Car and Driver: Lightning Platinum 12.7@107mph 1/4mile and 4.0 0-60mph

[buzznwood]

I guess I look at this from a numbers stand point. The F-150 lightning platinum starts at $90k. That's a solid $20k over Mach E GT price. Then there's the F-150 sales numbers. The truck has been Ford's biggest seller forever, so they know there's a huge market for it. Yes, bigger than for the Mach E.

I myself have a Mach E 4x and it moves quite well, both from a get and at highway speeds. I can't imagine the neck snapping the GT gives from a light, and let's be honest, that's where the vast majority of us do this, not at the track.

I'm not hating on anyone that feels they've been duped. I just think you all have an amazing vehicle that some of us wish we had.

Ford will probably make changes in future models, that to is a numbers thing. If sales suffer, changes move faster. That's the nature of the business, keep the customer wanting more, and better. Now go out and snap your neck at a light, and lay waste to an ice vehicle, you'll feel better...I promise.

Cheers!

The bold is the important part and this is the real issue that I find keeps getting lost in these discussions every time it is brought up, as it quickly get derailed into low speed 0-60 situations away from traffic lights or merging with slow moving town traffic where 5 seconds is enough to cover every day situations.

The key take away should not be faster 0-60s or the 1/4 mile time of a GTPE vs 4x but that the trap speed of your 4x is faster than the GTPE that means for the import upper mind range that you need on the highway the GTPE was accelerating slower than your 4x as it was hobbled by the power limiter.

When you are driving your 4x on the freeway and accelerate you will get a consistent level of performance as the battery discharges cold temps etc you can expect a reduction but this is just one of those EV things.

So in your 4x you could be cruising along on the freeway come up on a slow moving semi so go to overtake it, you want to accelerate up to the speed of the faster moving lane to the left, so you push the go pedal and overtake drop back to the right and lift off to your original speed and carry on a simple everyday maneuver.

While doing that in the GT/GTPE all too often results in have a quick look at the power see you have 90%+ power available due to current sate of discharge ambient temps so ample power to get past the semi in "5 seconds", start the maneuver the power limit kicks in straight away and now 75% of your power meter is greyed out as you crawl past the semi slower than your 4x while another time you do the exact same things and maybe get a couple of seconds before the limit cuts in it is that random.

For people that live is states where freeway speeds are high, the performance hit you get from having 3/4 of your available power just disappearing in an instant means you have to assume this is always going to happen to drive safely you can not drive the same way you would if you had a true 480hp

If you always had 5 seconds of full power while not ideal people would grumble less at present it is only 5 seconds in a very limited scenario which does not include the one where you want it the most which is at freeway speeds where in some scenarios the power limit cutting in could be borderline dangerous.

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[Thor2j]

The bold is the important part and this is the real issue that I find keeps getting lost in these discussions every time it is brought up, as it quickly get derailed into low speed 0-60 situations away from traffic lights or merging with slow moving town traffic where 5 seconds is enough to cover every day situations.

The key take away should not be faster 0-60s or the 1/4 mile time of a GTPE vs 4x but that the trap speed of your 4x is faster than the GTPE that means for the import upper mind range that you need on the highway the GTPE was accelerating slower than your 4x as it was hobbled by the power limiter.

When you are driving your 4x on the freeway and accelerate you will get a consistent level of performance as the battery discharges cold temps etc you can expect a reduction but this is just one of those EV things.

So in your 4x you could be cruising along on the freeway come up on a slow moving semi so go to overtake it, you want to accelerate up to the speed of the faster moving lane to the left, so you push the go pedal and overtake drop back to the right and lift off to your original speed and carry on a simple everyday maneuver.

While doing that in the GT/GTPE all too often results in have a quick look at the power see you have 90%+ power available due to current sate of discharge ambient temps so ample power to get past the semi in "5 seconds", start the maneuver the power limit kicks in straight away and now 75% of your power meter is greyed out as you crawl past the semi slower than your 4x while another time you do the exact same things and maybe get a couple of seconds before the limit cuts in it is that random.

For people that live is states where freeway speeds are high, the performance hit you get from having 3/4 of your available power just disappearing in an instant means you have to assume this is always going to happen to drive safely you can not drive the same way you would if you had a true 480hp

If you always had 5 seconds of full power while not ideal people would grumble less at present it is only 5 seconds in a very limited scenario which does not include the one where you want it the most which is at freeway speeds where in some scenarios the power limit cutting in could be borderline dangerous.

Complete BS.

I live in the foothills of Colorado. I climb 2800 feet in about 8 miles dead of winter. I have zero problems passing anybody going up the hill and usually drive between 75-80. I never charge more then 90%. Only time I see too many grey bars is when car is left outside for days. Normally driving at those speeds in winter I may have 3 bars at most. After the climb it may be 5. No where near your claims.

Do I think the 5 second thing is completely bs?? Hell yes. I'd be glad to be part of a class action lawsuit if nothing is done. But your claims are absurd.

 

[fpasta]

Interesting . I really want to test drive a GT now. Will they let me take it past 80? I don't know.

 

[Kevin P]

Complete BS.

I live in the foothills of Colorado. I climb 2800 feet in about 8 miles dead of winter. I have zero problems passing anybody going up the hill and usually drive between 75-80. I never charge more then 90%. Only time I see too many grey bars is when car is left outside for days. Normally driving at those speeds in winter I may have 3 bars at most. After the climb it may be 5. No where near your claims.

Do I think the 5 second thing is completely bs?? Hell yes. I'd be glad to be part of a class action lawsuit if nothing is done. But your claims are absurd.

I agree, its not that slow or anywhere near dangerous on the highway. It will blast from 70 to ~90 quite quickly given the instant response.

With all that said, I sold my Mach-E GT yesterday for more than I paid for it, and ordered one of those ugly BMW i4 M50s.

 

[Thor2j]

I agree, its not that slow or anywhere near dangerous on the highway. It will blast from 70 to ~90 quite quickly given the instant response.

With all that said, I sold my Mach-E GT yesterday for more than I paid for it, and ordered one of those ugly BMW i4 M50s.

When bmw comes out with x4m electric mine will be gone as well.

 

[buzznwood]

Complete BS.

I live in the foothills of Colorado. I climb 2800 feet in about 8 miles dead of winter. I have zero problems passing anybody going up the hill and usually drive between 75-80. I never charge more then 90%. Only time I see too many grey bars is when car is left outside for days. Normally driving at those speeds in winter I may have 3 bars at most. After the climb it may be 5. No where near your claims.

Do I think the 5 second thing is completely bs?? Hell yes. I'd be glad to be part of a class action lawsuit if nothing is done. But your claims are absurd.

If you have never has the locked out power bar and needed to wait on the count down timer for it to clear back to the original small number of bars then you either have a magic GT, have never pushing the throttle hard enough or actually watched what happens to the power power bar when you do.

At freeway speeds it behaves nothing like a performance vehicle which is supposed to have 480hp it is an utter turd above 70mph so I drive it accordingly. Everyone has different ideas of what is an acceptable performance benchmark for a 480hp vehicle, if you find your GT meets those requirements then all power to you, for me it is only close 0-60mph after that forget it is light years away a 0-100mph of 12 seconds is laughable. Thankfully I never purchased it for performance reasons and drive it as such.

One of the benefits of forums is to not gloss over and sugar coat what are serious performance defects for those that are contemplating purchasing a GT/ GTPE with performance in mind so they can go in eyes wide open and see if they think it will be a problem for them or not and I certainly stand with those that feel duped and feel Ford needs to address the issue.

 

[Electric Goat]

Don't forget that you can order the Pro with the same battery/more power if you have a fleet. So the 18yo landscaper might blow your doors off at the light. It almost makes me wonder if companies are going have a harder time insuring these Lightnings. I'm shocked there isn't a "valet mode" with reduced power.

I do know that business owners have requested ford to make an option to restrict power. Many fleet owners don't want to be replacing tires every 20,000 miles and they especially don't want the liability of a truck that runs 12s in the quarter.

Ford clearly applied the 5 second limit to the wrong vehicle

 

[silverelan]

It wasn't being designed as a Mustang SUV until pretty far along with the development process. Not so far along that they couldn't restyle it (which they obviously did), but perhaps far enough along that they were working with a battery cooling system initially designed for what was going to be something as sporty as a Ford Escape EV.

At least that would be my guess, that if they weren't going to start back at step one with the Mach-E once authorization was given to make it a Mustang EV SUV, they probably were a bit constrained by the already-designed basic design of the vehicle.

Still, I think it could just be that Ford is perhaps waiting on a bit more data before relaxing the five second rule. Of all the various grab bag of issues we have seen on this forum, knock on lots of wood, at least so far no one seems to be reporting any type of overheating issue on any Mach-E variant.

yup, this is pretty much exactly it.

I think us GT/GTPE owners are hosed on the 5 Second Rule. Ford Escape EV was just never going to have the hardware to do anything more than be a flash in the pan.

It’s possible the mid-cycle refresh will give the car an improvement and certainly the 2027 MME GT will match a 2021 Model Y Performance in 0-60 & 1/4 mile times and maybe even a lap or two around a track.

 

[Thor2j]

If you have never has the locked out power bar and needed to wait on the count down timer for it to clear back to the original small number of bars then you either have a magic GT, have never pushing the throttle hard enough or actually watched what happens to the power power bar when you do.

At freeway speeds it behaves nothing like a performance vehicle which is supposed to have 480hp it is an utter turd above 70mph so I drive it accordingly. Everyone has different ideas of what is an acceptable performance benchmark for a 480hp vehicle, if you find your GT meets those requirements then all power to you, for me it is only close 0-60mph after that forget it is light years away a 0-100mph of 12 seconds is laughable. Thankfully I never purchased it for performance reasons and drive it as such.

One of the benefits of forums is to not gloss over and sugar coat what are serious performance defects for those that are contemplating purchasing a GT/ GTPE with performance in mind so they can go in eyes wide open and see if they think it will be a problem for them or not and I certainly stand with those that feel duped and feel Ford needs to address the issue.

Ahhhh, there it is. You don't even own one. Never mind, nothing to see here.

 

[Blue highway]

If they’re never going to fix it, yes, I would rather know now instead of being stuck in limbo and forced to speculate.

And if they’re working on it…… freakin say so! They’ve told us TONS of “coming soon” updates well before they happen.

And yes, multiple people have already sold their GTs because of the limit and have been very vocal.

And even more have said “I won’t buy one until they fix it.”

Since we are speculating here, I'll speculate that it will not get fixed in the 21 and 22's and I wouldn't expect an announcement of any kind. I think so for a couple of reasons.

There will be a refresh at some point (23 or 24 at the latest) that will not have this issue and will likely be even faster 0-60.

Of all the things Ford could spend time on (2.7L failures, supply chain catastrophe, OTA disaster, dealers not ready for electric, etc.) it don't think this will be a top 20. The executive level argument will be that the GT is selling well and one of the fastest cars available at street speeds on the planet at any price. It isn't THE fastest, but it is very fast where most buyers care, which is off the line.

Lastly, what exactly do you think the benefit to Ford would be in saying "we are not going to fix this"? I don't see how that helps them and I don't think they will say anything.

 

[Pushrods&Capacitors]

Ahhhh, there it is. You don't even own one. Never mind, nothing to see here.

He owns one, just bought it more for the MagneRide shocks iirc. Point still stands though. A lot of us more hardcore former Mustang drag racers aren’t buying GTs until the issue is fixed. You’d think our opinions would matter some. Once GTs are fixed I’m certain we’ll trade in our 4X for one.

 

[JoeDimwit]

Wow! Five pages of evidence that the Mach-E is #NotAMustang…

 

[River Rat]

I consider it a safety issue, when you want max power for safety reasons (passing/avoidance) being restricted is wrong. Turn the Pony's loose.

 

[Tngo23]

I just went through the same thought process. What other EV is as fast as the Mach E GT and looks as good in its price range? Definitely not the EV6 GT, as much as I like Kia products! And the i4 has that butt ugly new BMW design language. Can’t believe they even ruined the new M3…
So I’ll likely be holding onto my GTPE until I can afford a Taycan, I guess.

I agree....The MME GTPE is a gorgeous design but Taycan is definitely a thing of beauty. Having owned a couple Porsches, Audi's, Bimmers.....

I am waiting for the Audi A6 Avant as my next EV

 

[Stang68]

I agree....The MME GTPE is a gorgeous design but Taycan is definitely a thing of beauty. Having owned a couple Porsches, Audi's, Bimmers.....

I am waiting for the Audi A6 Avant as my next EV

The Avant EV oooh baby…*drools in station wagon*.

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