Ford Mustang Mach-E Premium long term review

Wearing a badge any vehicle would struggle to live up to and given an electric heart along with sensibilities-first SUV body style, the Ford Mustang Mach-E was always going to ruffle a few feathers.

It’s the sort of bold plays we’ve come to expect from this new and confident lead-from-the-front persona embodied by Ford amid this great energy transition, swagger the Blue Oval has embraced whole-heartedly since chief Elon Musk-antagonist Jim Farley took the helm in 2020.

Created to take the fight to the best-selling electric vehicle both globally and here in Australia, the Tesla Model Y, the Mustang Mach-E reflects much of the vibe of its competitor with its huge 15.5-inch central touchscreen, but it ratchets back the ‘science project’ part and creates a vehicle which is, ultimately, a Ford through and through.

Although it was first launched in North America in late 2020, the slicked-back SUV Mustang didn’t make its way to Australia until much later in the piece, in 2023.

But it came at a price and a pretty big one.

Costing $79,990 (before on-roads) just for the base grade, the ’Stang was well north of its targeted Tesla rival and so it was no surprise that Ford quickly lopped $7000 off the start price, before a single example had landed in a customer’s driveway.

We can’t attest to the state of Ford Australia’s boardroom prior to the announcement, but the fact this new resident in the brand’s midsize SUV slot cost more than twice the starting price of the discontinued Escape (sub $38k) didn’t wash well with anyone and more cuts would follow.

At present, the Mustang Mach-E consists of the entry-level Select ($64,990), the longer-range Premium ($79,990) and the performance flagship GT ($97,990).

And it’s the middling variant, potentially the sweet spot in the Mach-E range, that’s arrived in the Chasing Cars long-term garage.

Why we chose the Ford Mustang Mach-E Premium

Our initial launch review of the Mustang Mach-E determined that this was a good car that was asking too much. Meanwhile, our follow-up garage review of the entry-level Select (prior to the last cut) found that it was our pick of the bunch but… it was still asking too much.

After two significant haircuts, the price of the 600km-capable (according to WLTP testing) mid-range Premium would eventually land at the same price as the original pricing of the Select, the entry-grade bringing a less impressive 470km of claimed range.

For your road-trip-loving reviewer, that made the decision to opt for the Premium even easier.

The Mustang Mach-E may not have set the EV world on fire just yet, but so often at Chasing Cars we find it’s the unsuspecting and often sensible choices that make for the nicest real-world ownership proposition when testing cars on a long-term basis.

So for the next three months, Chasing Cars will be putting ‘our’ Mach-E Premium through its paces and driving it extensively to find out if it’s worth your hard-earned cash – especially now that it’s asking for a lot less of it.

How we specified our long-term Mustang Mach-E Premium

For our long-term review we went with the Premium. It launched at $91,665 list, dropped to $86,990 in late 2023, and is now currently priced at $79,990.

Notably, ours is dressed in Star White (+$700) but is otherwise standard. Interestingly, solid Shadow Black is the no-cost paint choice.

Driveaway pricing in NSW sees our example retail for just short of $88,700.

Standard features on the Mustang Mach-E Select include:

• Synthetic leather seats
• Eight-way power adjustable and heated front seats
• Heated steering wheel
• 15.5-inch central touchscreen with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
• 10.2-inch digital driver’s display
• 10-speaker B&O sound system
• Wireless phone charger
• 360-degree camera

Notably though, the Premium does nab a few extras over the base Select including:

• LED projector headlights
• Red contrast stitching
• Ambient lighting
• Premium-finish scuff plates and pedals

Of course, the Premium also scores the larger 91kWh (usable size) nickel cobalt manganese battery over the entry Select’s 72.6kWh lithium iron phosphate unit, granting an extra 130km of range and providing that 600km claim. 

Outputs of the single rear motor are also boosted from 198kW/430Nm in the Select to 216kW/430Nm in the Premium, trimming the 0-100km/h time claim from 6.6 to 6.2 seconds. 

In other parts of the world, Ford offers a slightly more powerful AWD option for non-GT trims but there are no plans to bring this to Australia right now.

Month 1: Let’s start, by start-stopping

The Mustang Mach-E enters the Chasing Cars garage and is sized up by the team to determine what exactly this car is and what it’s trying to achieve.

Someone, somewhere, is having a right laugh about now.

As a fussy bloke who audibly groans every time I see ‘yet another car’ with its climate controls buried in the touchscreen and who loves to cover over 1000km in a day on road trips, being handed the keys to a short-range EV (in comparison to combustion cars) with a 15.5-inch iPad slapped in the centre of the dash doesn’t feel right.

I feel a bit like a grumpy old dad who’s been given a puppy he told the family not to buy, so will this relationship end with a surprising kinship, or will we remain at arm’s length? We’ll see…

I like EVs, I really do. I’m of the belief they are a fantastic fit for many commuters (price aside).

But for many other Aussies, EVs are yet to graduate beyond the ‘second car’ status due to their current limitations on the open road. And this long-termer will very much be my primary daily-driven vehicle for the next three months if I want my judgement to have any solid basis at all.

My relationship with the Mach-E starts, as most do, with a commute home from work and, oh boy, does this Ford put its best foot forward here.

There is no ‘avoiding’ traffic in Sydney. It’s an unstoppable force of tear-jerking misery. But the Ford’s ultra-soft seats, crisp Bang and Olufsen sound system and delightfully muted cabin aided by a whisper-quiet drivetrain go a long way to dissolve the chaos and stress often around me.

My commute home is a straight shot along Sydney’s main highway system though only the very end is traveled at anything close to highway speeds. It’s here that I enable adaptive cruise control and set the proximity distance to as close as it will let me, and to my surprise, it listens to me.

As much as I am a big believer in maintaining ample stopping distance, such rules are hard to apply in CBD traffic where leaving a car length is considered a sign of weakness and will be pounced upon by your neighbour to the right or left, sitting just half a car length behind.

In fact, it wasn’t until I reached home that I noticed that the adaptive cruise-driven Mach-E had completed almost the entire trip, including a series of relatively fast turns at 80km/h, without interruption. And to my amazement, it did it again the very next day.

I love driving and likely so do you dear reader, but nobody loves traffic. And the fact that this Mustang Mach-E had eased the pain of the worst part of my week had moved it up a few notches in my book. We might get on just yet.

What’s crazy is that this isn’t even the best Ford has to offer. What I was experiencing in the Mach-E was simply a great combination of intelligent lane centring and well-tuned adaptive cruise control, but over in North America buyers are offered even better tech.

‘BlueCruise’ as it’s known, is a proper ‘SAE Level 2’ autonomous driving system and allows drivers of vehicles such as this Mach-E (and the F-150) to take their hands off the wheel and let the car change lanes by itself when travelling across many of America’s highways.

Essentially, as long drivers keep their eyes on the road it will keep going in this environment, similar to Tesla’s full-self driving. Seeing a pattern yet?

Current laws don’t allow for this technology to function in Australia just yet though there is appetite and even some political will to make changes here in the coming years.

“BlueCruise remains unavailable in Australia, and we have no news to share about a future introduction of BlueCruise to Australia, but are committed to ensuring our vehicles are fitted with the latest technology,” a spokesperson from Ford Australia told Chasing Cars.

Anyway…

With less of my attention required to deal with my fellow motorists, I turned my focus to the 15.5-inch touchscreen to try and make sense of the situation.

Ever had one of those moments as a sub-30 something where you suddenly feel odd? Yeah, this is mine.

While there are a great deal of traditional buttons to control multimedia on the steering wheel, all other buttons are banished to the touchscreen. And to Ford’s credit, they’ve done a better job than most.

The bottom section of the screen features a rather clever built-in scroll wheel that works as somewhat of a halfway measure better purely focusing on touch controls and exclusively using buttons like an ’80s clock radio.

Press the fan speed on the screen for example and you then move your hand to the wheel where you adjust the speed to your liking.

It’s definitely an improvement over pure touch functionality as I’ve often found trying to repeatedly hit the same touch target when cycling through settings to be quite difficult in a moving vehicle, especially when I’m trying to keep my eyes on the road.

I’ll need to spend more time here to draw a verdict but this innovation is welcome so far.