Making the Mustang Mach-E | Mustang Mach-E | Ford

All good? Bill, what does Mustang stand for? Well... The new Mustang, which Ford Motor Company showed for the first time today. Car looks great. Thanks. America's most popular sports car. Mustangs to me mean power and excitement. You know, we talk about sheer looks. People eyeballing you going down a road. Girls always, you know, waving and things like that when you're a young man. When I drive by in one of my Mustangs, I get thumbs up from everybody. It's really cool. This car is my baby and it's not going anywhere ever. Ever. Like, I'll live in it if I have to. It's the best sports car ever made, period. Discovering the movie Bullet when I was in high school really cemented that that is the signature car, right? It's everything that I thought a car should be. See what I mean? It feels like you're a superhero. Everyone is wondering, what's next for Mustang? I've read about the Mustang having electrification capabilities. Oh, wow. You wouldn't hear that, horsepower. Yeah, well, maybe to the newer generation it'll be a wing. It needs not to lose what it is. This is a pivotal moment in time to be in the car industry. This isn't like a little thing. This is a monstrous change in dynamics of cars. We are all trying to figure out how to be more environmentally friendly. But we're also planning for a very different future. Ultimately, autonomous driving. But on that journey is electrification. There are so many factors that's making the shift to electrification not a question of if, it's a question of when. Almost a hundred years ago, Henry Ford himself was looking at electrified as a technology. Our first generation battery electric vehicle started its life as a product that we needed to do to be compliant in the zero emission state. The green states, if you will. Initially, it was all about range and it was all about just being green. The team was trying to show to the customers that we have this incredible technical capability. It was going to be a great battery electric vehicle, but it wasn't going to be an emotional heartbeat. It was just a car. And when I first saw it, that's the very reason why I said, oh boy, Houston, we have a problem. The vehicle looked like a science project. I thought to myself, who's going to want to buy this car? It wasn't exactly an SUV. It wasn't exactly a sedan. When I came into the role as CEO, the electrification had stalled in the company. We tore up the existing prototype. We said, we want to start over. Ford stands for much more than just meeting kind of environmental regulations. We put everyone in one agile group and we said, bring us lots of prototypes. It was about unleashing the passion and creativity of people who wanted to interpret something so new that it was actually risky. Team Edison was this brilliant idea of create a company within a company. A small coordinating visionary force to create aspirational product. The best way of increasing electric car take up in the world is to make things that people really want. We know customers, they're looking for a guilt-free transportation with iconic design that can represent themselves. We needed to do something that was going to be state of the art, cutting edge and exciting. We wanted to deliver something that was magical. Then we started to ask ourselves, what would get people excited about electric product? And it was actually Jim Farley who suggested, what if we made it a Mustang? I'll never forget the first time my father brought home the Mustang. I was six. I just remember thinking it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. My first Mustang was a 69 Mach 1. My father bought a 1964 and a half 289. My two sisters also had Mustangs, so it's a family affair. I got my first Mustang before I could even drive. My Mustang is everything to me. I grew up in Vietnam and my first image of a Mustang was everything that I thought was great about America. It means iconic. It means stylish. You can feel the power, hear the noise and squeal the tires. Just makes you feel good. The feel you get while you're driving down the road, people just like look at you and they're like, that's Mustang. And you're like, that's my Mustang. Mustang means driving really fast on the highway, listening to some really loud music. It's about power. It's about performance. Incredible. It's an original. It's an American original. You could remove all the badging and blindfold somebody until they get in the car and they could drive down the road and know it's a Mustang. It needs the attitude of a Mustang. The feeling of when you're driving it. I would capture that in the form of a utility vehicle with a drive system that's all electric. It will be a big challenge. We pulled in everybody we could find. All different designers, different ages, different experiences and said, what if that was Mustang? It was really a mandate of show us what you've got. Everybody from every studio around the world sketched day and night trying to come up with a better concept than what we had. It was nuts. The designers, they were all just super excited. It's like you were almost inventing as you were going. It's amazing how things started to happen quickly. This is a huge difference from the other companies. To take your most cherished icons and to ensconce them in the electrification vision, it's unheard of. This is where the journey starts to become difficult. How close to Mustang should it be? Do we put a pony on it? Do we call it a Mustang? Is it a close cousin? Is it a sibling? It was exhilarating, but it also scared the **** out of me. Because you are messing with the crown jewels. Consumers from one of our research clinics were saying, are you guys crazy? The heart of the company is on trial here because that brand is so precious. It means so much to everyone, and it has a very high standard of performance. I was absolutely adamant that it not be a Mustang, because to me, it couldn't possibly deliver upon the Mustang promise. When I saw that it was going to be an SUV, I really dug my heels in. Mustangs are two doors, not four. They're a coupe, not an SUV, and we were doing a four-door SUV electric. Holy cow, right? This is where the magic happens. This is the spirit of Ford. Once I started to look at the prototypes of this idea, I knew we had lightning in a bottle. You could see already from that first clay that this could be something really, really unique. The design team did an amazing job with it, and all of a sudden, it started to make sense to me. If we actually want to be proud of this vehicle and everything it can do, we ought to call it Mustang. Well, now we had made the decision, so we have to deliver on it. We were literally tasked with, you guys need to change the future trajectory of Ford. You guys need to create a new icon. I think everyone's first fear is Ford's taking away the coupe. We're not. The coupe's there. This is a new horse to the stable. That really lit a fire under us, because it's one thing to have a little bit of a design language. It's another thing to say that it's wearing the pony. You can put the Mustang emblem on anything, and people will know what it is on hats, shirts, because that emblem is legendary. The minute we called it a Mustang, everybody redoubled effort. Here's what I could bring to this. This is what more I could do. Please, can we do this? We started with the exterior. You think of all the classic cues and styling of the different Mustangs through the years. The long hood, the muscular haunches, the lines that cut through almost like tendons in muscle. It's imprinted on your brain. You need that sweeping roofline, the tri-bar lamps. All of that is there, but done in a really modern, really fluid, unique way. It's got that powerful look to it. It looks like it's moving when it's standing still. And then we progressed to the interior, and we said the same thing. How much influence should it have from historic Mustangs, and how much should it be one foot in the future? So striking that balance was one of the most difficult things for the entire team. The exterior has to be instantly recognizable as a Mustang, but on the interior of the vehicle, we wanted to signal that this is new. This is the future. So Mustang is the feel of the leather steering wheel in your hands. It's the smell of the interior. Mustang brings that passion, that power, to a segment that's super, super boring. And I want it to be a spaceship. I want it to be something that no one's ever seen or experienced before. Mustang is a me car. It's about me. It's indulgence. This is a we car. You want to experience these things together with your family, your spouse. And so we wanted the interior to be an open, spacious feeling, but still have the key lines that make it a Mustang. You know, a lot of people hit an age where they love Mustangs, but they also have children, and it's not the most practical choice for them. So this vehicle, you can put your family in it. It's going to be great. So our team works through listening to customers and really working with the product development team on how to get this combined in a way that really meets customers' expectations. We don't want it to be a science project. Our direction went more towards creating that iconic Mustang product, really deep diving into the heritage of Mustang color and materials. So we went through, like, every finish you could possibly think of, because it's the combination between, like, futuring it and making it electric, but also you got to keep it Mustang. Electrification is so much more than electric motor. It allows us to remix what a car is. This product is going to be like a technology tour de force. That's what customers want. Our challenge was, how do we combine technology with this iconic American muscle car and have it actually fit together? We want to interpret technology in new human ways, not just for the whiz-banging part of it, but the way people will love to use it. We were considering that this would be the most connected vehicle ever. All of the ecosystem that you carry with your mobile phone inside the car, you have all these other accounts, so why would you even bother not having your Ford account connected to you everywhere you go? Just like you update your phone, we can update the car. This is a whole new interface for people to interact with their cockpit. It basically adapts to your behaviors and keeps making it easier and easier for you to use and reach the things that you love. We had some of the most talented people on the planet, but I don't think anybody could have imagined when we first started where we were going to end up. You know, a year out, your vehicle will be different. It'll be better than what you had when you bought it. Everyone knows the sound of a Mustang. This doesn't have that. So what are you going to do? So we asked ourselves at first, what should it sound like? And it came out pretty quickly, authenticity is key. So we started to use VR tools and sound tools and studio tools so that you could immerse yourself in what this car could be, because it will have a unique sound that emanates from the vehicle. Once you hit trigger drive, the vehicle is going to start coming at you. It'll stop next to you. It's more pleasing. And with the character of the car, it's more fitting. Outstanding. Fantastic. Love it. Thank you, guys. Expectations with any car wearing the Mustang badge are going to be big. Every Mustang is better than the last, more powerful, more aggressive, more of what diehard Mustang customers really, really love. This is something very different. Can't lose the heritage. Can't lose the style. It's got to be fun to drive. It's got to be eye-catching. And most of all, it's got to go like hell. Electric vehicles are way faster than gas-powered vehicles. They could make that car really go if they really wanted to. We actually sized the high-voltage battery in the motor to meet the performance targets. It's amazing how fast it drives. Aerodynamics is extremely, extremely important on this vehicle. So we're really working to drive the drag as low as possible to enable better range while still allowing it to look great. We are bringing performance and environmental friendliness together in one vehicle in a way that we've never been able to do before. Once we convinced ourselves analytically that we had all of the ingredients to deliver the spirit of Mustang, we needed to test. When you're developing an all-new vehicle, you have to go and torture these things in a way that would just blow most people's minds. But they have to be robust. It has to be real. And it has to be able to wear the pony. I flew down to North Carolina where we have a simulator, and I said to the team, this is a Mustang. It better drive like one. That was a huge, huge moment for the program team. When I got out of the simulator, everyone was waiting to hear what I was going to say. And I looked at the entire team and I said, it's not a Mustang. And you could just almost feel the air leave the room with the gasps and just people just thinking, what did he just say? You could see the team was now in a, almost I would call a tizzy, because nobody would have expected. We said, guys, we have all of the fundamentals in place, but it was all about the fine tuning. We have to go back and make this a Mustang. I sat down with Ron and I said, we have to add more. We have to add more performance. We need to re-look at every single element. And we literally went through and did a side-by-side comparison to say, does this pass the litmus test of living up to Mustang credentials? We worked virtual space with our models, then we went up north and tested our physical prototypes. We took the base car out to the track and we knew we had something special. You push on the accelerator pedal and it's instant thrill. And it was at that point I said, we've got it. We really got it. I went back down and I redrove what was now going to be the Mustang. It was awesome. We held a huge event with everybody who is a key stakeholder in Mustang together. Thousands of people working on this and it comes to a moment where there's three of us staring at it and we look at each other and we go, we are ready to go. The reaction that car got was unbelievable. This is a perfect combination of both worlds. A high-tech vehicle with iconic design. The combination of that technology with emotion, with Detroit swagger. This vehicle will surprise people and after 40 years at this company, I got to tell you, I'm thrilled. The vehicle is going to be called the Mustang Mach-E. Mustang means American freedom and independence of spirit and Mach means fast. It's an E, good for everybody. This is 1000% a Mustang. It's an incredible Mustang. It's a new pony in the stable. We're starting to move more and more away from internal combustion engines. People have to embrace that and embracing it in an electric Mustang is better than embracing it in no Mustang. Mustang is going to continue to change and continue to be the car that we all know and love. I think the Mustang name is going to go forever. Probably have spacecrafts riding around that say Mustang on it.