- Ford confirms new UEV platform won’t be used in the Mach-E, casting doubt over a direct successor.
- The Mach-E remains Ford’s only U.S. passenger EV, but sales are down, and the model is aging.
- Ford’s EV reset may be less about updating old models and more about moving past them.
The Ford Mustang Mach-E is in a weird spot right now. It’s one of the few early EVs from a legacy automaker that made buyers reconsider getting a Tesla. Since Ford pulled the plug on the F-150 Lightning, it’s been holding down Ford’s North American EV fort on its own.
Even though it didn’t even come close to dethroning its main rival, the Tesla Model Y—no EV has—the Mach-E has been fairly successful. Still, it is getting a bit long in the tooth now—it was introduced almost seven years ago—and its year-over-year U.S. sales through May fell by nearly half to less than 10,000 units. The end of the federal tax credit certainly factors in there.
It could use a ground-up replacement with better specs and a revamped design to challenge the best new electric crossovers, but Ford may have other plans. The Mustang Mach-E will not move to Ford’s new Universal EV (UEV) platform, the lower-cost architecture that is supposed to underpin the next phase of Ford’s electric vehicle strategy, Ford says in a Q&A section on its site.
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Source: Patrick George
“Will Ford’s Universal EV platform be used for future Mustang Mach-E?” one question reads. In response, Ford says that “No, it will not be used for the Mustang Mach-E. This platform was built from a clean sheet to maximize vehicle efficiency.”
None of this means that Ford plans to kill the Mach-E, or that the nameplate will disappear. However, it still casts doubt over what it’s future looks like. Ford still could give the Mach-E a next generation based on its current architecture. But Ford is pinning its EV future, across models, to the UEV architecture.
Ford’s UEV architecture isn’t just for pickups. It’s designed to support SUVs and vans too. And while it’s not an 800-volt platform, it should still bring improvements in all areas that matter compared to the GE1 platform that underpins the Mach-E.
In an appearance on the Rapid Response podcast, Ford CEO Jim Farley said he considered Ford’s first-gen EVs—the F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E—were “designed the wrong way” and that the company had since gained new knowledge and insight into how customers choose EVs. Farley said something very similar in a Car & Driver interview from February when he said Ford hadn’t designed its electric vehicles right.
When asked about the F-150 Lightning, Farley remarked that “I totally would’ve done it differently. I mean, look, we didn’t know what we didn’t know.” Regarding the Mach-E, he better explained what he meant about the wrong design approach, pointing out that a Model Y’s wiring harness was 70 lighter and a full 1 mile shorter, all because it was a clean-sheet design.
The switch to UEV doesn’t automatically mean there won’t be a next-gen Mach-E. Ford could use another manufacturer’s platform, as it did with Volkswagen’s MEB, which underpins two crossovers for the European market. It has tapped Renault to build Ford-badged EVs on its platforms.
There haven’t been any specific announcements about a new U.S.-market electric crossover based on UEV yet, though we can only assume one is in the pipeline. Ford seems to have learned what it needed from its first EVs, and it has no trouble leaving them behind (as it did with the Lightning) when it sees an opportunity to turn the page. We just don’t really know what’s next.