rob_lewis said:
How much does it differ from any similarly sized ICE SUV of that type? If you didn't know it was and EV, would it act/drive/seem like any other car?
Not sure how your weather is down in Florida over the next few days, but how much impact does full tilt A/C have on battery life? It's 100+ here in Texas this week, with something like pea soup humidity. My A/C in the car runs full blast for most of the drive.
I'll second the "you're driving an EV" type of stuff. Does it distract or blend into day to day driving? Along with that, how are the HVAC/Stereo/etc controls? Probably more Ford than Mach-E specific. In the Explorer we rented, the HVAC controls seemed to have been designed by different committees that never talked to each other.
-Rob
I got out of the Mach-E and jumped into a brand new Acura RDX A-Spec. It's one of the better small SUVs, though the drivetrain isn't quite as great as its European competition.
I hate it. Once you've driven an EV, you'll come to despise every shift, every engine stop/start, etc. There's just so much pointless noise/accleration rate change/clunkyness/etc. in an ICE SUV.
If you're going 45 mph in traffic and want to go 55 mph, the Mach-E just requires pressing the accelerator. Boom--you're there. The RDX requires pushing the pedal enough to unlock the torque converter and downshift but not enough to downshift a few gears, then some whining and acceleration, then an upshift before you can resume your cruising speed. It's just an annoying way to go down the road.
No, A/C doesn't meaningfully affect range. Batteries hold more energy when they're warmer, anyway, so any A/C impact is likely offset but carrying more energy.
Nope, the EV thing is never a factor except you wake up every morning with a full tank of "gas." We have a healthy inter-office debate about the Mach-E, but zero of that debate is about the drivetrain. Electric cars have progressed to where you can mail one to a team of journalists and they'll all debate chassis tuning and wind noise instead of the electricity.
The controls are good enough. Everything happens on the touchscreen, but it's fairly intuitive and well-designed.