Ford Mach-E

August 2026

I was coming from a Mazda CX-90 that broke down six times and spent more than three months in the Mazda shop because of parts being on backorder. At one point, I even experienced a power-steering issue where the vehicle would seemingly try to steer itself. After the hybrid battery failed for the third time before the vehicle even reached 36,000 miles, I had finally had enough. I traded it in for the Mustang Mach-E.

I traded in my pearl white CX-90 — which I'd named Scarface, after Al Pacino — for an Eruption Green Mach-E I thoughtfully named Evergreen. Felt like a fitting pun for an EV that's supposed to keep going.

Ironically, the Mach-E was actually the vehicle I had originally planned to buy before deciding on the CX-90. The CX-90 is a beautifully designed and thoughtfully engineered vehicle in many respects, but my ownership experience ultimately overshadowed those qualities. After everything I went through with it, I was ready for something completely different.

After a month of driving the Mach-E, here are my thoughts.

What I Love

Beautifully designed and well thought out

The Mach-E is a genuinely good-looking vehicle, and the design feels intentional from the inside out. It manages to look sporty without sacrificing the practicality that I wanted from an SUV. There are little details throughout the vehicle that make it feel like Ford put real thought into how people would actually use it.

The Eruption Green paint has gold undertones, and they do something I didn't expect. In direct sunlight, the car reads almost light green, nearly lime. In the shade or after dark, it settles into a deep forest green. Same car, same paint, completely different mood depending on the light. There's something kind of beautiful about that.

The driving experience

I never expected this car to be this fast.

That was probably the biggest surprise of my test drive. I was completely caught off guard the first time I put my foot down. The instant torque is something that takes a little getting used to, especially coming from a larger SUV, but it is incredibly fun.

The Mach-E doesn't feel like an electric vehicle that happens to be fast. It feels like a performance vehicle that happens to be electric.

Case in point: in 24 years of driving, I had never gotten a single speeding ticket. Then I got the Mach-E. I'm still not entirely sure whether to be embarrassed or proud, but it's hard to feel too bad about it when the car makes going fast feel this effortless.

Drive modes

The different drive modes are an awesome perk and genuinely add to the experience rather than simply being something buried in a menu.

There is a noticeable difference between Whisper and Unbridled. Whisper makes the car feel calm and relaxed, while Unbridled completely changes its personality. The responsiveness, acceleration, and overall character of the vehicle feel noticeably different.

Blue Cruise

I wasn't planning on saying much about Blue Cruise, Ford's hands-free driving system, but it's turned into one of my favorite things about this car.

The first time I turned it on, I was honestly terrified. Giving up control of the wheel on the highway is a strange feeling, and it took real trust before I could actually let go and let the car do its thing.

Eventually, I got used to it, and now I rely on it more than I ever expected to.

Even so, the first time it changed lanes on its own to pass someone, it caught me off guard all over again. I knew the feature could technically do it. Actually watching the car decide to make the move without me was a different experience entirely.

What I Don't Love

The ventilated seats

The ventilated seats are one of the weaker features for me. They work, but the airflow is noticeably less powerful than ventilated seats in other vehicles I've owned or driven.

Living through hot and humid summers, this is one of those features where I really want to feel the difference when I turn it on. In the Mach-E, the effect is much more subtle than I expected.

The lane-centering system is aggressive

The lane-centering system is probably my biggest annoyance with the driving experience.

It is aggressive enough that I often find myself fighting the car because we apparently have different ideologies about where the vehicle should be positioned within the lane. Rather than feeling like the system is gently assisting me, there are times when it feels like it has already decided where I should be and is determined to put me there.

I understand the purpose of the system, and I appreciate having the technology available. I just wish Ford had made the intervention feel a little more natural and less forceful.

Parking function

The loss of the self-parking function is particularly frustrating for me.

Ford explained that the semiconductor components required for the system had become expensive and that, based on their surveys, the feature was among the least-utilized by the community. I understand the business reasoning behind cutting something to bring costs down when relatively few customers were actually using it.

Unfortunately, I am not one of those customers.

I live and drive around Washington, D.C., where parking can be an absolute nightmare. Tight parking spaces, crowded garages, narrow streets, and vehicles squeezing into every available inch make a car that can park itself something I actually would have used. So while I understand why Ford made the decision, it's a feature I wish Ford had let me pay extra for.

First Impressions After One Month

After only a month with the Mach-E, I am still getting to know the car. But coming from a vehicle that left me stranded repeatedly and spent months in the shop, the contrast has been pretty dramatic.

The Mach-E is fun, quick, comfortable, and surprisingly engaging to drive. It also feels like a vehicle I actually want to drive rather than one I simply needed to get me from point A to point B.

There are definitely things Ford could improve, but so far, I am enjoying the Mach-E far more than I expected to.

Charging, Maintenance and Ownership Costs

I've put almost 3,000 miles on the Mach-E already, so I've had plenty of opportunity to see what EV ownership is actually like in the Washington, D.C. area.

One thing I hear fairly often is that charging infrastructure is a major concern with electric vehicles. In D.C., at least, that hasn't been my experience. There are an abundance of charging stations throughout the area, and finding somewhere to charge has generally been pretty easy.

Fast charging, however, can get expensive.

I primarily use DC fast charging when I'm far enough from home that I don't want to risk making it back without a charge. Depending on how much energy I need, I'll typically spend somewhere between $20 and $40. Because of that, I've found myself changing the way I think about charging. Rather than sitting at a fast charger until the battery reaches 80%, I'll often add just enough energy to comfortably get home and then plug into my Level 2 charger.

That said, Ford's fast-charging capability is excellent. I can get the Mach-E to approximately 80% in roughly 36 minutes, which makes longer trips considerably easier. When I actually need the speed, the system works very well.

Charging at Home

My electric provider is Pepco, and they offer a $10 monthly bill credit along with a reduced electricity rate of about $0.17 per kWh. Unfortunately, there's a surcharge/tax that brings the effective rate closer to $0.25 per kWh.

Even with that surcharge, charging the Mach-E is still relatively inexpensive compared with fueling my old CX-90, which required premium gasoline.

For example, last night I added 53 kWh to the Mach-E and the cost was only $12.81. Compared with what I was spending on premium fuel in the CX-90, I'm saving a significant amount of money each month.

Another major bonus of buying the Mach-E was that Ford paid for the electrician to install my home charging equipment. That means I can come home, plug the car in, and Level 2 charge overnight without having to think about it.

Ironically, I have a Level 2 charger about a mile from my house that costs roughly $0.08 less per kWh than my home electricity rate. So I often find myself charging there instead.

Dang surcharge.

Maintenance: Almost Nothing

The maintenance schedule might be one of the biggest surprises of EV ownership.

When I first looked at the Mach-E's maintenance schedule, I was genuinely floored. It fits on a single page.

Rotate the tires every 10,000 miles. Flush the brake fluid every 30,000 miles.

That's essentially it.

Coming from a gas-powered vehicle, where I was accustomed to thinking about oil changes, filters, fluids, belts, spark plugs and all the other routine maintenance that comes with an internal-combustion engine, seeing that maintenance schedule was almost comical.

So far, my maintenance costs would effectively be zero if I hadn't picked up a nail and had to replace a tire.

That's it.

No oil changes. No engine maintenance. No transmission service. No spark plugs. Just tires and the relatively minimal scheduled maintenance Ford calls for.

Obviously, I'm only about 3,000 miles into ownership, so I'm not going to pretend I've proven the long-term reliability of the vehicle. Things can break on any car, and tires certainly aren't free.

But from an ownership-cost perspective, the difference is already noticeable.

After dealing with a vehicle that spent months in the shop and repeatedly left me dealing with expensive mechanical problems, there's something incredibly refreshing about looking at the maintenance schedule and realizing there's basically nothing to do.

The Charging Network Needs Some Work

While there are plenty of chargers around D.C., the reliability of some of them is another story.

I remember a few years ago when the excitement surrounding electric vehicles was much stronger. Businesses were installing charging stations of their own, and it seemed like everyone wanted to offer EV charging.

Unfortunately, a lot of those stations don't seem to have been maintained.

Just yesterday, I went to Barnes & Noble and their Level 2 charger was displaying a ground-fault error and was unusable. The other charging spot presented another problem I run into surprisingly often: a gas-powered vehicle was parked in the charging space.

And that leads to another major con of EV ownership:

There is still a tremendous amount of misinformation about electric vehicles.

Some of it is understandable. EVs are still relatively new technology, and many people simply haven't experienced owning one. But after driving one for nearly 3,000 miles, I've realized that a lot of the arguments I hear about EVs simply don't match my actual experience.

Charging hasn't been the nightmare I expected it might be. Finding a charger hasn't been particularly difficult. And the cost of fueling the vehicle has been dramatically lower than what I was paying to feed my CX-90 premium gasoline.

The biggest frustration hasn't been the vehicle itself.

It's been the infrastructure, the occasional broken charger, people occupying charging spaces without actually charging, and the amount of misinformation surrounding EV ownership.

Final Thoughts

So, would I buy the Mach-E again?

After nearly 3,000 miles and a month of ownership, the answer is absolutely yes.

That doesn't mean the Mach-E is perfect. The ventilated seats could be stronger, the lane-centering system can be overly aggressive, and losing the parking function is genuinely frustrating. The charging infrastructure still has its share of problems, and public fast charging can get expensive when you have no other option.

But those complaints feel very different from the problems I had with the CX-90.

Those were problems that left me stranded, put my vehicle in the shop for months, and made me wonder whether the car would actually get me where I needed to go. The Mach-E's shortcomings are, for the most part, inconveniences. That's a pretty significant distinction.

What has surprised me most is how much I actually enjoy driving this car.

I expected the transition to an EV to involve compromises. Instead, I've found myself appreciating things I didn't even realize I would care about: waking up every morning with a full "tank," plugging in at home instead of stopping at a gas station, spending dramatically less on energy, and having virtually no routine maintenance to worry about.

And then there's the fun.

The Mach-E is ridiculously quick, genuinely enjoyable to drive, and has far more personality than I expected from an electric SUV. It doesn't feel like I'm driving an appliance designed solely to save money. It feels like I'm driving a car that happens to be electric.

I'm only a month and 3,000 miles into ownership, so I'm not going to pretend I can tell you what this car will be like at 50,000 or 100,000 miles. Long-term reliability is something I'll have to earn the right to review.

But for now?

I'm happy I made the switch.

After everything I went through with the CX-90, I wasn't looking for perfection. I wanted a vehicle I could trust, enjoy, and actually afford to live with.

So far, the Mach-E is delivering exactly that.

And honestly, I didn't expect to have this much fun doing it.