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        Sunday September 18, 2022 – EVFinder Goes BEV - After many years of supporting EVs I finally went full BEV when I picked up a Ford Mustang Mach-e from Galpin Ford last Thursday. 

First a little history.  I began evfinder because I was concerned about the effects of air pollution and saw electric vehicles as a solution.  My situation was such that I wasn’t able to drive and electric car myself but I was able to help others find an EV.  In 2005 I moved up to a Toyota Prius and while this wasn’t capable of being charged, it did use electric power to greatly improve mpg and reduce my carbon footprint.  In 2012 I was finally able to add a plug when I purchased a Plug-in Prius to replace my original Prius.  I didn’t have anywhere to charge it then, but soon there were public charging stations popping up and I started getting to do a good portion of my drive on electric power.

In 2019 I finally moved into a house where I had a garage and could charge my car.   The Prius Plug-in was now being driven mostly on battery power but I still decided that I wanted to go fully electric. I started my search in January this year and I finally got my wish.

In an earlier blog post I wrote about the issues I had finding a BEV that didn’t come with a huge mark-up.  I had looked at my local dealer, Galpin Ford, who said they would charge a mark-up on cars that were dropped orders but would honor the MSRP for a car ordered through Ford.  Back in February I finally placed an order for a Mach-e Select in Grabber Blue.  The anticipated wait was 6 to 9 months.

Ford provides a web site that I subscribed to that showed the status of my order and notified me of any changes.  I went onto this website periodically and eventually I got a build date, or at least a build week.  That changed a couple of times due to a recall that Ford had to respond to but eventually the status changed to build in progress.  After what seemed like a long wait the status changed again to say that they car had shipped and I got a confirmation date with an estimated delivery in early September.   This date slipped a couple of times but eventually I got an email from Ford saying that the car was at Galpin Ford.

I called the sales person I was assigned to, Matthew Sanes, and he said that the car hadn’t been entered into their system yet but promised to call me back.  He did call back about an hour later saying the car was there and he could deliver it that afternoon.  My wife and I had an appointment for 2:30pm and I drove down there in the Prius Plug-in that I planned to trade in.  Matthew first took us over to take a look at the car, which was sitting on a charger, to do a quick walk around and get some pictures. 

The sales process was pretty painless and we were out of there in record time.  I can only say my experience with Galpin Ford was exceptional.

My first impression of driving the car was a little mixed.  I am still getting used to the car and after driving a Prius for so long (17 years altogether), driving an SUV was quite a change.  After leaving the dealership I couldn’t resist hitting the accelerator on a clear stretch of road and feel the surge of torque. 

The car was originally set to Whisper mode which is the most fuel efficient of the three available driving modes on the Mach-e.  Whisper mode makes heavier use of regenerative braking and I found that the brakes were kind of jerky.  My wife even complained that the ride was making her feel sick.  I eventually switched over to Engaged mode that is the medium setting.  I found this much smoother so I have been using this mode since then. 

I haven’t tried Unbridled mode, the most aggressive mode, but will experiment over the next few weeks.  I will also have to experiment with one pedal braking which I have only experienced once before on a test drive of a BMW i3.  I will publish a more detailed test drive report when I have had more time to drive the car and experiment with the features.

After 4 days of ownership and about 35 miles of driving my initial impressions of this car is very good.  It is definitely a step up in comfort and technology from the Prius Plug-in.  There are a couple of things that I am not sold on.  The first is the drive shifter which is a nob that you rotate from Part to Reverse to Neutral to Drive which seems a bit clunky compared to the Prius joystick shifter.  The main manual comes online which pretty much means sitting in the car to read it.  I might have to find one online so I can read it at my leisure.

I did have an issue setting up the garage door opener buttons on the car.  The first one set up with no problem but the second one appeared to fail to program.  Matthew at Galpin offered to have me bring it in and he would help me figure it out, but it looks like it may have been user error.  I looked up programming the buttons on the Mach-e forum and one hint said that the programming could fail if the gate opener batteries were weak.  A new battery in the clicker appeared to fix the issue so both buttons are working great now.

When the car was delivered it wasn’t quite full so I put the car on charge when I was not using it.  My charger is a 110V/220V but right now I am only using it at 110V.  The charger was adding a little over 3 miles per hour to the vehicle and that was about what I was expecting.  I charged the car up to 95% and it gave me an estimated range of 231 miles which is a bit better than expected.  I am currently showing consumption of about 3.7 miles per KWH but this will probably drop quite a bit, as will the estimated range, when I get the car out on the freeway.

The big challenge comes next weekend when I have to drive down to Anaheim, about 48 miles each way, to pick up our grandson for the weekend.  I will then be travelling around over the weekend including a trip over to Burbank, before taking him home on Sunday.  It will be interesting to see how this is handled using only 110V charging and will determine if I have to install a 220V line for the charger.  I will report on this along with additional review of the Mach-e shortly.

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