert:
Ford Mustang Mach-E 1000 Miles Update and First Long Road Trip [Rather Detailed Post But Lots of Positives] 24B8ED13-B9AA-4C77-A947-0204CC12CA9D_1_105_c


Campsite Charging:
Ford Mustang Mach-E 1000 Miles Update and First Long Road Trip [Rather Detailed Post But Lots of Positives] EA741D69-BD69-4F1F-928B-D514FC3E675D_1_105_c



Ford Mustang Mach-E 1000 Miles Update and First Long Road Trip [Rather Detailed Post But Lots of Positives] D5E82487-20D3-492B-9D2F-2C2D16C91E4D_1_105_c
 

RickMachE

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Good writeup.

The only free charging hours are with Electrify America. There is only one location in Minnesota.
 
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rachitsh

rachitsh

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Good writeup.

The only free charging hours are with Electrify America. There is only one location in Minnesota.
Hi @RickMachE. I was not talking about the EA charging credit. Those are of course limited to 250 kWh.
There are a lot of ZEF/Greenlots/Shell Recharge DCFC Chargers (usually around 50 kW only though) which are free, at least in MN.

So far the ones I have used and successfully charged for free are:
1. https://www.plugshare.com/location/120433
2. https://www.plugshare.com/location/286264
3. https://www.plugshare.com/location/59970
4. https://www.plugshare.com/location/131679

And there are more which I haven't been able to check myself.
 

SpaceEVDriver

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Great writeup!

That's a beautiful car. I might be biased as I have the same thing.

We also ran into headwinds on our first long (1000+ mile) roadtrip. The decrease in efficiency should not have surprised us, but it certainly gave us anxiety. We arrived at our next DCFC with 40 miles remaining (17% SOC), but only because we slowed considerably.

We also spend a lot of time camping in national and state parks. I hope somebody starts catching up with charging ports at these parks. It's nice to hear you were able to recharge overnight with the NEMA 14-50 plug.
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