Ford Mustang Mach-E – the all-American V8 'pony car' goes electric

Saddle up, boys and girls, Ford's famed "pony car" of the Sixties just got a new spark. Next year's new all-electric Mustang might bear little resemblance to Gale Halderman and Lee Iacocca's 1964 original (in fact it's a four-door, five-seat Sports Utility Vehicle rather than a sports car), but perhaps it's a measure of the car industry's forced reinvention of itself that even Ford, maker of the blue-collar supercar, has had to shoulder its environmental responsibility by throwing half a ton of batteries under the floor, sticking a horse on the bonnet and yelling giddy up.

Actually the electric Mustang is better than that, with a decent roofline and some nice detailing, but it's a long way short of the woofling, rumbling V8 whips more commonly associated with Steve McQueen in Bullitt, or Wilson Pickett's Mustang Sally.

Even though the new electric Mustang's electric drivetrain is augmented by the addition of synthesised sound effects to accompany the selection of the "Unbridled"(geddit?) setting, the most extreme of the three drive modes, it's going to be very far from the sound of an all-American V8.

So will it emulate the original, which at its launch became the world's fastest-selling vehicle and has sold more than 10 million examples over 55 years?

Good question. As well as showing a old-school chutzpah at the Los Angeles launch, which involved "The Man Who Would Be Bond", Idris Elba, Ford hasn't left much to chance including repurposing a lot of old Mustang trade names such as Mach-E after the high-performance Mach 1 original Mustangs.

The electric Mustang will have a choice of two batteries, standard with 288 cells and giving 75.7kWh, or extended range with 376 cells and 98.8kWh -  the latter weighs 596kg.

Four models are planned: a rear-wheel-drive model with 254bhp in standard range or 281bhp in extended range with 306lb ft of torque for both; next is an all-wheel-drive version with 281bhp in standard range and 332bhp in extended range with 417lb ft for both; and a First Edition car (also with all-wheel drive), which is in the same spec as the extended range AWD model.

All will appear late next year with prices from £40,000, with the First Edition model costing £58,000.

All of next year's models weigh between 1,993kg and 2,213kg, have a 0-62mph time of about 8 seconds (7sec for the First Edition) and a top speed of about 111mph.

In the summer of 2021 a GT derivative will be launched, priced at under £70,000. It'll be a 4x4 driveline with the bigger battery and a larger front motor, which will give a power peak of 458bhp, peak torque of 612lb ft and will accelerate from 0-62mph of less than five seconds, which is comparable with the Tesla Model 3 and Jaguar's i-Pace.

The range depends on which battery and driveline are chosen but in the more stringent WLTP tests it varies from 279 miles for the standard range two-wheel drive model, to 373 miles for the extended-range model – although, as we are all beginning to understand, winter or fast driving, sustained high speed or lots of big hills can severely drag that figure down. The 4x4 GT version has a target range of 310 miles.

Recharging times also depend on the power source, but all models get an onboard recharging capability of 150kW DC and 10.5kW on an AC supply. What this means is that on a 7kW home wallbox a full charge for the largest battery will be about 14 hours, while a 0-80 per cent charge using a 150kW DC charger will take 45 minutes for the 99kWh battery and 38 minutes for the 75kWh battery.

The chassis layout follows new industry practise (read Tesla) by mounting the battery pack in the floor between the wheels, although Ford brings something new to the party with a 100-litre washable box under the bonnet for dirty boots and sports clothes or even an ice-filled beer fridge (hey, it's a working man and woman's car after all) as well as the 402-litre boot.

The suspension is all-independent and the bodyshell is made of composite plastics and metal.

But how will the cognoscenti view an electric Mustang with the energy equivalent of 25,000 AA batteries on board instead of a rumbling V8? In the late Nineties the US Navy had a recruitment advert that ran: "The Beach Boys. Apple pie. The '67 Mustang. Three things worth fighting for..." The pony car's status in the national psyche is assured.

There were clearly some nervous faces on Ford executives at the launch, but the company has to do something smart. Ratings agency S&P downgraded Ford's stock to negative this summer after profitability concerns and besides, the world is changing fast.

Back in the Seventies, when Mustang sales plummeted, Iacocca mourned: "Our customers abandoned us, because we'd abandoned their car."

The current Mustang sports car will continue in production, blasting its rumbling hydrocarbon defiance at the world in general, but as the oil age moves gently into history, it's continually starting to sound like an old elephant out there in the woods.

Picture credit STUART PRICE

Intro

Darren Palmer is Ford's development director for electric cars. A Brit, he's been with Ford for 29 years working in senior positions developing Fiesta and Focus models, and the forthcoming Puma as well as the 2015 conventionally engined Mustang.

Q:  How significant do you feel the Mustang Mach-E is?

A: "This is the most important vehicle I've worked on in my entire career by a factor of three. Everything I’ve learned - everything my team has ever learned - has been put into this car and we’ve ended up with a world-class battery electric vehicle that nobody saw coming.

"I think we all wanted this car to feel like Car 2.0, not Car 1.1 as some electric cars feel like. And let's face it, no one ever felt less sexy when they sit in a Mustang..."

Q: Ford has committed $11 billion to bring 16 battery electric vehicles to market by 2022 and set up a separate company within itself to do this called Team Edison. How has this worked for this car?

A: "Jim Hackett [Ford's chief executive] set up Team Edison in 2017 to form global strategies for the development of electric vehicles and they decided that amongst other qualities electric cars would need to be aspirational. Originally this car was going to be the second-generation battery-electric Focus, but there were a lot of 'what-if' questions asked back then. At the end of 2017, we went down to the studio guys who were working on a Focus BEV 2 and said, ‘OK, what if this electric SUV was inspired by Mustang?’ And they lit up. They were like ‘whoa! It went from there...

Then we started drawing and talking to suppliers. We knew we had to develop the Mach-E using a completely different way of working and designing cars. So for the centre screen we went to China and the Consumer Electronics Show to talk to human machine interface experts and we asked a lot of questions of the public.

"We've tried to look at things in a human centric way, asking not what sort of screen you want in the car, but what do I want the screen for? And the answers we got were that people didn't want a great big screen with loads of confusing functions, they wanted a companion that knows them and helps them in their lives.

"Similarly we asked, not what sort of door handles do I want, but how do I want to get into the car? We've ended up with the illuminated buttons to open the door. It feels special, like a button on an iPhone and it's great when you see children with the car because they see the button and just walk up and press it.

"The world is evolving and younger people are increasingly interested in ‘we’ experiences not just ‘me’ experiences. This car plays into that ‘we’ experience and that’s one of the key reasons Bill Ford approved it to be a new product in the Mustang stable. It offers something different to the coupé Mustang that will continue on."

Q: Part of the Mustang Mach-E's appeal is its ease of use for the owners, but the electric vehicle recharging experience is far from perfect across the globe and that isn't necessarily in Ford's gift to fix. Are you concerned about this situation?

A: "Team Edison knows that part of the ownership experience is recharging and that why Ford has partnered with two of the biggest charging firms in America, Greenlots and Electrify America, to ensure that charging and paying for the charge is as seamless as possible. This is very important to us, but we know that a large number of people will charge their Mach-E on a wall box at home. In Europe, we're partners in the Ionity [which is targetting having 400 DC high-power chargers across Europe] and we're working on a single Ford account which allows owners to access up to 70 per cent of charge stations.