2025 Ford Mustang Mach-E Select, Premium and GT Review

When Ford decided to call its first ever fully electric SUV the Mustang Mach-E, we knew the new car had a lot to prove. The Mustang name, until now, has ever only been used on the car with the pony emblem, the company’s iconic Mustang Sports car. With both the Mustang name and pony emblem now gracing the new electric SUV, we could only expect it to deliver similar levels of performance and thrills as its less practical counterpart. Will our expectation be met? Let’s find out.

The Mustang Mach-E is available in Australia as a three-tier line-up, starting with the entry-level Select trim priced from $64,990, progressing to the mid spec Premium grade at $79,990 and topped off by the flagship GT with a hefty sticker of $97,990. All prices exclude on-road costs.

By default, being an electric mid-size SUV places the Mach-E in direct competition against the dominant Tesla Model Y, the segment’s best seller. While the Californian car’s emphasis has always been on energy efficiency and tech, the Detroiter markets itself as the sporty alternative. Beyond its fellow countryman rival, the Mach-E also goes up against the likes of Toyota bZ4X, Subaru Solterra, Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Volkswagen ID.5, Polestar 4 and BYD Sealion 7.

We drove all three Mustang Mach-E variants and while they’re all essentially a five-door, five-seat electric crossover, they have quite distinguishable flavours that will appeal to a wide demographic of buyers. But before diving into the details, the design is worth a mention as it’s been a major talking point of the car since launch.

Think Mustang and that muscly low slung sports car springs to mind. Who would’ve thought the Mustang design would work on an SUV? But here it is. Okay, the Mustang Mach-E may not have all the design cues of the coupe but there’s certainly some resemblance in a few areas, such as the boned bonnet, trapezoidal grill motive, rear haunches and taillights.

The base Select model surely isn’t a boring thing to look at, but the top dog GT is no doubt full of attitude. It has beefed up bumpers, body coloured wheel arch mouldings, rear diffuser and large 20-inch multi-spoke wheels. Draped in the striking Grabber Blue Metallic exterior paint work, the GT is a real head-turner, especially when every second electric SUV on the road is a Model Y.

While we still haven’t warmed up to the sight of a galloping pony on the front and rear of the Mustang Mach-E, we must admit a Mustang-infused SUV design isn’t as bad as an idea as we first thought. Others may still think otherwise, though, and with design being something subjective, we understand.

On the inside, the Mustang Mach-E is a total disconnect from the car from which its name was adopted, save for the pony emblem on the steering wheel. It might as well because the driver-oriented cockpit of the Mustang sports car isn’t all that suitable for a family SUV anyway. Rather, the Mach-E’s cabin is designed with practicality and usability in mind.

Immediately obvious the moment you hop in is that massive, super high resolution 15.5-inch infotainment touchscreen positioned vertically right in the centre of the dashboard. It’s larger than that found in the Tesla, but only by 0.1 inch. Still, the real estate available to display everything from smartphone projection to climate settings is unreal, as unlike the Model Y the centre screen doesn’t have to give up space for driving information.

That info is served up on a smaller 10.2-inch widescreen digital instrument display conventionally positioned right in front of the driver behind the steering wheel. While it’s not customisable, the screens limits the display to just essential driving info like range, speed, drive mode and sensory data to minimise clutter and distraction. And the airplane-like reference to “Ground Speed” in the speedometer is pretty cool. It’s a nod to the aeroplane that gave the original Ford Mustang its name, the World War II era P-51 Mustang fighter plane.

On top of embedded navigation, AM/FM and DAB+ digital radio, essential connectivity like Apple CarPlay (wireless) and Android Auto (wired) are supported by the aforementioned centre touchscreen which conveniently has a rotary knob at the base of the screen for volume control and media on/off. Granted, the climate controls are embedded in the screen, they’re still easy enough to operate thanks to their ideal screen positioning and large buttons. The rest of the functions and general navigation are just as intuitive, but the screen’s processing speed can be slow at times and that does take away from an otherwise good user experience.

While fit and finish is tight, cabin materials aren’t what you’d describe as premium, despite the Mach-E’s premium price tag. There’re some hard scratchy plastic trims in the lower door card and centre console base. There’s no mood lighting. There’s just a general lack of glamour and highlight to lift cabin ambience, even in the GT model which is a car with a near six-figure price tag.

That said, all variants have leather upholstery, with the sports seats in the GT boasting a combination of suede and leather. Speaking of which, the GT’s front seats are heavily bolstered, providing excellent support as well as comfort. The Select and Premium share the same type of seats, albeit with red contrast stitchings in the Premium. The rear seats are a little flat, though.

The cabin has enough room for a family of five, with the rear seats afforded with generous knee and legroom. Due to the sloping roof design, headroom in the back is less compared to more upright SUV like the Toyota bZ4X and those long in the legs might find the roof a bit too close to their heads.

Storage compartments are aplenty, with thick door pockets that are good for bottles, a pair of sizeable centre cup holders in the front and another pair at the rear behind the drop-down armrest, a decent size glovebox, a two-tiered storage tray in the centre console and covered compartment under the adjustable front armrest.

Further back, the boot, measuring 519 litres, is one of the largest in class. Drop the rear seats and the space expands to a voluminous 1420 litres. There’s also a second 134-litre boot under the bonnet.

In a bit of Ford quirkiness, the Mach-E has no external door handles. Instead you press a small button on the window pillars to pop open the doors, with your key fob in your pocket of course. There’s even a keypad in the driver’s side B pillar which allows access to the car without a key fob present, but good thing it’s for access only and one can’t start the car and drive away.

Both the Mach-E Select and Premium variants are configured as rear-wheel drive with a single motor. The former has a 71kWh battery while the latter uses a larger 91kWh battery. Their respective outputs are 198kW/430Nm and 216kW/430Nm, with their respective 0-100km/h times being 6.6 seconds and 6.2 seconds. The former is good for a range of 470km while the latter with its larger battery has a longer range of 600km. Both figures derived from the WLTP cycle.

The range-topping GT packs two electric motors, one at the front and another at the rear to afford all-wheel drive. The motors are energised by a 91kWh battery and produce a combined output of 358kW/860Nm. That’s enough to propel the 2.3 tonne SUV from zero to 100km/h in a supercar-beating 3.7 seconds, a time that also matches that of the Model Y Performance. It has a WLTP rated range of 490km.

On paper is one thing, on the road is another. Rolling off and accelerating away in the Mach-E, it’s quiet, responsive and, as expected from an EV, completely linear in its power delivery. This makes for anything from a quick intersection crossing to a swift overtaking on open roads.

While its still relatively easy to drive, the steering feels unnecessarily heavy with not much useful feedback, perhaps an average effort by Ford trying to infuse a bit of Mustang driving feel in the EV. The brakes, however, are progressive with none of the wooden pedal feel so common of recuperative braking systems.

The ride can do with a bit more fine tuning, as even in the base Select model it feels quite firm, in family SUV standard that is. That’s not to say it’s uncomfortable, far from it. It’s still very much a daily but if it’s toned down a bit that’d have made it more pleasant to drive on pimply roads.

The taut underpinnings does mean the Mach-E is quite a thing to chuck around corners, with good composure and flat stance. Despite being rear-wheel drive, both the Select and Premium models maintain good traction in most proceedings, with power to the wheels regulated expertly to quell any unwanted wheel spin.

Now on to the Mach-E GT performance model, if this is what the progression from a V8 feels like, we say bring it on. Whether it’s launching from a standstill or pulling away on the move, every squeeze of the right pedal pins you right back on your seat as the digits on the digital speedometer head north in a frenzy. The acceleration is that savage.

While there’s no match for the roar of a V8, the GT (as well as the Select and Premium) has a so called “Propulsion” mode which when activated, feeds synthesised sound into the cabin via the speakers. The futuristic, yet somewhat mechanical-like sound is synchronised to the acceleration to give the driver a heightened feeling of engagement. It’s fake but surely better than silence.

The GT’s ride is sports car firm, more so than the Select and Premium models. We wish It had some sort of adjustable dampers with sport and comfort mode to balance things out. It’s an SUV after all. Its sporting potential is, however, unmistakable. With all-wheel drive, sharp steering and heaps of power, it doesn’t feel a lot of its heft. It’s locked down for the most part and grip is phenomenal. It’s really a car that you can have fun with on the weekend after dropping off the kids at soccer training.

The GT washes off speeds as quickly as it gains them thanks to those massive Brembo stoppers. Unlike in a Mustang coupe, every time you hit the brakes energy is not wasted but instead recuperated to charge the battery. And because the brakes are regenerative you can expect them to be pretty much fade-free.

On to charging, all Mach-E models support both AC and DC fast charging, the latter up to 150kW. Charging times vary between variants due to the different battery composite employed. While they all use lithium-ion batteries, the Select uses a type made of lithium iron phosphate and the Premium and GT use the nickel manganese cobalt type. Unusual for a pecking order and likely due to having a smaller battery, the Select has quicker charging times than its more costly counterparts. For reference, the Select is about 20 minutes quicker to charge at 50kW DC and 13 minutes quicker at 150kW DC. Overall, the Mach-E is not the quickest to charge in the segment, with DC charging taking anywhere between 32 minutes and 2 hours depending on charging capacity.

Strangely, real-world energy efficiency is better than claimed except for the Select model. We spent a week in each variant and managed the following figures: 18.0kWh/100km for Select, 17.0kWh/100km for Premium and 20.0kWh/100km for GT.

Claimed figures are 17.8kWh/100km for Select, 17.3kWh/100km for Premium and 21.2kWh/100km for GT. They put the Mach-E in the middle of the pack in terms of efficiency, with the Model Y still the more efficient rival.

Verdict

2025 Ford Mustang Mach-E pricing and specification