The all-new Mustang Mach-E will be equipped with a new feature to help predict more accurately how much range drivers have left, becoming more precise over time. It will be called Intelligent Range and will be able to accurately estimate how many miles the all-electric SUV can drive, helping reduce anxiety about when and where owners can re-charge.
“Electric vehicle customers need to be able to trust their range estimates,” said Darren Palmer, Ford global director for battery electric vehicles. “People want to be confident they’re going to make it where they need to go, whether they’re on a road trip or coming home from work. Our new Intelligent Range feature helps ensure Mustang Mach-E owners around the globe know where they stand ahead of time, freeing them up to enjoy the ride.”
Intelligent Range is truly an intelligent feature as it will calculate the range based on past driver behaviour and forecasted weather conditions. This will allow the car to more correctly predict how much energy will be used in future driving. Everything is connected with the ultimate goal of making the driver’s life easier. The vehicle battery system reports how much energy is available, while the powertrain module tracks how much energy is being used. Warmer or colder weather can also be a factor impacting range, so this feature will take that into consideration too, and constantly update its estimation along the way.
Your car will be connected to the crowdsourced data of other connected Ford electric vehicles whose owners choose to share information on their power usage behaviour and that will improve estimates considerably. This technology is very similar to what Google Maps uses for accurately predicting traffic with real-time data sent from other smartphones. The all-electric SUV can track how much energy is used in different circumstances, including varying speed, terrain and climate conditions, so it can use fleet averages across all Mustang Mach-Es to improve range estimates, even for routes and conditions an individual customer has never driven before.
The car will keep the driver constantly informed if the range is impacted notably by any number of factors since the start of a trip. Customers will receive a notification in their instrument cluster highlighting the new estimate and details about why it has changed.
In case a Mustang Mach-E does run out of charge, the BEV Roadside Assistance programme will tow customers to their nearest charging point, which can be a FordPass Charging Network location, an EV-certified Ford Dealership, a customer residence or the nearest public charger. However, drivers should not worry too much about that as the Mustang Mach-E has a driving range of more than 370 miles according to the World Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP).
Ford will upgrade Intelligent Range through over-the-air updates, designed to deliver even more accurate prediction capabilities for the connected Mustang Mach-E, keeping the company’s fully electric SUVs at the forefront of technology. A future update will allow the Mustang Mach-E to take even more advantage of cloud-connected capabilities, enabling it to factor in real-time traffic conditions, road slope, the terrain and elevation of a given route, and even the temperature at the final destination. Just like an app in your phone it will keep updating and delivering improved services all the time.
At WhichEV, we know that some fans of the American company and especially of the Mustang were not ecstatic to see the V6 and V8 swapped for an all-electric engine. But this car seems an absolute high-quality product of the future and we are looking forward to checking it out on the road.