How much will the Ford Mach-E cost? We weigh in on where Ford will price their new electric crossover.
The Ford Mach-E arrived yesterday in an impressive presentation that unveiled the Blue Oval’s first effort towards an electric future. The Mach-E takes inspiration from the highly successful Ford Mustang sports car, but it’s not aimed at customers looking to get some V8-powered muscle. Not a drop of gasoline touches the Mach-E, and Ford’s advertising seems to have an entirely different sort of driver in mind.
For starters, Ford compares the Mach-E to Porsche twice in their initial press release. First, they say that it will beat a Porsche Macan in terms of base-model performance, and then later they say that the top model GT Performance Edition Mach-E will beat a Porsche 911 GTS. It seems a little odd that Ford is fixated on Porsche, so we might take it as a sign as to where Ford will price the Mach-E.
A base-model Porsche Macan starts at $51,000, which is not cheap by any means. The Porsche 911 GTS is even worse at $137,800. The Mach-E will start at just $44,000 and end at over $60,000, which makes it seem like the vastly better deal. But if you want to survive in the electric car biz, you have to consider the biggest electric carmaker in the world: Tesla.
If you want to be successful in the electric car business, you can’t ignore Tesla. Right now, you can get a new Standard Range Model 3 for just $30,815 before tax incentives, while a Long Range Model 3 starts at $39,815. These are reasonable new car prices that make battery-powered locomotion affordable. However, they're compact car prices and not crossover/SUV prices.
For that, we turn to the upcoming Tesla Model Y. Tesla is selling Long Range RWD models starting at $43,700, while Performance models start at $56,700. That roughly jives with the Mach-E.
Ford will also bring several advantages over Tesla, including a much larger dealer network so that people can actually test drive a Mach-E before they buy it. Will this lead Ford to think they can edge a bit higher on price? We’ll have to wait until 2020 to find out.