MachE owner usage statistics revealed

[dtbaker61]

I think you missed the data point about Americans in general, who drive, on average, just 30 miles a day. Many studies have shown that regardless of car type, Americans don't drive very far each day. So I don't think they drew the wrong conclusion at all...

"Prior studies have found that the majority of Americans don’t drive more than 30 miles per day, on average, so an all-electric vehicle like the Mach-E is a perfect fit in that regard."

yup, natl DOT studies show that 90+% americans drive less than 50miles/day, and in multi-car families, at least one of the cars is used less than that.

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[Ride_the_lightning]

I betcha 30 is actually on the high side compared to most countries.

This is the problem with using averages for something like this. It can be grossly misleading. Case in point, we're retired and take a LOT of long road trips. 25k of our 33k miles are on 1500+ mile road trips. Across 2 years. But average that over 700 days of driving and you get just 47 miles/day average. Even though 75% of our miles are road trips.

A lot of people would look at that and say "Oh, 47 miles/day is a piece of cake! Why do you need a big battery?". Which is of course ridiculous.

This. If you only look at the stats of how I drive my MME, it looks like it meets 100% of my needs. I’ve driven it 15,000 miles in 15 months, almost never needing to DCFC, and always less than 100 miles in a day, charged at home in a garage. But this misses the 4000 miles of trips in which we drove our ICE car because the MME would certainly have failed at the task either due to distance, lack of DCFCs, cold weather, or a combination of these things. I WANTED to drive the MME, but couldn’t. Put another way for my situation, this data would say “80% of the time, it works every time!” It does prove it’s a nice second car if you are wealthy enough to also have a nice ICE car.

I’m not saying I hate my car. I don’t. I love it. I knew this was the case when I bought it. I’m an early adopter. But pulling my usage data and trying to draw conclusions from it would absolutely give Ford the wrong idea.

 

[Ghost Ryder]

Ford sucks? Or the infrastructure sucks?

You might not like the battle EVs in general have with cold, but Ford‘s efficiency efforts are on par with TSLA, the South Koreans, VW Group and the others.

Physics is a bitch.

Ford's efficiency is no where near TSLA. I wouldn't say that Ford sucks, I think EV is still in it's infancy. We need more reliable and fasting charging stations.

I think people confuse range anxiety with charging availability anxiety. There are ICE cars out there with tiny gas tank, with range under 300miles. The owners do not have range anxiety, because they know there is a gas station every every few blocks.

 

[JohnFoxeSheets]

This. If you only look at the stats of how I drive my MME, it looks like it meets 100% of my needs. I’ve driven it 15,000 miles in 15 months, almost never needing to DCFC, and always less than 100 miles in a day, charged at home in a garage. But this misses the 4000 miles of trips in which we drove our ICE car because the MME would certainly have failed at the task either due to distance, lack of DCFCs, cold weather, or a combination of these things. I WANTED to drive the MME, but couldn’t. Put another way for my situation, this data would say “80% of the time, it works every time!” It does prove it’s a nice second car if you are wealthy enough to also have a nice ICE car.

I’m not saying I hate my car. I don’t. I love it. I knew this was the case when I bought it. I’m an early adopter. But pulling my usage data and trying to draw conclusions from it would absolutely give Ford the wrong idea.

In fairness though, (assuming your profile is accurate) you did buy the version of the car with the lowest range of the entire line... But to your broader point, yes, I agree that these "findings" are misleading at best. That said, I have little doubt Ford knows what's really going on and these "usage statistics revealed" are simply marketing spin.

 

[Ride_the_lightning]

In fairness though, (assuming your profile is accurate) you did buy the version of the car with the lowest range of the entire line... But to your broader point, yes, I agree that these "findings" are misleading at best. That said, I have little doubt Ford knows what's really going on and these "usage statistics revealed" are simply marketing spin.

I only bought the SR because in Kansas the ER wouldn’t have been any better. It would have been my metro commuter either way. I spent the extra $5500 on better tires, and a PHEV for my wife. There are still 0 DCFC stations outside I-70. I-35 will have 4 plugs in one spot soon but still not open. And yes, my family lives IN Kansas, so I’m not just driving through. I almost bought the ER, but running out of charge 80 miles later and still not having anywhere to charge wasn’t much of an improvement. Heck, driving the ER to Denver in the cold would still take 3 hours longer than in our PHEV and requires all EA stations to be working.

For fun, use ABRP to do a trip from KC to Pratt, KS. Is it possible? Yes, but you better have some balls and know your way around an RV park. and hope EA works that day. And not value your time.

 

[JohnFoxeSheets]

I only bought the SR because in Kansas the ER wouldn’t have been any better. It would have been my metro commuter either way. I spent the extra $5500 on better tires, and a PHEV for my wife. There are still 0 DCFC stations outside I-70. I-35 will have 4 plugs in one spot soon but still not open. And yes, my family lives IN Kansas, so I’m not just driving through. I almost bought the ER, but running out of charge 80 miles later and still not having anywhere to charge wasn’t much of an improvement. Heck, driving the ER to Denver in the cold would still take 3 hours longer than in our PHEV and requires all EA stations to be working.

For fun, use ABRP to do a trip from KC to Pratt, KS. Is it possible? Yes, but you better have some balls and know your way around an RV park. and hope EA works that day. And not value your time.

Yeah, I get your point. No sense spend the extra money on range that doesn't do you any good (at least in the near term)...

 

[HuntingPudel]

Interesting on the daly vs. trip mileage averages. My weekday drives are 21 miles per day and 10.5 miles per trip. Weekends vary. For the averages to be 32 and 5… Wow, a lot of people must make a lot of short trips in a day. ??

 

[dbsb3233]

I only bought the SR because in Kansas the ER wouldn’t have been any better. It would have been my metro commuter either way. I spent the extra $5500 on better tires, and a PHEV for my wife. There are still 0 DCFC stations outside I-70. I-35 will have 4 plugs in one spot soon but still not open. And yes, my family lives IN Kansas, so I’m not just driving through. I almost bought the ER, but running out of charge 80 miles later and still not having anywhere to charge wasn’t much of an improvement. Heck, driving the ER to Denver in the cold would still take 3 hours longer than in our PHEV and requires all EA stations to be working.

For fun, use ABRP to do a trip from KC to Pratt, KS. Is it possible? Yes, but you better have some balls and know your way around an RV park. and hope EA works that day. And not value your time.

We're heading that direction next month from north of Denver, I-70 to Salina then down to Dallas, New Orleans, Memphis, Branson, then back I-70. We are putting a lot of faith in EA, but we've already done 25,000 miles of trips west of Denver using (mostly) EA so we're fairly confident in them. But I know it only takes one station that's completely down to really mess things up.

We do have the ER though, which can usually reach a backup DCFC if really needed. Or at least really close where an hour of L2 would probably add just enough to do it. But that's only if an entire EA station is unusable (that hasn't happened to us yet in ~100 uses, although 2 times they were full and we just went to the backup). There's also some other DCFC in between many legs. Goodland, Limon, and a new station coming soon in Burlington.

The drive to Pratt would add about an hour for us vs ICE. 3 DCFCs, and one of those would be lunch that we'd stop and do even if driving ICE. Basically 2 extra half hour stops.

 

[MellowJohnny]

I betcha 30 is actually on the high side compared to most countries.

This is the problem with using averages for something like this. It can be grossly misleading. Case in point, we're retired and take a LOT of long road trips. 25k of our 33k miles are on 1500+ mile road trips. Across 2 years. But average that over 700 days of driving and you get just 47 miles/day average. Even though 75% of our miles are road trips.

A lot of people would look at that and say "Oh, 47 miles/day is a piece of cake! Why do you need a big battery?". Which is of course ridiculous.

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
- Benjamin Disraeli

 

[Mach-Lee]

Talk about taking the wrong conclusion from the data. We only drive it around town because the charging infrastructure sucks, not because those are the only trips we take. We have second cars. If ford looked at my data they would say “wow he never goes more than 100 miles away! And never drives in the cold!” Yeah, cause the car sucks at both of those things so I drive the Audi on those days.

Totally agree, I've been driving my other car a lot this winter because of how much the Mach-E hates the cold. They are going to totally spin this with marketing to make it sound like LFP will work for almost everyone even though it will suck in the winter.

Data shows if something is being used or not, but it doesn't show if there's an impediment to using it.

Next they will come for our heated seats - "Data shows heated seats are only used in 25% of trips so we can remove them from lower trims."

 

[woody]

An EV does meet the vast majority of American drivers’ needs. I’ve felt for a long time that more people would benefit from an EV than realize it. We are just too used to buying for the exceptional drive need rather than the majority. We often would rent a car for road trips when we weren’t comfortable with using our own car. While I know this isn’t an option for everyone, neither is it necessarily a bad option for those who can afford it. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

agree.
The MME(when/if it works) meets the majority of American driver's requirements. The majority of Americans still work and cannot afford frequent road trips. Their trips are local. 30miles/day is legitimate. As it was in the 1950s.
And EVs are now affordable - a Tesla, MME or any other overpriced EV are not of interest to many Americans. But, reliable EVs like Bolts, Leafs, etc. suffice for many. If they would only wade through the COGU* deceptions.
We have been flying and renting cars for years - even when we drove our Prius', long before we went all EV.
Range anxiety, anti-solar/anti-EV propaganda and gasoline guzzling ICE SUVs are a result of us allowing COGU* to control us.
For the last half century I never once considered range in my vehicle decision purchases. Nor did I ever own an "SUV". mpg was my deciding factor. My pick-up (yes, there was once such a thing) was a 1ton light truck - 30mpg+ for twenty years.

*CoalOilGasUtility

 

[Guss-E 2021]

That's because most people that buy a $60k EV have a house and a garage. You usually have to be at least moderately well off to afford a car in that price range. And most people that are fairly well off own a house rather than rent an apartment.

It would be a very different story if it were an apartment renter that has no garage to park in.

If their implication is that their statistics would apply across the board to universal EV adoption, that would be the wrong conclusion.

There's also surely some self-selection going on with buyers. Meaning, buyers are more likely to choose an EV if living in a warm climate than a cold one.

I took that statistic to mean there are more MMEs in the warmer parts of the country like CA and FL. I would love to see a break down by state or region.

 

[CWSpook]

I suspect those numbers are pretty close. I know they are in our case. The Mach-E is 'her' car, and it's usual mileage is <>20mi/day. In the three months we've owned it, we've only made one trip over over 100 miles and have yet to try public charging. 'My' car is a Wrangler 4xe, which is usually run in full-electric mode for my 10-20 miles per day, and it's also the vehicle we use for trips outside the full-charge range on the Mach-E, as the Jeep is a PHEV.

 

[HuntingPudel]

<SNIP>
Range anxiety, anti-solar/anti-EV propaganda and gasoline guzzling ICE SUVs are a result of us allowing COGU* to control us.
<SNIP>
*CoalOilGasUtility

I disagree completely on the ICE SUV statement. I own a ‘72 Blazer because I needed a vehicle I should fit my duck hunting gear in. One that I could sleep in with the dog. One that I could run all over the West Coast to hit dog shows with all of the related gear. One that could tow a car and spares on a weekend run. It makes nearly 200hp more now than when I bought it and gets about 1mpg more on the highway. It’s a big ugly pig, but it’s a supremely useful pig. ??

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