Motor Trend 2021 Car issue

dbsb3233

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Just received my October 2021 issue of Motor Trend. Under mainstream electricvehic it lists the Nissa Ariya and Polestar 2 but not The Mach E.
Old news by now?

It does seem like it's been forever since it was announced. (Of course, a few things have happened in the world since then too. ? )
 

tex

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Just received my October 2021 issue of Motor Trend. Under mainstream electricvehic it lists the Nissa Ariya and Polestar 2 but not The Mach E.
This is a real problem for Ford. How could they not have had independent reviews of the car by this time. They have test cars everywhere and best the could do was give journalists a ride around an airport at November launch. The the apparent reluctance to an independent review at this stage is baffling. No offense meant to Ford employees and retirees on this forum who for the most part have been great in providing information that Ford should have, but I think at some point buyers need to start to look objectively at short comings of the launch until now and hope that is not carried over to the car, where there are clearly design issues that were not well thought out. Will be very interesting to see how long Ford can avoid direct driving, first hand, independent reviews.
 

macchiaz-o

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How could they not have had independent reviews of the car by this time. They have test cars everywhere and best the could do was give journalists a ride around an airport at November launch.
I'm guessing we'll see journalist first-hand reviews by December 1. I'd prefer that those reviews are from experiences with final factory examples and not from preproduction test cars.
 
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dbsb3233

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This is a real problem for Ford. How could they not have had independent reviews of the car by this time. They have test cars everywhere and best the could do was give journalists a ride around an airport at November launch. The the apparent reluctance to an independent review at this stage is baffling. No offense meant to Ford employees and retirees on this forum who for the most part have been great in providing information that Ford should have, but I think at some point buyers need to start to look objectively at short comings of the launch until now and hope that is not carried over to the car, where there are clearly design issues that were not well thought out. Will be very interesting to see how long Ford can avoid direct driving, first hand, independent reviews.
Could be a method to their madness, since they're capped at 50,000 for 2021MY. They'll likely have no problem selling them all, with demand left over.

In that scenario, it's probably better just to wait and let the car speak for itself when it comes out. Otherwise you risk frustrating potential buyers with too long of a wait to be able to get one.
 


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This is a real problem for Ford. How could they not have had independent reviews of the car by this time. They have test cars everywhere and best the could do was give journalists a ride around an airport at November launch. The the apparent reluctance to an independent review at this stage is baffling. No offense meant to Ford employees and retirees on this forum who for the most part have been great in providing information that Ford should have, but I think at some point buyers need to start to look objectively at short comings of the launch until now and hope that is not carried over to the car, where there are clearly design issues that were not well thought out. Will be very interesting to see how long Ford can avoid direct driving, first hand, independent reviews.
You said "... the car, where there are clearly design issues that were not well thought out....."

What are those design issues? Just curious as to what you think the design issues are that Ford did not think out well. Or, are you concerned that we might discover some design issues that are not yet known?
 

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There were shortcomings in a recent promotion run by FMC's marketing department. But shortcomings in the launch? No, I don't see that at all. Quite the opposite in fact. Ford has done far better than anyone else in launching this vehicle (so far) in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic.
 

dbsb3233

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There were shortcomings in a recent promotion run by FMC's marketing department. But shortcomings in the launch? No, I don't see that at all. Quite the opposite in fact. Ford has done far better than anyone else in launching this vehicle (so far) in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic.
I've still got a little concern about getting an early one off the line. But that's mitigated just a bit by knowing that some things will be fixed OTA. Probably only 10-20% of the car, but every little bit helps.
 

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The amount of people down at the plant manufacturing the mache is insane. Triple the engineers, and the workforce. The end of rolls before cal line, there are so many jobs just for quality control.
Variance jobs are jobs that parts could not be put on in a normal spot on the line. It would slow the line speed down (JPH), or cause a part not to assembled correctly.

The yellow vest down there running around is on a whole new level. Trust me I've seen a few launches and ford is stressing this mache to no end. Can there be a problem and need to be fixed? Yes of course, but with all the extra hard work and quality control it will be very minimum.

Polestar 2 had problems before it was launch with the suspension. They even put different size tires on the front compared to the rear to help with that.

Ram truck is recalling the ram truck over floor mats. They can get wedged under the gas pedal and keep it accelerating. At the end of the day recalls do happen. With the number of people, I have talked to that have been down there. The mache is an amazing SUV. Jd power awards are this month so maybe we can find out something in September.
 

GoGoGadgetMachE

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The amount of people down at the plant manufacturing the mache is insane. Triple the engineers, and the workforce. The end of rolls before cal line, there are so many jobs just for quality control.
Variance jobs are jobs that parts could not be put on in a normal spot on the line. It would slow the line speed down (JPH), or cause a part not to assembled correctly.

The yellow vest down there running around is on a whole new level. Trust me I've seen a few launches and ford is stressing this mache to no end. Can there be a problem and need to be fixed? Yes of course, but with all the extra hard work and quality control it will be very minimum.
A cynical part of me wonders if the quality on the MY2022 (for example) will actually be a little worse than the first year once the "heavy attention" goes back to "normal attention."
 

timbop

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The amount of people down at the plant manufacturing the mache is insane. Triple the engineers, and the workforce. The end of rolls before cal line, there are so many jobs just for quality control.
Variance jobs are jobs that parts could not be put on in a normal spot on the line. It would slow the line speed down (JPH), or cause a part not to assembled correctly.

The yellow vest down there running around is on a whole new level. Trust me I've seen a few launches and ford is stressing this mache to no end. Can there be a problem and need to be fixed? Yes of course, but with all the extra hard work and quality control it will be very minimum.

Polestar 2 had problems before it was launch with the suspension. They even put different size tires on the front compared to the rear to help with that.

Ram truck is recalling the ram truck over floor mats. They can get wedged under the gas pedal and keep it accelerating. At the end of the day recalls do happen. With the number of people, I have talked to that have been down there. The mache is an amazing SUV. Jd power awards are this month so maybe we can find out something in September.
I have no concerns with the MME's design or engineering, and I believe you that QC will not be an issue. I have no doubt everyone involved in the rollout is putting their heart and soul into this car. I'm still in line to get mine, and the only thing that I think will be an issue is the software - it is an ambitious step since Ford is not a software company. I also have been a software developer for 35 years, and I know what version 1.0 means. I am not worried about basic safety or functionality, but there will be issues. Those issues will likely be fixable with OTA updates (although that could be one of the things that is broken), so I am not afraid to be a first model year owner.

What is disappointing is that the marketing team seems to be out of step with the rest of you.
 

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A cynical part of me wonders if the quality on the MY2022 (for example) will actually be a little worse than the first year once the "heavy attention" goes back to "normal attention."
While the attention to detail may reduce when the mach-e is produced in significant numbers with out a large number of model derivatives I think we will be ok in that regard, I can't really see a large amount of mixing and matching of parts which can lead to problems, even when throwing the GT into the mix which depending on how serious the performance development is could end up with a whole host of suspension differences beyond the obvious, but this is no different to other performance trims in fords

Even if the battery production is doubled you have future vehicles such as electric transit that will require them so I imagine for the foreseeable future production is not going to be much more than 50000 units a year.

If I was to guess I suspect the future issues will come more from the software side with over the air updates where just like most software updates there is always a chance it has to be rolled back or has to be updated soon after to fix the issues it caused.
 

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What is disappointing is that the marketing team seems to be out of step with the rest of you.
They always live in a completely different world. My dad was a Marketing Professor. It's a completely different thought process.
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