IN 2023, THE Tesla Model Y wasn’t merely the world’s best-selling electric car – it was the most popular car period. No Taylor Swift tickets, then, for guessing that mid-sized SUVs have the most frenetic market activity of any EV category.
Audi, BYD, Polestar, Porsche, Skoda, and Volkswagen are all set to bring competitors to Australia later in 2024, but right now we have the first-ever electric cars from Ford, Subaru, and Toyota.
Ford has undoubtedly the most controversial nameplate, daring to trade on its V8 muscle-car heritage by calling its battery-powered crossover the Mustang Mach-E.
Subaru has gone all latin with Solterra (a combo of ‘sun’ and ‘earth’), while Toyota has gone leftfield with the alpha-numerical bZ4X.
The Japanese brands’ EVs are more than mere architecture twins like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6 platform buddies also in this group – they’re basically the same car with subtle design and spec differences.
While the bZ4X offers a $66,000 front-wheel-drive variant as one key difference, we’ve opted for the $74,900 AWD for proper price and technical (near) parity with the top-line $76,990 Solterra Touring AWD.
We did, however, choose to split the Korean twins to give us the two different levels of performance available for both the Ioniq 5 and EV6. We have the $84,000 Ioniq 5 Epiq AWD and the $79,590 GT-Line RWD variant of the 2022 Wheels Car of the Year-winning EV6.
Ford’s Mach-E is available from $72,990 in base Select form, though we instead selected the mid-range Premium that’s still rear-drive and quite a jump at $86,990 before on-road costs, though it brings the biggest battery and biggest on-paper range to the group.
We also have the mid-range model of the car they would all dearly love to outsell – the $78,400, all-wheeldrive Model Y Long Range. JS
SIXTH PLACE
Ford Mustang Mach-E Premium
ODDLY MARKETED MACH-E SHINES FOR RANGE AND CURIOSITY
FORD’S NEWCOMER, the Mustang Mach-E, makes a bold play for attention in the booming electric medium SUV category, wearing styling cues from the world’s best-selling sports car (somewhat awkwardly) and coming in swinging with a 358kW/860Nm GT AWD flagship that hauls itself from 0-100km/h in just 3.7 seconds.
As the brand’s first ground-up EV (albeit using a re-engineered ICE platform), the Mach-E is out to make a big impression and is instantly identifiable as a product of the Ford Motor Company, even though it doesn’t wear a single Blue Oval, which it eschews for stylised Ponies.
Fewer ponies in the paddock, though, because our budget didn’t stretch to the $104,990 GT AWD so we settled for the mid-spec Premium rear-driver that offers 216kW/430Nm and falls inside the LCT threshold for efficient vehicles, at $86,990 plus on-road costs, making it the priciest EV on test.
And that’s after a pre-launch price adjustment lowered Mach-E entry points by between $2675 and $7000, with the range-opener Mach-E Select benefitting from the largest cut to wear a $72,990 sticker.
Press a small, circular button on the window frame and the Mach-E’s driver door pops open – a tiny winglet providing the handle. (Rear occupants don’t get winglets and instead grab the door edge.)
A black-on-black cabin treatment makes for a dark vibe inside, though there’s a tinted glass roof letting light in (as well as heat, seeing there’s no sunshade). From red-stitched perforated-vinyl seats that look and feel flat (and are crying out for seat ventilation), front occupants are presented with an appealing mesh-fabric-upholstered upper dash (with matching door trim inserts) that evokes 1980s Alfa, with a swathe of carbonfibre-effect trim below.
A Tesla-style 15.5-inch central portrait display screen and
