Sunday September 24, 2023 – Mach-e 1 Year of Ownership - Last Wednesday I took my Mach-e in for its first service. I have owned this car for one year and have put a little over 6,000 miles on the car. So far, while there has been a few hick-ups with the technology it has been very reliable and fun to drive.

Over the last year the car has become the primary vehicle that we use on a day-to-day basis. My wife drives her Ford Escape from time to time but when we go somewhere together, we invariably take the Mach-e. Normally I charge the car about once per week using my existing charger which I run at level 1. I have never used the charger that came with the Mach-e so I can’t say how well that works.

Most of my driving is done around an area within 5 miles of where I live, with the occasional trip to Anaheim to see our grandson. We have also taken two longer trips using the Mach-e, one to Laughlin, NV. and a recent trip to Laguna Beach (about 70 miles south of here) with a 2-night stayover. While many people have complained about the public charging network, I had no problems with that on my two trips. On the trip to Laughlin, I had a short wait for a DC charger in Barstow as one of the chargers had been taken out of service and the others were all busy. On the trip to Laguna Beach I was able to add plenty of charge for the drive home using a Chargepoint 40KW DC charger while having lunch at Fashion Island in Newport Beach.

On a recent trip to Sequoia National Park, we did elect to take the Escape rather than the Mach-e. There were two reasons for this, the first is that my wife didn’t want to stop on the way to charge the car, and the second is that there was very little charging opportunities near our hotel and non in the park itself. Right now, the push is for fast chargers along the highway but I would also like to see chargers installed in most hotels. It is much more convenient to charge overnight at the hotel so you can start the next day with a full charge.

I have had no mechanical issues with the Mach-e so far and do not appear to see any battery degradation with start-up range, showing as over 250 miles when fully charged, which is better than the EPA estimate. I usually try and charge to a maximum of 90% unless I am going on a longer trip when I charge to 100% if I can. Charging to 90% for regular daily use is recommended by Ford.

I have had some issues with the tech but nothing that has been more than a mild annoyance. The first couple times that Ford did an over the air update the process change my custom setting back to factory default so my climate settings were off, my seat mapping was gone, and my radio was set to some non-existent AM channel. Ford has now fixed these issues and over the air updates work fine now.

I have also had a few strange events. The most common issue I see is that the car gives me a message that the front parking camera is not installed. This sounds OK but I only get this message when I am backing out of my garage. Once in a while the collision alert will sound when there is nothing in front of the car. I also see a few issues with the navigation system. I live in a gated community and my car parks parallel to the road about 30 yards west of it. The Nav system appears to think I am parked on the road and gives me direction based on that. Once I get to the road it will sometimes switch the route and tell me to turn in the opposite direction. I’ve learned to pause for a second while exiting the gate to give the Nav system time to switch it around.

My first service with the Bev went great although it did have to wait about two weeks to get the car in for service. I had the service done at Galpin Ford, the dealer that I bought the car from. My wife has been using them for years and has always been happy with them.

There is not that much to do when servicing a BEV and I elected to wait to pick the car up. I was promised the car in one and a half to two hours and the actual time it took was one hour and twenty minutes from dropping off the car to driving it home. There was one funny thing, the report of work performed included changing the oil and filter. They didn’t actually charge me for this so I just assumed they haven’t updated their computer systems to be BEV specific for the Mach-e.

I did get a text from Galpin saying that cars like mine were in high demand and they would like to buy it. This of course is a common ploy to get you to update your current car to a newer model. I just ignored the text as I am very happy with my Mach-e. If you are interested in a Mach-e then please note that Galpin Ford has a load of them on their lot and I personally have been very happy with them from both the sales and service perspective.

My first year with the Mach-e has been fun. I get lots of comments about the looks of the car and it is a pleasure to drive. I am hoping to keep this car for a long time.