My first road trip in an electric Mustang Mach-E was almost a disaster

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I almost ran out of battery on my first long electric car trip.
But living with the Ford Mustang Mach-E just got easier once I changed my ways.
Traveling on the road in an electric vehicle is quite doable if you plan ahead and plug in whenever you get the chance.

“How far are we? I asked my girlfriend and co-pilot frantically for the 15th time in as many minutes.

It was 10 p.m. on a Friday, we were still a good 30 miles from our destination in rural Vermont, and the car Ford had loaned me for the week – a 2021 Mustang Mach-E – was running out of battery. Stressed and potentially stuck was not how I wanted to start a camping weekend, nor how I had imagined my first long electric car ride would turn out.

I had left New York six hours earlier, brimming with expectations of what road travel might look like in our battery-powered future. But there I was, anxiously piloting the Mach-E through the pitch black Vermont night, helplessly watching the car’s battery level drop to 10%, then pass it.

If “range anxiety” is an EV owner’s lingering fear of running out of juice without a charger nearby, I would rather experience something like acute range panic.

I had turned off the air conditioning a long time ago in an attempt to preserve the last remaining electrons of the Mach-E to run its two engines. In my darkest, dumbest moments, I also considered skipping the headlights, in case they contribute to battery drain. We looked for a way to turn off the ambient lighting in the cabin of the compact SUV, but couldn’t figure it out.

Returning to a charging station at this point would have added hours to our trip – and since we had booked a private campsite and our host was waiting, showing up in the middle of the night was not an option. We decided to go ahead and figure out the rest later. I slowed down, got behind a semi-final and tried to use as little energy as possible.

The most frustrating part of it all was that I had done my best to get everything right.

At Ford’s suggestion, I had used the FordPass app to plot a route from New York – the chargers and all – and I had followed it to the letter. The app recommended stopping at an Electrify America station in Massachusetts and charging up to 67% of the battery. He figured this would give us enough mileage to get to our campsite with 19% charge remaining, enough to point us to a charger the next morning.

But for some reason, the Mach-E started draining battery power at an alarming rate on the second leg of the trip. We left the Massachusetts rest area with around 180 miles of range to cover the 145 miles ahead, but that buffer zone evaporated within hours.

In the last part of the trip, a message kept popping up on the Mach-E screen alerting us that the battery level was critical and that we were out of range of known chargers.

“Yeah, I fucking know! I barked at the inanimate object, not in those exact words. No answer.

By this point, cell service had also become increasingly spotty. Things were getting more and more difficult by the minute.

We finally reached our campsite – the crisis was averted. But we ended up with a measly 6% battery, good for just 13 miles of driving. The nearest charging station? A tragic 15 miles away. “So near, yet so far” has never sounded truer.

If our host hadn’t been kind enough to let us plug in in his garage the next morning, we would have been completely screwed. Luckily, it turns out that Vermonters who open their farms to campers tend to be pretty easygoing.

Charging the Mach-E using a standard household outlet would be extremely slow, but I had no other choice. After four hours of walking around the property and munching on eggs and fresh farm vegetables, the car had absorbed enough power to allow for just over 20 miles of driving, enough to access a more powerful charger. . With that, the weekend finally started to turn around.

A Ford spokesperson told me that range predictions can be wrong when the Mach-E encounters an environment it is not used to. Steeper roads, warmer weather, and a new driver with new habits, for example, can loop Ford’s so-called smart range system, but the car should adapt and improve ratings over time. , did he declare.

Indeed, for the rest of the weekend, the Mach-E range predictions were correct. Almost every trip we’ve taken to Vermont has actually consumed less of energy than expected. We usually got to places with a few more miles in the “tank” than we anticipated and never had to relive the sudden battery drain we experienced on that first grueling ride. nerves.

Read more: Analysts explain why they are skeptical of Biden’s ambitious plans for electric vehicle sales in the United States

Once I had a decent amount of battery to work with and a little more confidence in the Mach-E, I could focus less on the next load fix and more on enjoying what the crossover had to offer.

The Mach-E’s punchy acceleration made driving enjoyable, and on a more practical level, quick mergers and lane changes were a cinch. Unlike gasoline-powered vehicles, which need to rev up gradually, electric cars deliver their full power almost instantly. The first edition of Mach-E I had, every 5,000 pounds, can hit 60 mph in about five seconds.

Squeezing the accelerator and feeling the big SUV leap forward with all its might never got old, though the brutal torque in its sportiest setting, the unbridled mode, did get a little smelly. The way the Mach-E does all of this in an eerily quiet way, without the familiar rumble of a combustion engine, makes driving even more exciting.

At low speeds, virtually all you can hear is the hum of the air conditioning, and it’s exceptionally quiet on the highway as well. All this creates a pleasantly comfortable and relaxed atmosphere, especially on long journeys. But I imagine the same applies to any electric vehicle.

Frustrated at first with the limits of range and load, I learned to live with the Mach-E once I stopped treating it like a gas car.

Electric vehicles are a new technology that requires a new set of routines and habits – if you don’t recognize it and adapt, they become a major problem. Running a car almost empty before you think about refueling just doesn’t work when you replace a gas tank with a battery, for example.

But going in an electric vehicle becomes fairly easy once you start making charging part of your daily routine, scooping up power in short bursts when convenient rather than all at once when needed.

This sometimes involved taking a detour for a quick charge, but most of the time it was just plugging in when we were going to be parked for a while anyway. At each stop for a coffee or a meal, I took the opportunity to recharge the Mach-E battery, if only for a few minutes. Sockets are plentiful in Vermont, and finding them was a few clicks away on the FordPass app or the Mach-E’s giant center display.

The same mindset applies on long journeys – the most intimidating part of owning an EV. When it came time to make the 300-mile return trip to Queens, Ford’s trip planner made a 20-minute stop at a loader in upstate New York. It was just the time it took to use the bathroom, stretch your legs, and air out some wet camping gear.

By the end of our trip, the Mach-E seemed to know my ride inside and out. We returned to the city with 76 miles of range, 20 miles more than we expected when we left.

We cannot all count on the kindness of the farmers to get us out of load constraints forever. So if EVs are truly the way to go, they will require adjusting our habits, changing our expectations, and learning to plan ahead.

No one ever said saving the planet would come without compromise.

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