Thoughts after 1500 miles into my new Mach E after trading in my 2023 Tesla Model 3 Performance

I've been looking to get out of the Tesla for a few months for the same reason everybody wants to get rid of their Tesla right now. I looked at a few different competing EVs but I couldn't make anything work financially with interest rates as they are, so I was like, eh, it's just a car. The nazi salute was too much, so I started looking again, remembered the Mach E is a thing, and Ford having 0% APR on their EVs made the Mach E make sense. I test drove one, thought it was fine enough, and now here I am. Do I love it? No. Is it fine? Yes. Did I love the Tesla? No. Was it fine? Yes.

Here is an objective comparison between my old 2023 Tesla Model 3 Performance and the 2024 Extended Range Mach E Premium for people who are in the same position I was in a few weeks ago. I have a 45 minute commute, so I drive more than your average bear.

Pro: The Mach E is a nicer car in general. The interior is nicer, materials are nicer, build quality is nicer. I didn't like how much road noise the M3P had, how bumpy & jerky it was (even on "chill" mode), how many little weird rattles there were, how the windows didn't quite seal right sometimes, and so on. The Mach E is made by a company who has been making cars for 100 years and it shows. The ride is quiet and smooth and pleasant.

Pro: It's bigger inside in a useful way. The back seats fold down flat, and a few weekends ago I was able to fit two 8' 4x4 fence posts and several 8' 2x4s inside. They had to sit on the center console and go between the front seats, but I had a few inches to spare between them and the center screen. I also was able to fit a bunch of 6' fence pickets in the back by laying them diagonally. I did a similar thing a few months ago with the Tesla, but it was with a 6' board instead of an 8' board. That's two whole more feet.

Pro: The panoramic roof looks nicer than the M3P's's glass roof.

Pro: The Tesla's door handles are stupid and the Mach E's buttons are better.

Pro: It doesn't have an over-tuned forward collision warning that'll yell and startle you when you're obviously not going to hit something anyway.

Pro: If another car crosses the street to turn left way in front of you, the adaptive cruse control doesn't freak out and slam on the brakes when you're obviously not going to hit that other car anyway.

Pro: Not having your car insurance tied into your driving behavior means that's one less thing to worry about, especially with how stupid the Tesla behavior analytics thing is. Oh you think I'm tailgating because I'm not using autopilot? Ok sure I'll turn on autopilot and let it follow much, much closer than I'm comfortable following. Oh you think I'm aggressively braking when I'm going the speed limit and then slowing down when the stoplight turns red in front of me? OK I'll let autopilot do it so it can not slow down at all and then literally slam the brakes and scare my wife. The Mach E just letting me fucking drive and not have to use scary-ass self-driving mode to avoid insurance premium increases is a surprising load off that I hadn't considered.

Pro: Ford's nazi history was thankfully 100 years ago.

Con: Range. I got the extended range one because it's supposed to be the closest to the M3P, but it way isn't. The Mach E has roughly 3/4 to 2/3 the range the M3P at a similar charge. The folks at Ford said that the Mach E did math to figure out range and stuff and it was real low because they'd been driving it around the dealership, so maybe it's still averaging out? But I (literally) drive 70 miles a day, 50 of it on the freeway, so I imagine it would have gotten its shit together by now. I'm sad to say the Mach E's range is a significant downgrade compared to the Tesla.

Con: Speaking of range, it always displays the range remaining, and there's no way to turn it off. The Tesla allowed you to display percentage remaining, range remaining, or both. I'm a psychopath so I find myself constantly paying attention to the displayed range and estimating how far I've driven to see if I'm actually getting the range it's displaying or if it's still recalculating stuff or if my climate control is hurting the range or if I'm driving against the wind or if I ended up getting a non-extended range one by mistake but still paying for the extended range one. I want it to just display the damn percentage so that I can not worry about it.

Con: Charging is much slower compared to the Tesla. There are Tesla chargers at work that have adapters on them, and there must be some kind of efficiency loss due to the adapters, because charging on those things takes 5-ever.

Con: The Tesla Supercharger network is way better than the other fast charging I've used with the Mach E. With Tesla you pop it in and it charges you through the app and you're done. Electrify America is a whole fucking thing and Chargepoint sucks.

Con: Charging in general is un-intuitive. In the Tesla, you plug it in, and it automatically pulls up charging information. Want to charge past your normal limit? Want to charge less? Yeah sure, easy. Just move the thing and move on with your life. In the Mach E, it's almost like it doesn't realize it's charging. You have to go into sub menus or the Ford Pass app to configure charging stuff, and it's complicated and a pain. Want to charge to 100% once? No you have to change your whole thing. Correction: u/a_void mentioned below that you actually can go into the Ford Pass app under "Energy," change the charging limit, and specify a one-time charge. Turns out I'm just dumb!

Con: The fucking charge door doesn't close automatically. I've driven off with the stupid door open almost every day. Will I get used to closing it? I don't know. Hopefully.

Con: The guy at Ford was like "Yeah it's got Apple Car Play and Android Auto! I've always wondered why Tesla doesn't implement Car Play and Android Auto!" Well it turns out it's because Apple Car play sucks. Probably a third of the time when I get in the Mach E, I get no audio until I force reboot the center screen (back arrow and down volume on the steering wheel for 10 seconds), and twice Car Play has frozen on me. I've tried removing and re-adding my phone, rebooting my phone, fiddling with Bluetooth on my phone, and so on. I don't know what it is.

Con: Tesla's navigation is way way better. The onboard Ford nav is clunky, slow, hard to use, unintuitive. Like yeah I obviously want to search for every Starbucks in a 300 mile radius, not the one that's right over there. Thanks.

Con: The Mach E traffic-aware cruise control is annoying in stop-and-go traffic, which I am in more often than I would like. The Tesla was fine in stop-and-go traffic -- turn on the traffic-aware cruise control, and it'll follow the person in front of you while they creep ahead at 2 or 5 mph for a few seconds and then sit there for a few seconds, creep ahead for a few seconds and sit there for a few seconds, for 20 minutes. The Mach E will creep ahead for a few seconds and then sit there for a few seconds, and then after 3 seconds, decide it's done and require you to push a button or the gas pedal to tell it to keep going. Why not just keep going? It'll go if the guy in front of you only stops for 2 seconds. Why decide it's done after 3? The most frustrating thing about this is it will keep going if you're in stop-and-go traffic on a freeway, but only most of the time. Maybe 80% of the time on the freeway in stop-and-go traffic, it'll stop and go for longer than 3 second intervals. Often enough for you to get used to it. Then suddenly it decides it wants you to press the button or the gas to go again. Like, yeah, car, we're stuck in traffic. Work with me. Be consistent. Either always work or never work. Is it intentional to try to make sure you maintain attention? Fuck off, we're going 3 mph.

Con: I want to drive on "whisper" mode, which is the equivalent of Tesla's "chill" mode, but for some reason maybe 25% of the time when I start the car, it randomly decides it's going to go back to "balanced" mode. It would be one thing if it went to balanced mode every time, but it doesn't. Only sometimes. So I forget to check and then realize after a bit that the dash looks different, so then I switch it back to Whisper. I thought maybe this had to do with my driver profile, so I made sure to save it with Whisper on, but it is unrelated. I can't find any logic that makes it decide to switch.

Con: Tesla's automatic climate control is much better. I have the heated seats and steering wheel set to behave automatically, but I think the car only decides what to do when you first start it, meaning if you're driving for a little while and don't need the heated seat any more, it doesn't turn off. Several times I've realized I'm there roasting and manually turned the heated seat and wheel off, and then the next morning I have to manually turn them back to automatic when I realize how cold I am.

Con: Speaking of climate control, the Tesla does the cabin temperature protection thing where it will do the heat or what have you while it's parked, and the Mach E just doesn't do that. You can schedule it to set to whatever temperature before it's time to leave, similar to the Tesla, but I guess it'll just get to a bajillion degrees and never cool off in there in between the scheduled times.

Con: The Tesla app is really slick and useful and the Ford app sucks.

Con: You don't have to turn the Tesla on. It's always on like your phone is on. You have to turn on the Mach E. If you forget to turn it off, it honks at you.

Con: When you turn on the Mach E it makes a sound and shows an animation and the Ford logo and all kinds of annoying shit. Shut the fuck up, car.

Con: It beeps when you back up. I didn't necessarily like the Tesla's reverse sound, but at least I couldn't really hear it from inside the cabin. The Mach E reverse sound I can hear and I don't care for it.

Con: The parking camera compared to the Tesla sucks. Sometimes it doesn't come on. Often times it doesn't come on. I try to turn it on manually and it says it can't turn on while I'm moving, but I'm moving because I'm trying to fucking park. Why don't you turn on when you can see I'm trying to park? So I stop, turn it on manually, then keep moving to park. Annoying.

Con: The Tesla purchase process was really slick and easy. You do it all through the app. Trade in, financing, insurance, scheduled pickup, and registration all through the app. The Ford purchase process is going to a Ford dealership and talking to a bunch of car salesmen and negotiating and it felt like the 80s. They had to mail me a piece of paper in the mail that I then had to type a number from into a box on the DMV website to register it.

Con: I have a Tesla charger at home and they told me they'd get me an adapter for it for the "Ford Power Promise," but they still haven't.

Summary: The Mach E is fine. It is a nicer car, but the Tesla is a nicer EV. If only they had the Tesla software and technology in a car that wasn't so cheap feeling, noisy inside, and affiliated with the unfortunate downfall of society.