The Story:
Ford recently announced that its new electrical vehicle (EV) SUV will take the model name “Mustang,” a legendary brand. This decision may reflect confidence in the new product, and may fairly be taken as a signal that the automotive industry is changing.
Background:
The old Mustangs have become symbols of a time when cars were designed, built, and sold with little or no attention to fuel efficiency. Because, after all, there was styling and performance to think about, and because it was presumed gasoline would always be cheap.
The new electrical SUV, the Ford Mustang Mach E, is important precisely for the opposite reason. Improved battery and charging technology allows cars to rely on the broader electrical power grid, which introduces economies of scale and thus greater energy efficiency on the whole, compounded if the electrical plants themselves can be brought to draw upon renewable sources of energy rather than fossil fuels.
The Thing to Know:
The auto industry has long worried that consumers would not buy electric vehicles en masse until they could total more than 300 miles between recharges. The Mustang Mach E represents progress against that somewhat arbitrary round-figure benchmark, although only the Premium version can beat 300 miles outright.
