Ford Mach-E 2 Year Long Term Ownership Update + Road Trip!

this is my family's personal Ford Mustang Mach e it's a toaster a blender a characterless egg painted and uncharacteristically deep shade of iconic silver an example of how every single year Ford picks one color from the palette to execute in a drastically higher quality than all their other paint schemes the quality of this paint Rivals what you'd see on something like a Mercedes S-Class rather than these sad shuddery Escape I rented last week in Miami my wife and I decided on this Maki which we never refer to as a Mustang after testing an early example in 2021 and finding it to be a delightful in-town Runabout ours is a premium long-range rear drive version which in sunny California is exactly the one you want if you're interested in how I think our Maki drives compared to a real must Mustang we made a video about that we also made a video of our initial Impressions and then of our impressions of owning one after a few months we are unsure if the problem is the tablet the car or the phone as well as a video with the much quicker but no better GT variant you can see those links in the video description we took delivery of this car in March of 2021 and it is a very early production example one of the first few hundred built I'll get into why this is important later but it's been two years and over 16 000 miles in the Maki so let's see how it's coming along Zach and I are taking a road trip from Los Angeles to Tempe Arizona a suburb of Phoenix just over 400 miles each way the kind Folks at the hilariously named mullet Arena have copped us a Skybox to see the machine himself Bert Kreischer and that is a good reason as any to drive eight hours each way and risk the frustration of the public charging Network in the process pulled the muscle in my back last night oh no cooking dinner no way welcome to your 40s leaving La with a full charge I can expect based on experience to get 290 miles if I drive at a speed that I will not be driving or about 230 miles at the speed I will be driving we loaded up some podcasts and left La early to beat traffic across town this drive is not interesting excluding pulling off to charge in the arena parking lot there are fewer than five turns on this entire Journey giving us plenty of time to ponder the ups and downs of Ford's attempt to build a better Tesla folks today's video is brought to you by Jegs they have been around since 1960 and if you know anything about cars you have heard of Jegs and jegs.com I have personally given them thousands maybe even tens of thousands of dollars over the years in parts for my Corvette Mustang tools for my garage tools for here at the shop automotive car care products and more they are the go-to built by Racers and for Racers but not just Racers for enthusiasts as well they pioneered an American Muscle Classics and modern but that's not it they've got parts for imported cars they've got parts for modern cars they've also got tons of tools supplies and products for your home garage or your professional garage and right now they are running a bunch of deals here's some of them free shipping on all orders over 199 dollars right you've got unrivaled experience from the techs on the phone helping you make sure you get the right part and tool that you need if you text Wheels to 36727 you can save a hundred dollars off your order if you sign up for their email you can get lots of exclusive deals sent directly to you hit the link in the video description thank you to JEGS for giving us some of the money back that I have given them over the years and enjoy this video what struck me about the Maki when I first drove the Press car and then now with my own car is how well made it feels uh the panel gaps are really tight the door slam is really solid the whole thing feels very tight very substantial assembled well and the materials inside are very premium feeling and none of that has changed in 16 000 miles of ownership in fact for the most part my car looks as good as the day it left the lot the leather barely shows any signs of wear at all the carpets look nice and the screen is remarkably resistant to fingerprints in fact you can only tell the car has been used by looking in one specific place the track Advance button on the steering wheel although the rest of the interior looks brand new the Finish has totally worn off of this one button it is easily the most pressed button in the car right because the music is always better on the next station Ford has updated sync several times since we've had this car the interface improving incrementally each time and the self-contained systems work really well we love the fact that you can intermingle AM FM in serious presets in a large grid that you can see all at once we love that you can customize the home screen with preferred bits of information and we love the Simplicity of changing the profiles from one driver to the next we use regular key fobs not the phone as a key feature because the fob is dead To Nuts reliable but there has been an ongoing issue that Ford has struggled to really solve effectively car play I love carplay I use it all the time I'm an Apple phone user and therefore a smooth integration with my car is very important plus in Los Angeles an enormous grid there are virtually infinite ways to get anywhere right it's really just about where is traffic not a disaster right now and so that means I'm almost always trying to run ways to show me the best route across the city right so it's very important I use it even when I know how to get to where I'm going because there could always be some kind of disaster but one out of ten times the car just will not connect to my phone totally inexplicable no idea why other times it'll take five or ten minutes of driving for it to connect to my phone if my wife and I get in the car and we both have our iPhones the car seems to randomly choose which phone to connect to even though there is a clear hierarchy established on the car's MMI of which phone to look for first it's very random and sometimes infuriating and of course it always seems to happen when I really need it to work such as at the beginning of a long road trip or when I am going to have to make a bunch of calls in the car or when I really need ways to sort out my traffic situation for that particular Drive infuriated admittedly this is a lot of screen time for one issue but if your car is going to be a computer which this car basically is we have to critique it like a computer and as great as carplay is when it works it makes me sympathetic to why Tesla rivian and Lucid just don't bother and this isn't the only electronic issue of course in an EV aren't they all electronic issues occasionally if the window was down and you'd raise it using the One Touch function it would get to the top and then bounce back down and you'd have to manually hold the switch to raise it all the way we've had to have the dealer reprogram that a couple of times additionally we've had some trouble sometimes with the Ford Pass App connecting to the car either to show our charge level or to use the remote start functionality these issues are inconvenient and mildly annoying with a new car but they've never kept us from driving the car as needed and they've certainly never left us stranded anywhere speaking of driving I have very few gripes with how the Maki actually drives it's incredibly quiet it's smooth the regenerative braking is programmed beautifully scrubbing speed at a consistent predictable pace the steering though totally Logitech is light and direct and much better in the rear-wheel drive variants than the all-wheel drive ones the ride is slightly unrefined compared to higher end luxury vehicles but the Magnetic Ride shocks that come with the GT are too stiff for everyday use and not a preferred upgrade at this price for our needs City Highway not Canyons I really couldn't ask for much more than the Machi from a dynamic perspective except who programmed the auto emergency braking in this thing it's been a problem with every monkey I've driven fortunately it doesn't Phantom break on the highway but when maneuvering tightly at low speeds either in traffic or in a parking lot or even inside of my shop it will violently slam on the brakes in a situation where I'm actually in control and need those couple of feet to maneuver slowly and then once grabs the brakes it holds them solidly tight not letting go for two to three seconds which feels like an eternity and it disconnects the throttle so you can't move the car out of that situation quickly it has the potential for stopping you and freezing you in a dangerous situation you can't talk about an EV without talking about charging fortunately I am fortunate I have a house with a spacious driveway and a level 2 charger I also have this beautiful shop here called Westside collector car storage and we also have a level 2 charger because ninety percent of our driving is within the city limits we charge the Maki overnight about once a week it's no big deal it barely registers on our electric bill that may not be the case for everyone but I am the right type of person to have a car like this because it fits my existing lifestyle what on a road trip we are going to have to deal with the public charging Network in fact getting from LA to Phoenix we're going to have to deal with it twice each way I've driven to Vegas San Diego Palm Springs San Francisco and charging has never been seamless out in public so here we are about a third of the way to Phoenix let's see if this will be my first ever easy charging experience we're using the onboard GPS today rather than Waze or Google which features some route planning it says we can get a fast charge here as I predicted when I left the house this morning a full charge indicated 300 miles of range we are arriving at the charger after going about 150 miles with 106 miles of range so at the speed that I uh intended to drive to make my life Pleasant which may be above the legal speed limit but is certainly not outside of what is morally correct in this state um range goes by faster you use more energy the last time I was here was a lucid air which is capable of charging at 350 kilowatts and I was very excited to use a 350 charger and get 350. and that charger was delivering 75 kilowatts so I had to sit at this Walmart for a lot longer than I really found ideal hyper fast 350 it says boy is that presumptuous I've got uh Ford plug-in charge with this car which means that I shouldn't have to do anything the car is connected to my credit card it's connected to Electrify America you should be able to plug it all in without doing anything else and just go I bet 10 bucks that doesn't happen the maximum power of this charger has been temporarily reduced in order to improve service and perform an update let me just tell you that I was last at this charger in May of 2022 that same screen was up the same screen big update this connector seems uh like it's intact what are the odds this works first plug first attempt connecting the vehicle locking mechanism has worked see the thing is people talk about range anxiety it's not about range anxiety I can accurately predict my range based on how I'm driving the gauges is accurate my brain works I know how far I've got to go it's not range anxiety it's infrastructure anxiety it's when I get to the place I need to go will I be able to fill back up and so that's a matter of Shifting priorities away from range which means we need infinitely bigger batteries to infrastructure which is we need reliable dependable ways to charge up the batteries we've got it's not a range anxiety it's infrastructure anxiety it connected hey so right now it's delivering 81 kilowatts the chart the car can handle 150 the charger says up to 350. but what it's actually delivering is 81. it's under delivery let's just say that but it is going to Electrify America would consider this a successful charging attempt and I will say it worked on the first try so yay but we are going to have to be at this charger twice as long as we thought we were going to have to be at this charger so there's that okay we have uh we've been here for 35 minutes we now have 86 percent charge we've added 46 to our charge which is uh less than the charger could be delivering but more than we need we now have 220 miles uh 225 miles of range and we only have to go 120 miles to our next destination the final destination in Tempe Arizona is 260 miles and so even if we sat here until the car was a hundred percent full we would then have to drive very conservatively for the next five hours so this was going to be a two-stop trip pretty much no matter what Ford is very proud of their blue Cruise technology a hands-free level 2 Advanced cruise control that under a certain operational design domain allows you to take your hands off the wheel Ford is regularly 3D mapping divided well-marked highways where this technology can be enabled and the car informs me when I have entered such an area and it can be used in theory on a Long Freeway Drive across the desert like this I should be able to use blue Cruise like 95 percent of the way but the reality isn't quite that yes blue Cruise does work when the road is straight clear divided and well marked such as the 10 freeway crossing the western part of Arizona like we're on right now I'm using it hands-free it indicates on the screen as such and it can handle this task just fine but it is surprisingly inept at dealing with curves and I'm not talking about making turns or even a winding Mountain Road even gentle bending sweepers on the highway can cause this thing to ping pong back and forth and it's kind of stressful actually in fact in a lot of ways because I can't do anything else but monitor the system while I'm using it I might as well just be steering and using Ford's excellent adaptive cruise control you can't check Instagram or read a book or totally zone out you got to be eyes forward ready to take over now Mercedes has their new system which is a level three system and in certain cases mainly low speed bumper-to-bumper traffic can zone out read Instagram or read a book and Mercedes will take responsibility for what happens to the car when it is activated they are first to Market with that technology this works just sometimes here we are quartzite Arizona Electrify America the Love's Travel Stop we have 137 miles to get to our hotel in Phoenix 78 miles of range on the car I flogged up to a 350 charger but let's see if I can get the full juice out of this one Good Vibes Good Vibes what's it connecting to the vehicle and then it said reconnecting to the vehicle it is not recognized plug and charge so plug and charge was a fail however I have the app and uh here we are this is uh number three oh three swipe to start charge processing my payments yeah charging start error see that's that's what we're talking about with this [Music] like like an NES oh I just heard it make the lock sound so that's good it said reconnecting the vehicle that's not good like this just this should just not be a thing the perhaps is nothing because oh it's still on look it says reconnecting the vehicle it's just not it has to connect to the the car before anything else happens okay so now I'm on the same screen as before now I'm back at the app swiping the start charge says initiating charge up wait we've gotten further than before initiating charging Welcome Matt okay so it has recognized that Matt is here [Music] it's charging is started it only took two tries I think it is going 118 kilowatts we're gonna make it to Phoenix oh foreign [Music] destination of migrating air conditioners it is the fifth most populated city in the U.S possibly because it has one of the most sexually active student bodies in the country we arrived to our hotel with over 90 miles remaining which averages to as predicted around 240 miles per charge on this road trip driving at a pace that we saw fit there really is a lot to like about this car it's spacious in the front and back comfortable as fast as you'd ever need it to be Dependable by EV standards and the fit and finish aside from the skip button is beyond reproach this is a good car it's been really really great there have been some issues which we've gone over in this video there were a couple recalls which I took the car in and it spent a few days at the dealer getting it worked out there was a motor recall that didn't personally affect me they had to replace the panoramic glass roof glue because it could come on lewd and other than them doing the work for a day or two it didn't affect me now this car in particular was part of a very early batch of 2021 model year cars the first couple hundred cars delivered and as such it had a very unique set of teething problems something that in talking with other members of the Maki Community newer cars 2022 and 2023 model your cars do not have those issues so I am confident that whatever those issues are with my early 21 build they have mostly been sorted out and I've recommended these cars personally to some of my friends all of whom have reported back that they enjoy them if you ask me I would buy another I would it's worked for me and my family now we are here at the arena we found a charger in the garage because after all we have to get home after this let's go see some bird Chrysler we at TST don't think you need to give up your gas car if you don't want to personally own DVS with giant batteries are not going to save the planet you'd make more of an impact by giving up meat TST wants you to drive the car that makes you happy and while it's not replacing my Boxster for the Fizz or my 35 year old Lamborghini for the wow factor this is an everyday car that works better than most gasoline cars while sitting in LA traffic or driving a couple hundred yards at a time from light to light as we've proven in this video it is acceptable if not perfect for the occasional road trip it's a fridge it makes my life easier without asking too much in return and in that way the Maki is as my old friend Carl Ruiz would say an egg but a good egg and remember always fight your tickets use code tst10 on the off the Record app available in the Android and iOS store or go to offtherecord.com TST

Channel: TheSmokingTire

Views: 121,194

Keywords: the smoking tire, smoking tire, hoonigan, tavarish, the straight pipes, carwow, throttle house, doug demuro, edmunds, car review, matt farah, hagerty, the smoking tyre, zack klapman smoking tire, Ford Mach-E 2 Year Long Term Ownership Update + Road Trip!, long term Ford Mach E test, Ford Mach-E long term test thesmokingtire, matt farah ford mach E long term, ford Mach E road trip range, mustang mach E real range, ford mustang mach E premium RWD, the smoking tire TST mach E long term

Id: Cv9-RAO9j6I

Length: 23min 41sec (1421 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 13 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Not a ringing endorsement of Electrify America.

[u/AznTri4d]

Hoping the long format gains enough traction to stick around. It's nice to see longer videos returning.

[u/YouSoundVaccinated]

I’ve always liked this thing’s shape

[u/unskilledlabor]

Like a lot of vehicles it has to fit your specific use case or it can become a pain in the ass. If you suddenly have twins a Supra is gonna be a struggle, if you only have one vehicle and you have to do major road trips an electric vehicle will have different challenges than you are used to. I think the big issue for adoption come from consumers being unwilling to compromise over range or charging due to how expensive the upfront cost is versus the limitations that come with fully electric vehicles.

[u/2fast2nick]

It’s so much fun on a road trip when you find a working charger, and that POS only charges at 1/4 speed. That’s when you bust out the iPad and start watching Netflix

[u/just_another_laaame]

Better than Tesla tbh

[u/Strength-Certain]

I'd like it better if it just had a blue oval on the front instead of the "Mustang".

(And I say that as the owner of a classic 'Stang.)

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]