Adventures of our Grabber Blue Space Pony...

[kindofblue]

These are all Amazon links. I found similar items off of Amazon, but several charged more for shipping than the item itself.

High Voltage Stickers

Lift Here Stickers

DOT C2 Red Reflective Tape

Lifting Pucks

Gracias! I had the same issue with these pucks for our MY and sent them back. Anyone find some that stay put (when stationary and trying to position the lift)?

Sponsored

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Gracias! I had the same issue with these pucks for our MY and sent them back. Anyone find some that stay put (when stationary and trying to position the lift)?

For these ones, I can get the nubs into the holes so they'll stay put while the vehicle is stationary and I'm positioning the lift. I was hoping to keep them there while being able to drive, but I don't think I want to chance one coming off on the freeway and causing harm to someone else, so I'll remove them and store them in the frunk.

 

[kindofblue]

For these ones, I can get the nubs into the holes so they'll stay put while the vehicle is stationary and I'm positioning the lift. I was hoping to keep them there while being able to drive, but I don't think I want to chance one coming off on the freeway and causing harm to someone else, so I'll remove them and store them in the frunk.

Thanks. Good to hear.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Thanks. Good to hear.

The slots toward the front of the car require a bit more force. I ended up just placing the puck on my floor jack and slowly adjusting the puck and jack until everything was lined up. Then it popped right in.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Went to the big box home improvement store to pick up some spring cleaning supplies.

As we were leaving, an employee from the Toyota dealer across the way comes running up.

"Hey, man, I love your Mustang!"

 

[Craigeddy111]

Went to the big box home improvement store to pick up some spring cleaning supplies.

As we were leaving, an employee from the Toyota dealer across the way comes running up.

"Hey, man, I love your Mustang!"

Ugh. The best feeling.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

I and my partner were out of town for 12 days and just recently returned.
We don't garage our vehicles, so the Mustang got to sit outside, alone. We drove the pickup to, and parked it at, the airport. I'm not ready to leave the Mustang at the airport.

We decided to leave the Mustang unplugged and at whatever state of charge it happened to have before we left. Mostly this was to protect the charge port door. We're still not used to leaving protrusions like that open on our vehicles and did not want to come home to damage that could easily have been avoided.

Because it was going to be unplugged, we deleted the precondition schedule. I don't know if that was necessary, and I was too busy preparing for our trip to bother looking it up in the manual.

We left with 85% SOC displayed and returned with 85% SOC displayed. That's not really a surprise. These batteries are very stable.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

I almost ran out of gas in the Tacoma; I've forgotten that some vehicles require me to spend my time going to a gas station and wasting 10 minutes to fill up.

I put 17 gallons in the tank and it cost me $85.

Seventeen gallons might get to Phoenix/Tempe and back.

In the Mustang, eighty-five dollars would get me to LA and back, if I paid for all of the electricity at the highest market rates.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Took the pony on a week-long trip over about 1500 miles.

Mostly the trip was uneventful.

The Electrify America charging was mostly free in dollars, but we encountered problems with nearly every charging stop.

The first stop in Kingman, AZ was fine.

The second stop in Needles, CA was a mess with only a couple of the chargers working for a long line of vehicles.

We stopped at the new stations in Goff and they worked fairly well.

Then none of the EA stations we stopped at in the rest of CA worked well.

Back in AZ, most of the stations were offline or providing only 30 kW or less.

Overall, it has been a frustrating charging experience compared with what I've had up to now.

I would rather pay higher prices than have to play craps with the chargers.

 

[kindofblue]

Sorry to hear this and road trippers be forewarned. That's a big reason why we're going to keep a PHEV as a second vehicle, at least for a while.

Edit: Decided to go whole hog and got a BMW i4 rather than a PHEV.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Sorry to hear this and road trippers be forewarned. That's a big reason why we're going to keep a PHEV as a second vehicle, at least for a while.

This is my first experience with most of the chargers misbehaving. I've had the experience of one here or there, but not entire banks.

Someone at the station this afternoon seemed to be under the impression that EA is doing some kind of work on their network. I don't know whether there's any truth to that.

I knew we were signing up to be testers, but knowing that is different from experiencing it.

30 kW draw from 30% to 85% is sloooooooooooooow... Or at least feels slow.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

I haven't been posting here much. Just driving the Mustang a lot. We've had it for about 10 months and have about 12,000 miles on it.

I was making a run to the hardware store today when I had to push through some 3-foot snow drifts. The Mustang did fine, of course, but on the way home I decided to stop for a photo.

We just have the factory tires that came with it. We have debated getting snow tires, but...we really haven't needed them despite the ~60" of snow we've received so far this January.

Still loving the vehicle. No problems with it other than a fastener came loose on the rear taillight and made it rattle a bit--easy fix.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

We took another ~1100 mile round trip work trip from northern Arizona to Pasadena and back. The trip included a lot of short trips around the LA area.

The biggest issue with the trip was that two EA charging stations, one of our usual stops and a backup stop, were completely offline. This was annoying. But we charged at a slower DCFC charger (62.5 kW), honestly it wasn't all that much slower. The average efficiency we got was about 3.5 miles/kWh.

The hotel I stayed at had a free L2 charger that I was able to get charged up every night...except for the most important last day I was there. I left with about 60% SOC. Oh, well.

I started my return trip late in the evening. I don't drive well at night--I tend to get sleepy, but I needed to get home, so I expected I would have to stop at least once or twice just for napping. I again stopped at the slower DCFC chargers where there should have been faster DCFC chargers. Because of the slower charger, I had the opportunity to take a quick nap while charging. I got about halfway home and had to stop for the night. I found a place with a free L2 charger (well, with four free L2 chargers, I think). I plugged in to charge overnight at 6 kW. When I was ready for breakfast, I moved from the L2 to a DCFC charger nearby and got up to about 95% SOC while having breakfast.

I decided to skip my usual last stop on the way home, even though I was climbing up from near sea level to over 7,000 feet elevation and running relatively low efficiency. I arrived at home with 13% SOC. My average efficiency on the way home (from 0-7,000 ft elevation, highway speeds) was about 2.5 miles/kWh.

Overall the trip was great. The car did what I expected it to do. I felt a bit of frustration because of EA's removal of its chargers without fully informing its customers.

Here's a photo of my terribly dirty car (from the muddy road at home--the touchless car washes are closed because of the cold, but I didn't have time to wash the car while in California).

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

This is my 1-year report (it's a few days early, but I'm going to be busy then).

Ordering, Waiting, and Purchase

We took delivery of our Grabber Blue Metallic, California Route 1, all-wheel-drive with the extended range battery on 24 February 2022.

The ordering processs was different from walking onto a lot, dealing with the haggle for four hours, and eventually (maybe) driving away with a new car. I don’t enjoy dealership interactions and so was happy to be able to configure and order online. Because of the unreasonable political power car dealerships have, Ford cannot sell directly to customers, so we had to order through an “authorized dealer.” The nearest authorized dealer is about 70 miles away. We placed our order on 1 October 2021. Ford’s estimated delivery time was 20-24 weeks.

Our dealer accepted our order a week later, after I called them to ask about what was going on. Another week passed and we changed the color of our vehicle from Cyber Orange Metallic to Grabber Blue Metallic. On 22 October 2021, Ford and the dealer had both accepted the order. So far, we’d been in the process of buying the car for three weeks.

Then the waiting began.

On 4 November, we got an email that production for our vehicle had been scheduled for 10 January 2022.

I had nothing to do between 4 November and 10 January but read all the forums and think about how to filter the warranted frustration with production, build, performance issues from the anecdotal angry posting of semi-anonymous forum members.

10 January 2022 came and went with no update on what was going on with the car. Chip shortages were really hammering all sorts of vehicle production pipelines and Ford’s was no different. I didn’t think I’d see anything for at least a few more weeks at best, but me being me I obsessed about how to find out what was going on with the car. Nothing was going on with the car because it hadn’t been built yet.

On 22 January 2022, we received an email from Ford that the car had been built. The wait-for-shipping stage was going to be just as frustrating as the wait-for-build stage, so I read and interacted with the forums some more to get my Mustang fix. One thing to note was that just because the car was tagged as “built” did not mean it was complete. We were seeing many cars being parked in lots in Mexico and in the US waiting for their final chip delivery and installation. I had little expectation that we would see our car any time soon.

Less than a week later, on 26 January 2022, we received an email from Ford indicating that the car had been put on the train from Mexico to the United States. One might think that would mean fast shipping from Mexico to the distribution center. But, no. These trains aren’t fast. And there are a lot of inspections that happen along the route.

On 6 February 2022, I noted that the tracking system of one particular truck-based shipping company used by Ford had scanned my vehicle’s VIN into their system. This meant that the car had been offloaded from the train into a holding lot in Kansas City, MO. I wasn’t too excited about this because some people had been seeing their car sit for weeks in Kansas City while they waited for the proper chips to be installed.

While waiting, we had a level 2 charging port installed at our home.

I did start obsessively watching the Ford “AsBuilt” database to see if our vehicle’s modules were installed and/or different from other vehicle modules. It seemed like our vehicle had all of its modules, but I didn’t want to get excited about that.

There was very little new information available from the various tracking sources to inform me of when the car would be shipped from Kansas City to Arizona. I could get an estimate by watching what was going on with cars that had been delivered to Kansas City at the same time as mine and were being shipped by another shipping company. Mostly, though, I was speculating about delivery times. I hoped for a delivery of early March.

On about 20 February, I received an email from the dealer telling me that my car had been delivered. They needed a couple of days to prep and charge the car, so I could pick it up on the 22nd.

Delivery

Except there was a massive snowstorm rolling in on the 22nd and we just weren’t going to feel comfortable driving a brand new Mustang in a snowstorm. So we scheduled pickup for 24 February.

On 24 February we went down to the dealer and started the worst part of the entire purchase. We had already committed to buying the car, we had already done the paperwork online, and had been approved for the lease-like loan. But it still took HOURS to get through the process. Have I mentioned that I hate dealing with car dealers?

Well, after many hours, we finally had the car in our possession. We did the walkaround inspection, went through having the dealer tell me incorrect information about the car, etc. We paired our phones, set up our (two!) fobs, and were good to go. The car had 9 miles on it when we took possession.

I asked my partner if she wanted to drive it home but she asked me to.

What a fantastic ride home!

The next day, a friend brought his Tesla Model X over for a look. We enjoyed taking rides in each others’ vehicles, but neither was going to even consider a trade for the other.

I drove the Mustang around town to show it off to some friends.

Then two days after we brought it home, we took it on its first long road trip.

Driving

We drove from our home to the Grand Canyon and back, a total of 230-ish miles. The temperatures were hovering around freezing. The elevation profile was 7,000 feet to 4,200 feet to 7,000 feet and back again. We stayed at a speed of around 60-65 mph for most of the trip. After doing the basic calculations, I was happy to see that our EPA-estimated range of 312 miles was an underestimate; we beat that range by about 6%. Other than a Prius, I’ve never been able to get, much less beat, the EPA-estimated efficiency of a vehicle.

We took a bunch of short trips (50-100 miles) over the next several weeks, getting used to the vehicle.

Then on 10 March 2022, we took our first very long trip from home to Los Angeles. The one-way distance is about 450 miles. We would have to charge multiple times on the way. I did some trip planning using a whole pile of apps and determined that our best bets were to charge in Kingman, Needles, and Barstow.

We headed down off the mountain in a windy, icy snowstorm. When we arrived at the charger in Kingman, we had about 30% state of charge (SOC). This was less than the apps had anticipated, but better than I had feared given the cold, windy, snowy start to the trip. At the time I didn’t know about using the built-in navigation system to help precondition the battery for charging, so it took 27 minutes to charge from 30% to 80%. We had lunch while the vehicle was charging and really didn’t notice the 27 minutes as any different from the time it would have cost us if we were in our dead-dino-juice vehicle.

We went on to the Needles charging station. We arrived with much more charge than we’d expected (60% instead of about 50%). The warmer weather and warmer battery (from the charging in Kingman) had helped with efficiency quite a bit. We charged to 80% in 13 minutes, which was barely enough time for us to run to the restroom across the street.

We headed from Needles to Barstow, 144 miles, and almost immediately ran into incredible headwinds. We ended up slowing from the speed of traffic to about 65 mph and then 60 mph while the car yelled at us for only having 50 miles of range left. We arrived with about 17% SoC.

We added 64 kWh (about 70%) to our battery in 45 minutes while eating dinner and cleaning the windshield. This was maybe a bit longer than we would have spent if we’d had a dead-dino-burning vehicle instead of the Mustang, but it still wasn’t obnoxious.

We saw three other Mustangs at the charging stable in Barstow. The third one, a Cyber Orange Metallic GT was pulling in as we were pulling out. That Cyber Orange is gorgeous.

We spent the weekend in LA, running a ton of errands, visiting botanical gardens, and otherwise enjoying the warm weather. Then headed home. There were no surprises or problems on our way home. We left a little late so decided to stay the night in Needles at the hotel next to the charging stable, which also had Level 2 chargers. We charged up on Level 2 overnight and had 100% charge for the rest of the drive home.

Since then, we’ve had a bunch of different adventures in the car, including making that 1100 mile drive several more times. We have about 13,250 miles on the car right now.

Likes and Dislikes:
Dislikes first:

• I don’t like the way the HVAC controls are laid out on a touchscreen instead of with physical buttons and knobs. It requires me to remove my eyes from the road to control and that’s more than annoying, I consider it unsafe.
• I don’t like that when it’s well below freezing the heat isn’t as effective as it could be, and I don’t like that Ford didn’t use the AC unit as a heat pump to create more efficient heat.
• I tried the Phone As A Key (PAAK) and hated it.
• I wish the price was lower.
• I wish it had a tow rating.
• I wish it had a 120V inverter and outlets in the frunk and in the rear cargo area.
• I don’t like the glass roof but my partner loves it.
• I wish it had a “Precondition Battery Now” button on the app and in-vehicle interface.
• Ford’s Navigation system should be more aware of charger issues in its Blue Oval network than it is.
• It’s a little too fun to drive.

Likes:

• It was and can be again powered entirely by the Sun for local trips.
• It’s one of the most amazing vehicles I’ve ever owned.
• The acceleration is scary.
• It handles incredibly well.
• There are so many cool things to geek out about (range, efficiency, engineering of the battery, etc., etc., etc).
• I love the departure time controls (so the car is warmed while on grid or solar power).
• It is SO quiet compared with my gas truck.
• It handles itself very well in the snow and ice and mud.

Issues Separate from the Car Itself
Charging infrastructure has a way to go to be totally easy for people used to driving a dead-dino-burning vehicle. In particular, people believe they can get into and out of a gas station in five minutes, which is totally unrealistic, but people have their mythologies. I grew up with cars that were lucky to make it 50 miles without some kind of trouble, much less across the Arizona and California deserts. So considering where my stops might be is nothing new to me.

There are the typical haters. I don’t get as many idiots in jacked-up, big-tire, low-gear diesel trucks trying to race me or coal roll me as my friend with their Tesla gets, but I have had one or two.

People on the freeway really like to grab my attention while I’m driving and it can sometimes be dangerous.

People still—after 20 years of Prius, hybrid, plugin-hybrid, and BEV vehicles—will tell me that my battery is going to fail soon and will cost me a lot of money. People are easily fooled by false statements made by youtube and tv hosts with agendas.

People still—despite all of the reality and evidence—claim batteries are worse for the environment than burning fossil fuels. People are easily fooled by false statements made by youtube and tv hosts with agendas.

Overall
I love the Mustang.
I believe EVs are ready for the mainstream.
Except for their prices. Even the cheapest new EV available in the US is around $30k and it should be closer to $15k to $20k.

For most people, having access to a level 2 charger is not a reality. However, despite a lot of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD), it’s totally reasonable to have a simple 120-volt Level 1 charger that stays with the car. When we’re not doing road trips, we can stay on our Level 1 charger most of the time and have no issues with range, state of charge, or battery health. There are fast chargers close enough that we could easily go back to the old way of refueling just before a trip if we needed to. Being able to fill up your car overnight is incredibly convenient and I hadn’t realized how annoying going to the gas station is until I was able to compare my Mustang with my truck. Gas stations suck.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

It's cold out there (I took this a few nights ago--the rest of the pictures are from this afternoon).

It's snowy out there.

We sure do appreciate heated mirrors.

Looks like our charge port cover got blown around (but not blown away) in the 50mph+ winds last night.