Lucid Bought My Car Back, So I Bought A Mach-E

I wasn't supposed to buy this car. You see, I had a Lucid Air and it was awesome. But after 10 months of a super buggy software experience, Lucid bought the car back. Now, my plan was to buy the Rivian R2 as a replacement, but my order window was pretty far out. Coincidentally, Lucid had a pretty rad solution. They offered a long-term Gravity loaner that I could use for the channel through the end of 2026, long enough to get my Rivian R2. But after less than a week with the Gravity and numerous software bugs, the passenger side window wouldn't go up, even after multiple vehicle resets. So the car went back to service, and I decided to wipe my hands of it. I don't think I need to make another video explaining my thoughts on Lucid. Physically, they make awesome cars. But in my experience, the software isn't ready. So I needed a replacement for the Air while I waited for the R2, and that's when this happy accident happened. And it's a car I've come to love, despite some of the very real flaws it has, which we'll get into. But compared to many modern electric cars, there are some exceptionally rare features that this Ford Mach-E GT Performance has. For example, it has a physical stock for not just the turn signals, But the wiper blades as well, incredible. It has physical buttons for adjusting the mirrors. It has buttons for adjusting the seat. It even has a real lever for adjusting the steering wheel and you can open the glove box without using a touch screen. Wow. Even more bizarre, it has these mechanical air vents which you can individually open or close or point in whatever direction you please. What? And if I wanna get into the car. All I have to do is use the very normal door handle. Except, there's no door handle. There's no door handle! Ford, where the f- Is the door handle. Now, we're going to get into all of it, but first I need to address the elephant in the room. I never wanted this to happen. I am someone much like Vin Diesel that can appreciate any fine body regardless of the make, but somehow I've ended up with three Fords. Even though I tried to buy a Genesis GV60 Performance in Highlighter Yellow, Because I think Genesis has the best interior game in the business currently, but that didn't end up working out. So I ended up trading in my highlighter blue GR Corolla for a highlighter orange Ford Mach-E. Which means in this very moment, I own three Fords, and I only own Fords. The importance. Oh. As a viewer, the only logical conclusion you could have is that I'm a Ford guy. Oh god, how did I get here? Now, I thought about this long and hard because I'm open to all makes and models. I've owned cars from Japan. I've owned cars from America. I've owned cars from... Japan. Anyways, I felt like the easiest way I could prove to you that I'm not a Ford guy was to roast Ford. The problem is, I love my Ford Maverick, and I love my Shelby GT350, and I love my Ford Mustang Mach-E. I finally get to say I own a real Mustang. So I decided that because I love these cars, I wouldn't roast Ford. Like, what good does it do for me to say, like, Oh, remember when the Ford F-150 Lightning towed that train? That was cool. Hey, Ford, how'd the Lightning end up working out? Because, look, the facts are Ford makes quality products. So, I don't need to bring up that in 2025, Ford absolutely shattered a record no automaker has come close to. The number of recalls issued in a single year. Second place wasn't even close. Ignore the details. What we learned is that Ford is always numero uno. And like, are these recalls even serious or just like pesky regulatory nonsense? So I dug in and here's what NHTSA had to say on one of their latest Ford recall reports. Quote, fuel tanks may become unsecured from the vehicle And detach while driving. Oh, the fuel tank detaches! The fuel tank! Anyways, there's a simple rule in life. Don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. That's why I'm keeping my true feelings as tightly sealed as a Ford Focus RS head gasket. So now that we've established I'm an authentic Ford fanboy, let's talk about this Mustang Mach-E. There's a lot to love and some pretty big reasons why you might want to avoid it. Let's start off with the positives. And okay, sure, Ford followed Tesla's trend and threw a giant tablet in the car. But they also have an abundance of physical controls. Mirrors, seats, steering wheel, turn signal stalk, a windshield wiper stalk, thank the heavens. Tesla. Lucid. Are y'all seeing this? What's funny is I've owned this car for months now, months, and I still haven't set up my driver profile, which saves your seat and mirror locations, because it's just super easy to adjust them in a few seconds while you're leaving your house. And if you need to adjust them while driving, no biggie, it's super easy. The biggest compliment I can give this car is that for the most part, it doesn't make driving an EV a whole new experience. You'll get in and you'll be familiar with the process. This particular model is a 2022 Mach-E GT with the performance package. So, it has the MagneRide suspension, which I find lovely, and I quite like the seats as well. It's a touch firm, especially coming from a cloud like Lucid, but on longer trips I haven't had any issues with it. Lots of useful, real buttons on the steering wheel, cruise control starts and activates with just one button touch, love that. You can have hands-free driving if you want to pay for it, and it's nice having a display in front of you with the critical info. You know, normal car stuff. With 480 horsepower and 634 pound-feet of torque, it's quite quick. I tested the true 0-60, no rollout nonsense, In 3.9 seconds. Obviously, there are EVs that are quicker than this, but it's wild that a 4-second 0-60 is no longer impressive. It's plenty quick for daily use. I mean, it's quicker than my Shelby. It has one pedal driving, I love that. Not stoked on the low speed operation, say under about three miles per hour, the response isn't amazing. But it's true one pedal driving and it works well enough, though I do wish there was a mode with a bit more regen. Decently spacious rear seats, ample cargo room, a very useful frunk, and hey, my dog doesn't hate riding in it, so that's a plus. I've also been very pleased with the range. Now, coming from a lucid... Obviously, this had a drop in range, but why I'm pleased is because the EPA rates this as having 260 miles of range. In the 1,267.1 miles I've driven it, I've gotten 3.1 miles per kilowatt hour. And in my experience, the battery has about 85 kilowatt hours of usable energy, from 0 to 100%. Do the math and my real world range is just over 260 miles, so even though the car is four years old, I am still getting the EPA's rated range. Plenty of EVs don't come anywhere close to their EPA range, though admittedly I expect that number to drop in the winter months. Also impressive, it's getting that real world range while on sticky summer tires. First thing I did was swap it to Continental Extreme Contact Sport 02 tires. The same tires I'm running on my Shelby GT350. And speaking of the GT350 and tires, this portion of the video is sponsored by Continental, who brought me out to Charlotte Motor Speedway for Mustang Week, where I got to truly stretch the legs of the GT350, and put these tires to the ultimate test as I ran the Roval. Unfortunately, electric vehicles weren't allowed on track, so I was forced to listen to the 5.2 liter flat-plane crank V8, In all its glory, the Extreme Contact Sport 02 tires, despite being a very road-friendly tire, performed beautifully on track. They were quite grippy, predictable, and to my surprise, still had plenty of tread remaining, even after five 20-minute lapping sessions. On top of the 5,000 miles they already had on them from a road trip. Where I wasn't exactly using them lightly. Mustang week was awesome, and these tires are awesome. Showcasing their breadth of use from a GT350 on track to the smooth and quiet Mach-E GT on my local roads. Now on the subject of range, I did some testing on my own with the Mach-E. With adaptive cruise control set to GPS verified 75 miles per hour, climate control at 72 degrees, and an ambient temperature at 62 degrees, It gave me an estimated range of 212 miles at an average efficiency of 2.5 miles per kilowatt hour. So over 200 miles of real world range on the highway. I'm happy with that, especially considering this is the performance variant, not the longest range variant. But speaking of range, after my range test I had dropped the battery down to 8%. So I took it to a fast charger. And here's probably the biggest disappointment with the Mach-E. So let's get into the negatives, starting with charging speed. I took the preconditioned Mach-E to a 350 kilowatt charger, intentionally going higher than its peak rating of 150 kilowatts, so you know exactly what the true charging curve looks like. And it's pretty bad. This is a huge battery pack, close to 100 kilowatt hours gross capacity, and yet the charging speed is quite low. Okay, starting off, they claim it has a peak charging speed of 150 kilowatts. Technically true, but here's why quoting these peak numbers is dumb. From 10% state of charge to about 13% state of charge, it charged at 150 kilowatts, then very quickly dropped To just over 100 kilowatts at 15%. And from 45% onward, it mostly stayed below 80 kilowatts. And once you hit 80% state of charge, it drops below 40 kilowatts, making fast charging above 80% nearly pointless. What does this mean? Well, fast charging from 10% to 80% took just over 40 minutes. That's pretty much double the time it takes for the Hyundai Ioniq 5. If you are planning to road trip this car frequently, you're really restricted to the 80% charge limit, because above that it's super slow, and even below that it's crushed by the competition. It's certainly not impossible to road trip this thing, but expect 40 minutes for each charging stop after roughly 150 miles of driving. Hyundai, including Kia and Genesis, Tesla, Lucid, Rivian, and of course the kings of charging, Porsche, will all offer a faster road trip experience. For an around town and weekend trip EV, it is lovely, but I think you should know about the charging speed before buying one of these. And that includes the 2026 model year, which MotorTrend recently tested and found the charging is still slow. Hyundai Ioniq 5 is probably the more responsible choice, but does it come in highlighter orange? No, it does not. Other negatives. The lack of door handles is dumb. They do have mechanical plungers, so I'm betting they can still open a door with ice freezing over it. But like, what? Pushing a button in to force a door out is just so backwards. And yeah, they've been pretty reliable, so I'd still rank these above Lucid and pretty much on par with Tesla, though that's a low bar. With my old Tesla or this Mach-E, everyone still has to ask, how do I open the door? I'd rank Rivian's slightly above this, and I'd rank Porsche's the best. Behind me is the Porsche Cayenne Electric, and there's a feature I want to show you that's really cool, something that's crazy innovative. Look at this. You see this door handle? I can put my whole hand around it, I can pull on it, and then I can open the door. I also hate how everything has a subscription these days and Ford has three independent subscriptions you can get with this car. Blue Cruise, Navigation, and Premium Connectivity. It's totally usable without any of them because it has CarPlay, so I don't have any subscriptions and I don't mind at all. But let me just show you how dumb this whole thing is. If I use the built-in navigation, which I like doing for road trips because it will show you where to stop to recharge, it works no problem and it picks out spots for me to charge. But if I just try to search locally for chargers, it says this feature requires activation. This is an electric car that's only four years old and it wants for me to pay a subscription to search for a charger, yet it's perfectly capable of it for road tripping. Someone make it make sense. The world hates subscriptions. Please, please subscribe. It's free. Ford offers three subscriptions, and they're still not as bad as BMW. Alright, final critique, the screen just isn't very responsive. There's a healthy delay in when you press something and when it happens. I'll show you just using the heated seats and climate controls as an example. It tends to remember what you've pushed, but it takes its sweet time, by modern standards, on getting that done. Considering this is eyes off the road type stuff, I feel like the delays are far too long. Now, even with all of that said, and perhaps it's a low bar because my last EV was so buggy, I've absolutely loved this thing. It's a phenomenal daily driver. It's funny that still today people have such a hard time admitting EVs have huge advantages. I meet plenty of people who say things like, oh I could never be caught in an EV, that's just embarrassing. And I'm sorry, but it's embarrassing to be choosing your vehicles based on what you think other people will think of you. Here's a little secret for anyone feeling self-conscious about nearly anything. No one actually gives a f***. No one cares what you drive, except for, like, a handful of dudes in the comments section who you don't even know. So why would you possibly care? So for anyone out there who's capable of deciding what vehicle to buy based purely on whether or not it suits your needs, and hopefully to some extent you like it, let me explain why I personally believe having an EV makes for the absolute best daily driver if you have a place at home to charge it. You can preheat or pre-cool the car, even in a closed garage. And you can keep the climate controls on while the car is, air quotes, off. Great for pet owners. There's no need to refuel. It's always full when you leave home. No oil changes. No need to wait for the engine to warm up, which leads to one of my favorite benefits. No mechanical empathy for short trips. Start it up and send it. While I have a GT350 in my garage, which I genuinely believe to be one of the Greatest cars ever created. For any short trips, I'm always going to go for the Mach-E. Continuing the benefits, EVs are super quiet, and they have instant torque. There's no waiting for gear shifts. You get response immediately when you ask for it. Enthusiasts don't want to admit it, and I get that, but realistically, if you're able to charge at home, electric cars are unquestionably the best daily drivers out there. This thing is rad, and I've enjoyed living with it even more than I expected. Please don't tell anyone I exclusively own Fords. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. Thanks for watching.