1st week impressions - GT

[ctenidae]

Here's a handful of random-ish observations, based on 400 miles of driving. I had a Model 3 Stealth Performance before, and we just got a Taycan a couple days ago, so those are my comparisons.

Overall impression, it's a good car, fun to drive, and great looking. Worth $65k? Probably not, at least not yet. This is my first Ford since a drove an '86 escort to over 200k miles, and my first American car since a 1994 Chevy S10. Getting over paying that much for a Ford was hard, but worth it in the end, I think, especially since every jackass who tried to roll coal on me in the Tesla is going to have to deal with an electrified Ford future.

Tesla’s 10 years and billions of miles of driver data and development shows. Most everything involving the electric motors, especially their controllers, is too chunky in the Mach e. The adjustments aren’t made on a fine enough scale yet. This will change over time, I’m sure. I’m interested in seeing how it compares to Porsche’s system. The Taycan doesn’t have 1-pedal driving, so the regen effect won’t be as noticeable. I wonder if they haven’t released 1-pedal yet because it’s just not good enough yet.

Transition from coasting to power is hard sometimes, like the motor has to take up slop in the transmission. Feels like my brothers 1983 Land Cruiser when you let off the gas, then get back on it. Not sure if it’s a mechanical or control issue on the Mach e. When in 1PD at a stop, the brake releases rather heavily sometimes, and if you've got your foot hardish on the brake when switching from P to D the pedal will drop all of a sudden, like someone pulled a pin out and let it drop.

The last couple mph in 1PD, or crawling at 1-2 mph the car feels like a stepper motor, or like it’s rolling over a bad bearing. Could be the charge controller switching between regen and not. Have to see if it’s different if decelerating or accelerating through it

Steering behaves oddly at the locks. Turn the wheel to lock and it stops at the end, but then sometimes it goes a little bit further after a second. Release is sudden, though, and unexpected. Steering overall is odd feeling. More feedback than the Tesla, but it weights up like pulling a compound bow. The weight builds nicely, but it sometimes releases all of a sudden, causing an oversteer. Slight, but surprising.

Skittery under any power over rough surfaces, likes to skip sideways a little bit. Haven’t noticed it moving enough to matter, but it’s noticeable. Also haven’t noticed it especially on turns. Could be the motor controllers aren’t adjusting power quickly or finely enough.

Nowhere near as fast as the Tesla, but it hardly matters. 50-80 acceleration is perfectly fine, but feels like it should pull harder. Could be a result of the 5-second rule (which seems to be cumulative – 5 seconds of max power over 15 seconds or so), have to test on some 50-80 races.

Tesla built a car around an electric motor. Ford and Porsche have put an electric motor in a car. Different.

On my first school run I accelerated some coffee out of my cup, right into the parking brake switch well. Oops.

Interior fit and finish is fine. Materials are decent, but there's some bean-counter thin plastic in places. Not a big fan of the seat fabric- it's grippy enough, but feels kind of like the fabric on the T in Boston. No

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[voxel]

Transition from coasting to power is hard sometimes, like the motor has to take up slop in the transmission. Feels like my brothers 1983 Land Cruiser when you let off the gas, then get back on it. Not sure if it’s a mechanical or control issue on the Mach e. When in 1PD at a stop, the brake releases rather heavily sometimes, and if you've got your foot hardish on the brake when switching from P to D the pedal will drop all of a sudden, like someone pulled a pin out and let it drop.

The last couple mph in 1PD, or crawling at 1-2 mph the car feels like a stepper motor, or like it’s rolling over a bad bearing. Could be the charge controller switching between regen and not. Have to see if it’s different if decelerating or accelerating through it

1PD to brake is the weakest part of the Mach-E driving experience. It's not smooth like most other EVs. The brake to stop is overly grabby and you can feel it release too. There was a review video where they compare 3 EVs - and multiple reviewers mention this. Kyle at Out of Spec also mentions this a few times in his video.

The rest of the Mach-E I prefer over my Model Y... except maybe the lack of Sentry mode and a built in dashcam. The lack of 360 cameras, blind spot monitors, and rear cross alert alerts in the Teslas I've owned (Y and 3) is appalling. On a small car like my MINI EV... it's fine but on a Model Y with such poor rear visibility and poor turning radius you need them.

 

[ctenidae]

1PD to brake is the weakest part of the Mach-E driving experience.

The rest of the Mach-E I prefer over my Model Y...

I'll go ahead and throw in the inevitable "You're wrong, it's the 5 second limit that's the worst" so we don't have to beat that dead horse again.

I like the GT better than my 3 Stealth Performance, in part because it's got a little badge bravado I didn't enjoy with the stealth, but mostly because I like its driving personality more. Tesla maybe got it too perfect, so it's like driving a video game. Some of the Teslas quirks drove me a little nuts, and a lot of the time I didn't have confidence I knew what the car would do. I was confident it would be OK and compensate for whatever errors I made, but was never sure exactly how it would react- Brakes, cut power, completely ignore me and head for the barn, I never really knew.

New thing I've formed an opinion on: the propulsion noise. My son turned it on and we got a great laugh deciding if it sounds like a 1 cylinder moped or a 2 year old on a kazoo. We went with kazoo, and turned it off across all modes, never to be used again.

 

[voxel]

I'll go ahead and throw in the inevitable "You're wrong, it's the 5 second limit that's the worst" so we don't have to beat that dead horse again.

I like the GT better than my 3 Stealth Performance, in part because it's got a little badge bravado I didn't enjoy with the stealth, but mostly because I like its driving personality more. Tesla maybe got it too perfect, so it's like driving a video game. Some of the Teslas quirks drove me a little nuts, and a lot of the time I didn't have confidence I knew what the car would do.

1) 5 second thing only applies to GTs and not the Premium or Select trims.

2) Agree with the Tesla driving personality. It’s a no fuss daily driver that lacks some common features in modern cars. The 3 is a modern Camry or Civic. If the Y was $40K I’d use it as a daily. My ideal car is a Telluride as an EV or a R1S. I don’t even view Tesla Autopilot as class leading. Not hands free and often disengages for no apparent reason.

 

[ctenidae]

So a couple more weeks, and 1,000 milesin, 2 things are clear:

1) Badge bravado is fun. Took my son to see Top Gear Maverick the other day, and damn if I didn't have an overwhelming urge to blast classic rock with the windows down. Reminded me of high school, filled with late 60's Mustangs, Camaros, Hemi'Cuddas, and all sorts of fire snorting glass-packed stupidity. Love it.

2) I wish the GT were my first electric car, so I could be completely amazed by its awesomeness all the time. But, it has to live with being compared to the M3SP. Still, between it, the 3P and my wife's Taycan, I still like the GT more. It's not the better car, by a country mile, but I like it better.

 

[Benny’66]

Here's a handful of random-ish observations, based on 400 miles of driving. I had a Model 3 Stealth Performance before, and we just got a Taycan a couple days ago, so those are my comparisons.

Overall impression, it's a good car, fun to drive, and great looking. Worth $65k? Probably not, at least not yet. This is my first Ford since a drove an '86 escort to over 200k miles, and my first American car since a 1994 Chevy S10. Getting over paying that much for a Ford was hard, but worth it in the end, I think, especially since every jackass who tried to roll coal on me in the Tesla is going to have to deal with an electrified Ford future.

Tesla’s 10 years and billions of miles of driver data and development shows. Most everything involving the electric motors, especially their controllers, is too chunky in the Mach e. The adjustments aren’t made on a fine enough scale yet. This will change over time, I’m sure. I’m interested in seeing how it compares to Porsche’s system. The Taycan doesn’t have 1-pedal driving, so the regen effect won’t be as noticeable. I wonder if they haven’t released 1-pedal yet because it’s just not good enough yet.

Transition from coasting to power is hard sometimes, like the motor has to take up slop in the transmission. Feels like my brothers 1983 Land Cruiser when you let off the gas, then get back on it. Not sure if it’s a mechanical or control issue on the Mach e. When in 1PD at a stop, the brake releases rather heavily sometimes, and if you've got your foot hardish on the brake when switching from P to D the pedal will drop all of a sudden, like someone pulled a pin out and let it drop.

The last couple mph in 1PD, or crawling at 1-2 mph the car feels like a stepper motor, or like it’s rolling over a bad bearing. Could be the charge controller switching between regen and not. Have to see if it’s different if decelerating or accelerating through it

Steering behaves oddly at the locks. Turn the wheel to lock and it stops at the end, but then sometimes it goes a little bit further after a second. Release is sudden, though, and unexpected. Steering overall is odd feeling. More feedback than the Tesla, but it weights up like pulling a compound bow. The weight builds nicely, but it sometimes releases all of a sudden, causing an oversteer. Slight, but surprising.

Skittery under any power over rough surfaces, likes to skip sideways a little bit. Haven’t noticed it moving enough to matter, but it’s noticeable. Also haven’t noticed it especially on turns. Could be the motor controllers aren’t adjusting power quickly or finely enough.

Nowhere near as fast as the Tesla, but it hardly matters. 50-80 acceleration is perfectly fine, but feels like it should pull harder. Could be a result of the 5-second rule (which seems to be cumulative – 5 seconds of max power over 15 seconds or so), have to test on some 50-80 races.

Tesla built a car around an electric motor. Ford and Porsche have put an electric motor in a car. Different.

On my first school run I accelerated some coffee out of my cup, right into the parking brake switch well. Oops.

Interior fit and finish is fine. Materials are decent, but there's some bean-counter thin plastic in places. Not a big fan of the seat fabric- it's grippy enough, but feels kind of like the fabric on the T in Boston. No

Porche has said that 1-PD will never be good enough because the concept is flawed. “It is efficient to coast and keep kinetic energy in the vehicle”. Since they know an awful lot about racing, speed and efficiency, their engineers may be on to something. I just assumed it had more to do with the 2-speed transmission, but it’s their stubborn engineers.

 

[ctenidae]

Porche has said that 1-PD will never be good enough because the concept is flawed. “It is efficient to coast and keep kinetic energy in the vehicle”. Since they know an awful lot about racing, speed and efficiency, their engineers may be on to something. I just assumed it had more to do with the 2-speed transmission, but it’s their stubborn engineers.

I guess that's true on a race track, but when approaching a stop sign it's much safer to convert that kinetic energy back into potential energy. I mean, sure, not stopping is more efficient, but not always viable. Seems like some excusineering to me.

 

[joebruin77]

Thanks for sharing your impressions. We've had our MME GTPE for about 4 days. What's interesting is I had also seen Kyle's Out of Spec videos and his comments about the 1-pedal driving. So I was expecting for there to be a problem with the feel of the 1-pedal braking, especially when it came to a complete stop. I think Ford must have updated the system because my MME's breaking is so much better than I expected. It is very smooth and there is zero jerking or roughness when it comes to a complete stop. I was pleasantly surprised.

I love the MME overall and am very happy with it. The one area where I feel like Ford needs some improvement is in the FordPass app. I wish there was a way to adjust the number of amps I am charging at as well as a simple and direct way to adjust the maximum charge level. On the Tesla app, I can do both quickly and easily. I hope Ford adds these features in future editions of the FordPass app.

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