2,000 mile review

jeremyF

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Jeremy
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2021 Mach E
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I've had my 2021 Mach-E (AWD ER) for about six weeks, and I crossed over 2,000 miles this week. The first 1,000 miles were mostly short trips around town. This past week I took it out for a 1,000 mile round-trip down I-95 from Delaware to Myrtle Beach, SC. I am very happy to own this vehicle, the negatives listed below are far outweighed by the positives (even if the count says otherwise!). Here are my thoughts:

Positives

- Great ride, very comfortable for me. I am a large 6' tall guy, and even on the 10+ hour drive back this Saturday I was completely comfortable.
- The assisted driving feature is great; significantly better than my wife's 2019 Volvo XC90. It handles highway curves much better than the Volvo. The Volvo has a tendency to understeer around highway bends, then beep at you for not staying in the lanes. This rarely happened in the Mach E, even at high speeds.
- The auto-speed adjustment based on speed limit signs works very well. I set mine to a few MPH over the limit, and the car handled all the speed adjustments.
- Range anxiety goes away very quickly. The car does a great job of reminding me to charge up, and locate the closest the charger.
- The sound system is amazing. Try listening to Bohemian Rhapsody for a great demonstration of its surround sound audio. Make sure you enable Surround Sound in the settings, my car was delivered in Stereo mode.

Negatives
- Please Ford, let me control the recirculating air function. This is not a new complaint, my older Mustangs and other Fords had the same issue. This has probably been my biggest pet peeve about the many Fords I've owned. Having it turn off quietly while behind a big rig, and then having my cabin fill with noxious fumes, is incredibly annoying. I promise I am smart enough to not let my windshield fog up.
- If fixing the recirculating air function is a non-starter, please offer a better air filtration system or even an upgraded cabin air filter to keep highway fumes out of the vehicle when receiving 'fresh' air.
- The sensor for 'hands on the wheel' when using assisted driving is not sensitive enough. The car frequently tells me to put my hands on the wheel when they've been there the whole time. This is probably a victim-of-success issue, since the auto-steering works so well I don't need to correct it often. As mentioned before, my Volvo doesn't do this because I am constantly adjusting the wheel. I am very much looking forward to the Hands-Free upgrade later this year. If Ford needs another beta tester, please reach out!
- Wireless CarPlay has two drawbacks. First, my phone's battery drains faster than the wireless charger can keep it topped up. So I have to plug it in anyway on a long trip. This is probably more of an issue with my 2.5 year old iPhone Xr. Also, after 30-ish minutes, the audio becomes choppy and disconnects. I don't know if this is a Ford or Apple bug. I disable Wireless CarPlay and now use the wired version.
- Somewhat related, my phone's GPS has trouble when the phone is on the wireless charger. Waze often thinks I'm driving in a field alongside the road. There's probably too much interference in that specific position, below the dashboard/display.
- The speed limit sign reading doesn't work very well with temporary construction speed limits (the ones with small light bulbs). Not a significant issue, but it was noticeable and consistent. It also has trouble with 'dual' speed signs, like you see along highway express lanes. Just north of Baltimore there is an I-95 express lane which is parallel to regular I-95. The speed limit for the express side is 65mph, and regular I-95 is 55mph. Both signs are next to each other. I recall the car getting confused and putting me at the wrong speed. But it was late, and at the end of a long drive, so I may be misremembering.

Possible Improvements / Bugs Found
- It would be nice to have a simple 'recalculate chargers' button on the map. While driving long distances I've gotten better than expected miles/KwH, and the only way I could find to have the map put me to a further Level3 charger was to cancel my trip and regenerate it. I may be missing a simpler way.
- Small bug found: When in motion, select "Where to?", then MyTrips. The first trip in the list is greyed out and cannot be selected due to "vehicle in motion". The others are available. I think they all should be tappable.
- At one point during my trip, the car showed 198 miles to destination, and 174 miles to empty. It would not recommend a charger along the route until I canceled my destination and restarted my trip. Then it added a charger.
- During the same trip, the turn-by-turn directions became out-of-sync between the display and the dashboard. The dashboard directions were about 4 miles behind the one on the display (which was accurate). This persisted even after I turned briefly turned off the car and canceled/restarted the trip. It wasn't until I had the car off for 20ish minutes at a charging stop that they got back in sync.

Other Thoughts
- The front end of the car is a bug magnet! The flat front was coated in bugs from my trip. After two passes through an automatic car wash, I still had to hand wash the front end.
- Not stopping at gas stations makes it difficult to clean bugs off the windshield on a long trip. I intend to put some glass cleaner and paper towels in the frunk for future trips. The level3 chargers do not have any windshield cleaning gear, although most of them along I-95 are located in Walmart parking lots, so it is easy enough to buy what you need inside.
- It turns out Myrtle Beach, SC does not have any level3 chargers within ~40 miles. Even the level2 charger I found was incredibly slow (4.4Kw). Hopefully someone installs a set near town. There is a large Tesla Supercharger deployment at the mall near the airport. I was able to charge overnight at 120v at my in-law's home, which got me barely enough juice to get back to an Electrify America level3 charger in Lumberton, NC.

Despite all the things listed above, this is a great car. I highly recommend it!

Jeremy
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mark360

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I've had my 2021 Mach-E (AWD ER) for about six weeks, and I crossed over 2,000 miles this week. The first 1,000 miles were mostly short trips around town. This past week I took it out for a 1,000 mile round-trip down I-95 from Delaware to Myrtle Beach, SC. I am very happy to own this vehicle, the negatives listed below are far outweighed by the positives (even if the count say otherwise!). Here are my thoughts:

Positives

- Great ride, very comfortable for me. I am a large 6' tall guy, and even on the 10+ hour drive back this Saturday I was completely comfortable.
- The assisted driving feature is great; significantly better than my wife's 2019 Volvo XC90. It handles highway curves much better than the Volvo. The Volvo has a tendency to understeer around highway bends, then beep at you for not staying in the lanes. This rarely happened in the Mach E, even at high speeds.
- The auto-speed adjustment based on speed limit signs works very well. I set mine to a few MPH over the limit, and the car handled all the speed adjustments.
- Range anxiety goes away very quickly. The car does a great job of reminding me to charge up, and locate the closest the charger.
- The sound system is amazing. Try listening to Bohemian Rhapsody for a great demonstration of its surround sound audio. Make sure you enable Surround Sound in the settings, my car was delivered in Stereo mode.

Negatives
- Please Ford, let me control the recirculating air function. This is not a new complaint, my older Mustangs and other Fords had the same issue. This has probably been my biggest pet peeve about the many Fords I've owned. Having it turn off quietly while behind a big rig, and then having my cabin fill with noxious fumes, is incredibly annoying. I promise I am smart enough to not let my windshield fog up.
- If fixing the recirculating air function is a non-starter, please offer a better air filtration system or even an upgraded cabin air filter to keep highway fumes out of the vehicle when receiving 'fresh' air.
- The sensor for 'hands on the wheel' when using assisted driving is not sensitive enough. The car frequently tells me to put my hands on the wheel when they've been there the whole time. This is probably a victim-of-success issue, since the auto-steering works so well I don't need to correct it often. As mentioned before, my Volvo doesn't do this because I am constantly adjusting the wheel. I am very much looking forward to the Hands-Free upgrade later this year. If Ford needs another beta tester, please reach out!
- Wireless CarPlay has two drawbacks. First, my phone's battery drains faster than the wireless charger can keep it topped up. So I have to plug it in anyway on a long trip. This is probably more of an issue with my 2.5 year old iPhone Xr. Also, after 30-ish minutes, the audio becomes choppy and disconnects. I don't know if this is a Ford or Apple bug. I disable Wireless CarPlay and now use the wired version.
- Somewhat related, my phone's GPS has trouble when the phone is on the wireless charger. Waze often thinks I'm driving in a field alongside the road. There's probably too much interference in that specific position, below the dashboard/display.
- The speed limit sign reading doesn't work very well with temporary construction speed limits (the ones with small light bulbs). Not a significant issue, but it was noticeable and consistent. It also has trouble with 'dual' speed signs, like you see along highway express lanes. Just north of Baltimore there is an I-95 express lane which is parallel to regular I-95. The speed limit for the express side is 65mph, and regular I-95 is 55mph. Both signs are next to each other. I recall the car getting confused and putting me at the wrong speed. But it was late, and at the end of a long drive, so I may be misremembering.

Possible Improvements / Bugs Found
- It would be nice to have a simple 'recalculate chargers' button on the map. While driving long distances I've gotten better than expected miles/KwH, and the only way I could find to have the map put me to a further Level3 charger was to cancel my trip and regenerate it. I may be missing a simpler way.
- Small bug found: When in motion, select "Where to?", then MyTrips. The first trip in the list is greyed out and cannot be selected due to "vehicle in motion". The others are available. I think they all should be tappable.
- At one point during my trip, the car showed 198 miles to destination, and 174 miles to empty. It would not recommend a charger along the route until I canceled my destination and restarted my trip. Then it added a charger.
- During the same trip, the turn-by-turn directions became out-of-sync between the display and the dashboard. The dashboard directions were about 4 miles behind the one on the display (which was accurate). This persisted even after I turned briefly turned off the car and canceled/restarted the trip. It wasn't until I had the car off for 20ish minutes at a charging stop that they got back in sync.

Other Thoughts
- The front end of the car is a bug magnet! The flat front was coated in bugs from my trip. After two passes through an automatic car wash, I still had to hand wash the front end.
- Not stopping at gas stations makes it difficult to clean bugs off the windshield on a long trip. I intend to put some glass cleaner and paper towels in the frunk for future trips. The level3 chargers do not have any windshield cleaning gear, although most of them along I-95 are in front of Walmarts, so you it is easy enough to buy what you need inside.
- It turns out Myrtle Beach, SC does not have any level3 chargers within ~40 miles. Even the level2 charger I found was incredibly slow (4.4Kw). Hopefully someone installs a set near town. There is a large Tesla Supercharger deployment at the mall near the airport. I was able to charge overnight at 120v at my in-law's home, which got me barely enough juice to get back to an Electrify America level3 charger in Lumberton, NC.

Despite all the things listed above, this is a great car. I highly recommend it!

Jeremy
Great review, thank you
 

krafty81

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I do agree about the hands-on sensitivity of steering wheel. Lightly resting hands on the wheel should be enough but I am constantly "nagged" about that. I noticed that I usually do cruise control with one hand on the wheel. Not anymore!
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