08 WHAT’S NEW
The battery details
Ford customers in Europe will be able to choose from 18
electrified vehicles by the end of 2021, up from 14 by the
end of this year, and the company is promising to deliver
electrified options on all future passenger vehicles.
Globally, Ford is investing more than US$11 billion to
electrify its vehicles.
The Mach-E’s battery pack is located in a crash-proof
structure between the axles, and its modular design
means that Ford can offer standard (75.7kWh) and
extended-range (98.8kWh battery) versions. These
advanced batteries feature 288 lithium-ion cells for the
standard-range specification and 376 lithium-ion cells for
the extended-range specification. Each module contains
custom-designed LG Chem lithium-ion pouch cells, with
liquid-controlled heating and cooling to maintain
performance and charging speeds of up to 150kW in
extreme weather conditions.
SUV. “With this vehicle we have been
focusing on positioning it as more sporty
than mainstream Ford vehicles,” van
Noyen states. “We didn’t want to go all
the way to having the sports suspension
from, say, a Focus or a Fiesta, because we
want the Mach-E to have wider appeal.
“So the comfort should be good, but
we have given the car a sporty touch,
which we believe is in line with the
Mustang badge and what we want the
vehicle to be,” he adds. “Buyers will
fi nd that the vehicle feels connected to
the road without being uncomfortable.
I think the ride is nicely muted over
bumps, and all impacts are nicely
damped, while the driver still feels
connected to the road.”
First deliveries of the car won’t start
until later in 2020, with development
work still ongoing, as van Noyen
explains, “All the hardware development
is complete, but we’re still working on
some of the electronics. Tuning work
on the ESC and the electronic all-wheel
drive system is still to be fi nished. And
we’re also very close to completing the
calibration of the steering system.”
Electric benefi ts
Arguably the most signifi cant difference
in the development of the Mustang
Mach-E compared with other Ford
models is the fact that this is an allelectric
vehicle, with batteries and
motors, rather than a large internal
combustion engine positioned at the
front of the vehicle.
“The way we tune our European
vehicles is always in the direction of
being fun to drive – that’s a major
thing that my team has to develop into
VehicleDynamicsInternational.com •May/June 2020
vehicles. The Mach-E is is a crossover
type of vehicle, but the battery pack
is fi tted low, which compensates very
nicely for the higher centre of gravity:
not fully, but almost, so that’s a positive.
“And the weight distribution is
better than that of an ICE vehicle.
When we started thinking analytically
about the setup of the vehicle, when
we knew the weight we then knew
what kind of spring stiffness and roll
stiffness distribution we were going to
have,” adds van Noyen. “It’s just about
adapting to the weight confi guration
and then refi ning it. You then drive
the car and give it the character that
you want.”
The absence of a heavy engine at the
front has an effect on the dynamics,
but that is offset by other factors. “The
inertia is better, because most of the
weight is between the wheels rather
than in front of the wheels. For Mach-E
the inertia is better than with some
plug-in hybrids where a lot of the weight
sits way too far backwards, as that
creates, with the yaw of the vehicle,
a bigger challenge.
“But one of the things that we have
had to overcome with this car is the
weight, which at roughly 2 to 2.2
tonnes, is heavy. We wanted to achieve
a certain nimbleness with Mach-E, and
creating nimbleness with this weight
required some tuning. The weight is
low down, but it’s still there. And
when you have to make a weight move
direction, the heavier that weight is,
the more diffi cult it is to create that
feeling of nimbleness.”
Agile thinking
This feeling of agility is a factor that
the North American team has historically
not focused upon quite as much as their
European counterparts.
“European customers want nimbleness
on small roads. We want to have a
feeling of precision and immediate
response without nervousness, and that’s
where we pay more attention to the setup
of vehicles than in North America,”
states van Noyen.
The work of van Noyen and his team
is then further complicated by the fact
that there are two different battery pack
options, plus rear- and all-wheel-drive
versions, so there are four variants of
Mach-E to set up.
“We tried not to just think about allwheel
drive and rear-wheel drive. We
try to think in weight classes, because
otherwise it’s very diffi cult to cope with
everything,” adds van Noyen. “So if a
vehicle is in a certain weight class, it
gets a certain suspension setup, and
if it’s in another class, it gets another.
That’s how we cope.”
A passenger ride on the UK capital’s
congested roads offered little chance
to confi rm whether van Noyen and his
team have got the Mach-E right, but
when we get behind the wheel of the
car later in 2020, we fully expect it to
dispel the myth about EVs not being
engaging to drive.
ABOVE: The Mach-
E’s powertrain
delivers peak power
of 465PS/342kW,
and enables a low
centre of gravity
/VehicleDynamicsInternational.com