Back in 2007 or so, James Lileks stopped by the NARN broadcast at Back to the Fifties – the classic-car show at the State Fairgrounds that used to be such a vibrant focus of life in the Midway before the same people that brought us Tony Soprano-style trash collection badgered the cruising hot rods out of existence.
Because “vibrancy”, to the new Urbanites, must exclude those who actually vibrate.
Anyway – while on the air, Lileks pointed to a 1967 Mustang Fastback, and proclaimed that “the electric car will never succeed until Detroit builds one that looks like that“.
Was Detroit tuned in that day?
I’ll just assume they were; Ford’s new battery car is going to be an electric version of the car that, along with the Model T and the F150, may be the marque’s most iconic vehicle – the Mustang:
Originally Ford was working on what it openly described as “a compliance car,” one built simply to meet incoming emissions rules in the US and Europe. But in 2017 it threw out those plans, putting together an internal skunk works called Team Edison with a brief to reimagine the project. Its goal was to design a BEV that could only be a Ford, and there’s little that’s more iconically Ford than the galloping pony.
Five models are on the way:
Between late 2020 and spring 2021, Ford will bring out a mix of rear- and all-wheel drive Mach-Es with either standard- or extended-range battery packs. The cheapest of these is the Select; $43,895 buys you a rear-driving one of these with the smaller pack, but you’ll have to wait until early 2021 to get one of those. That also applies to the $52,400 California Route 1, a RWD version with lower-drag 18-inch wheels and the long-range battery pack. All prices are before the IRS tax credit is taken into account; this will be $7,500 until Ford joins Tesla and General Motors in having sold 200,000 plug-ins, at which point it will begin to sunset. Ford expects this to happen at some point in 2021.
Maybe there’s hope?
The magic of the electric engine is infinite horsepower at zero rpm – and the precise application of power to the ground, which is why railroads went to diesel electric (among other reasons).
But cars are about more than acceleration, styling and a slick paint job, let’s not forget the roar of power and pulse of a throbbing V8.
Could you imagine NASCAR electric?
whrrrrr…..
whrrrr….
whrrrr…
Yeah, that’s what I would spend Sunday afternoons watching.
The amazing thing about fossil fuels is that they are energy dense & portable. A car that burns gasoline to generate power to run an electric motor is good. Giant batteries are bad.
No one listens to me because I make too much sense.
I’d bet a brand-new nickel that none of the people who designed this car owned a Mustang as a kid.
They see the pony, they know it was a big deal with Boomers, they don’t appreciate how radically different the Mustang was when it burst onto the scene. Yeah, yeah, it’s just different sheet metal bolted on the frame from a Ford Falcon, blah, blah, blah. And Star Wars was just a movie.
Slapping the pony on an electric crossover doesn’t make it a Mustang, it makes it an insult.
Hey Ford, didja hear about the greatest idea in soft drink branding? New Coke.
I saw a feature on this yesterday on Cavuto’s show on Fox Business channel.
What the greenies continually ignore, are the drawbacks of all electric cars. First, the driving ranges of these vehicles, are reduced as much as 40% when the heaters and air conditioning are used. Second, studies have shown that overall, they cause more harm to the environment than a standard vehicle. Lithium mining run off and disposal of the batteries they are made from, is extremely detrimental to the environment. Finally, the power needed to recharge the batteries, has to come from a generation source.
Wind generators and solar panels? About one third of a wind mill’s composition, is non-recyclable plastics. Solar panels are considered hazardous waste.
As usual with left wing do gooders, their solutions are worse than the problem, 99% of the time.
As usu
An electric Mustang. Using natural gas or coal produced electricity. Not an more sustainable than gasoline. A couple of the Clean Air/Water acolytes stopped by my house the other day. They were selling the Xcel Energy solar farm concept. I politely declined, pointing out that my monthly electric bill is $100 and a 5% savings is miniscule. They persisted. I could have pointed out that if Xcel was not being coerced by the government into building the farms they’d have nothing to do with them. If solar electricity was “free” of course they’d sell plenty of it. I did mention to them that the sun happened to be setting as we spoke. I like to have electricity at night and on rainy days.
Greg nailed it.
Fire; heat; explosions; concussive vibrations. These are the things that make a car feel like a living thing.
Compare the thrill of the first starting of an engine you have built to flipping the switch on a motor you attached some wires to.
Internal combustion will eventually die, but it’s a long way into the future.
One more thing. Although not a new thing, these electric cars will expand the data being collected on you.
If you have “OnStar”, “Sync”, or “Uconnect” wether you have paid to activate the service or not, you are being tracked, and recorded when ever the ignition is on.
Disconnecting these nasty little bugs isn’t hard, and we’ll worth the effort. The problem really gets bad when all this spygear is an intrinsic piece of the car, not just a little box like now.
https://www.aol.com/article/finance/2014/08/21/how-to-stop-your-car-from-spying-on-you/20949960/
Stopping every four hours to charge the battery for a few hours would make a road trip with the “e-Mustang” something to remember, that’s for sure. As for me, I’m going to be driving 1200 miles next weekend, and that’s simply not possible with an electric car yet.
It looks about as much like a Mustang as does, ah lets see — my coffee mug.
It looks a bit like a cross between a Model X and a Model Y. But that might be better than trying to make an SUV actually look like a Mustang.
But I shouldn’t carp. Any move Ford makes towards battery electrics and getting away from their total reliance on always-bigger gas burning SUVs and pickups should be encouraged.
The way I see it is simple. The base Mustang is about $20,000 cheaper than the electric version and has twice the range and a “third pedal antitheft system/driver entertainment system.” You’ll make up the difference in fuel costs in a mere 320,000 miles, about 50,000 miles longer than the maximum reasonable life of the battery and about 150,000 miles longer than the maximum reasonable mean life of the car. And carbon emissions/fossil fuel usage? Once you price in the energy used to create the battery, it’s about a wash.