Ford Mustang Mach-E 2021 first drive

There’s a smallish digital instrument screen ahead of the driver, but a whopping 16in, portrait-oriented infotainment setup on the centre stack. It comes with all grades of the car. It doesn’t quite hoover up every single opportunity for a physical button, knob or switch around the interior in the way the equivalent in a Tesla seems to, mercifully. It doesn’t have a built-in web browser; and there's no 'autopilot' here either, thank heaven. It is a fully networked system capable of wide-ranging ‘over the air’ updates for the car, though, as well as fully connected navigation and entertainment.

So, is this car fun? Hmm. Well, the names for the various drive modes certainly are (Active, Whisper and Untamed, cringe). You can turn ‘one-pedal’ driving on and off, and while battery regeneration isn’t fully controllable, it certainly varies with those drive modes. The digital ‘propulsion sound’ the car plays through its audio speakers is switchable also, and varies in its volume with those driver modes. It does, at least, sound a bit like a gently rumbling V8, rather than the Starship Enterprise or someone having a seizure next to one of those Theramin musical instruments that you play by waving your arms around.

Our test car was a mid-range version (the 480bhp ‘GT’ firecracker comes later), and it had usefully brisk performance up to motorway speed. It was quick though not quite Tesla-punchy; drivable and smooth, but once you’re used to the response and the torquey performance level, the powertrain offers little else to engage you: a familiar state of affairs, that.

The chassis does go a bit further than electric cars often can to keep you interested in what you're doing, however; just a little. The car steers meatily, with scant feedback but consistent pace and the right kind of weight. Body control is good though corners, if a bit leaden and cumbersome over lumps and bumps where the car starts to feel a bit heavy and firm. 

You wouldn’t call it agile, but the Mach-E does handle precisely and it grips quite keenly, where so many electric cars feel short on mechanical grip if anything. Even in our four-wheel drive test car, there was just a suggestion of a rearward torque bias about the way it could be powered out of corners, which is an added bonus if you like a naturally balanced-feeling car.

I don’t imagine that rear-driven Mach-Es will handle like proper Mustangs; the four-wheel drives ones certainly don’t. But there’s enough dynamic poise, bite and accuracy about this car that a keener driver might seek it out, in the way you might a Jaguar I-Pace over an Audi E-tron, or a Mini Electric over a Peugeot e-208.

As regards real-world range, for now I can only give you the kind of indication you get on a chilly December day, which is likely to be a bit tough on the car. Ford's 'standard range' Mach-E gets 68kWh of usable battery capacity and a claimed WLTP range of up to 273 miles; the 88kWh 'extended range' version takes that up to 379 miles of claimed range - although in both cases range is reduced if you want two motors and four driven wheels.

Our twin-motor, extended range test car had an advertised WLTP range of 336 miles, and on our wintery test day it indicated a fully charged range of about 260 miles, in mixed, slightly stop-and-start running. On that basis, you could probably expect an average 220-miles from an entry-level car, and almost 300 real-world miles from the rear-driven 'extended range' model. A warmier ambient temperature might well nudge that latter figure over the 300-mile marker; and even if it didn't, it would probably still be enough to shade most of the Mach-E's rivals for running autonomy.

The Mach-E comes with an 11kW onboard AC charger for at-home charging, and it can be recharged out-and-about at a DC rapid charger at up to 150kW, at which rate an 80 per cent charge can be restored from flat in less than an hour. That peak recharge rate only applies to the 'extended range' version, however; 'standard range' 68kWh cars can be rapid charged at 115kWh, but because they also have less battery capacity to fill, overall rapid charging time for them is broadly comparable with 88kWh cars.