People say it's not a Mustang, but they would be surprised. It's the real deal
'I had a leased Audi Q5 and the lease was coming up. Driving to work in winter (then Whitby to the Pickering nuclear plant, now Cobourg to Darlington), I have to deal with bad weather on the highway and having anything but all-wheel drive is not a consideration. I didn't know of many electric vehicles, other than the Nissan Leaf, but my husband Kent had done research and knew about EVs.
I put a deposit on another EV, but it would not be in when I had to give up my leased car. You didn't have to wait long to get a Mach-E. The Ford dealership had one in the shop getting its software upgraded. I couldn't drive it, as it was someone's car, but I got to sit in it. It's the first car I've bought that I never test drove. I put my husband in the back seat, as he's six-foot-two, and my son is six-foot-four, so I wanted to make sure there was enough headroom for my oversized family and that it had adequate trunk space.
It's one-pedal drive, like a Tesla, so there was a big of a learning curve. You put your foot on the accelerator and it moves off, you take your foot off and it brakes. It has its own sound when it backs up, and has an electric whine when it's running, but it's so quiet, some people don't hear it, so it's good that it has really good brakes.
A few of my co-workers drive gas Mustangs. People who own those Mustangs say my car is not a real Mustang, and I don't call it that. I call it a Mach-E. It's not a sports car; it's a crossover vehicle.
It's likely the most powerful vehicle I've ever driven. It has instant torque and all those who say it's not a 'real' Mustang would be surprised. (It can go from zero to 96 kph in 3.5 seconds.) It's handy when I have to pass slow people on the 401, or to get away from tail-gaters.
It handles well in snow. It's 4,800 pounds, so it's heavy. I was at a stop sign and got rear-ended by a Honda Pilot minivan. My car didn't move, but the Honda spun around and almost hit me again. I thought it was impressive that a much larger car bounced off the Mach-E and it didn't budge.
When we moved to a new house this year, we brought the Canadian-made Grizzl-E Level 2 car charger we had and had an electrician install it in the garage. There are chargers at my workplace, but you have to pay for them, but I never use them. EV owners typically follow the ABCs — Always Be Charging — but I don't charge my car every night. It has a 400-km range, although it's less in winter. When we lived in Whitby, I charged it to 100 per cent and we drove it to Niagara-on-the-Lake and back, and it still had 20-per-cent charge. Typically, I don't charge it to more than 90 per cent to preserve the battery life. I have no range anxiety and our other car is a gas vehicle, a Toyota Tacoma. The Mach-E is the commuter car.
Last year, there was a fatal crash on the 401 on my way home from work, and my 20-minute drive took two hours. Running out of charge wasn't a concern. People have misconceptions about electric cars, but if you're not moving, you're hardly using any charge.
I've never had so many people come up to one of my cars to check it out as this one. The car has dual electric motors, and one of the strangest questions I got was whether I got to pick how many motors it had. If it's after dark and I approach the car, welcome lights turn on, including a projection of the Mustang pony logo.
I like the vehicle. It's got lots of headroom, it's fun to drive, it's easy to handle, and it's fun to leave someone in the dust. For a commuter car, I'd get an EV again.
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