LFP-Powered 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E Vs. Outgoing SR Battery Version

Last week, Ford announced that it is reopening orders of the Mustang Mach-E model in the United States and major changes applied to the offer.

The most important thing was a price reduction (partially because since April 18, it’s eligible for only half of the $7,500 federal tax credit), but equally interesting was the new LFP-powered, entry-level version.

Prices

Before we move to the technical details, let’s just note the price changes. The entry-level Select trim level of the Ford Mustang Mach-E is $3,000 less expensive than before, while the Premium trim level is $4,000 less expensive. That’s a several percent difference.

In the case of the Route 1 trim, the difference is just $1,000, while the GT versions are $4,000-$5,000 less expensive.

However, as we mentioned earlier, since April 18, 2023, all Mach-E versions are eligible only for a $3,750 federal tax credit, instead of $7,500. Besides that, the destination charge for all versions increased quite substantially from $1,500 to $1,800.

In effect, despite all the versions being less expensive, the effective cost is now slightly higher or comparable to before April 18 (see the previous price list here).

LFP-powered Ford Mustang Mach-E

According to Ford, all Standard Range battery versions of the Mustang Mach-E will now be powered by Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) lithium-ion battery chemistry (most likely from CATL, which is Ford’s battery partner), instead of the NCM-type (pouch cells from LG Energy Solution).

The new battery pack has 72 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of usable battery capacity, compared to 70 kWh in the outgoing NCM type. The total value is not revealed.

With the additional usable capacity of 2 kWh (or 2.9 percent), the EPA Combined range is expected to increase a bit – by 3 miles (or 1%) to 250 miles in the case of the RWD version, and by 2 miles (or 1%) to 226 miles in the case of the AWD version.

A vastly more important improvement brought by the switch to the LFP battery chemistry is the higher peak DC fast charging power, which is now 150 kilowatts (kW), compared to 115 kW previously (35 kW or 30 percent more). The improved charging characteristic is promised to decrease the fast charging time from 10 to 80 percent of state-of-charge (SOC), from 38 minutes to 33 minutes (down 5 minutes or 13 percent).

For reference, the Extended Range battery pack (91 kWh usable capacity) also accepts up to 150 kW of power and requires 45 minutes to recharge in the same 10-80 percent SOC window.

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The side effect of the LFP battery type is increased weight (noticeably lower energy density of LFP vs. NCM, when comparing the same capacity). The curb weight of the base versions is now 6-7 percent higher (we guess that there might be some smart cell-to-pack system that helped to maximize LFP overall energy density, otherwise, the difference would be even higher). Because of that, the RWD version is now slightly slower than before.

The LFP-powered Mach-E RWD requires 6.3 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour (mph), compared to 5.8 seconds previously. That’s 0.5 seconds (nearly 9 percent) slower.

In the case of the AWD, the new LFP-powered version does 0-60 mph in 5.1 seconds, compared to 5.2 seconds previously. One would ask, how it’s even possible that acceleration improved? Well, Ford increased the peak power output of the Standard Range AWD versions from 198 kW to 232 kW (34 kW or 17 percent more) to mitigate the increased weight, it seems. Unfortunately, the higher weight will not be mitigated in corners or in terms of potentially a bit faster degradation of tires.

An interesting thing that we discovered is that the LFP-powered, Standard Range versions of the car are almost as heavy as the NCM-powered, Extended Range versions of the car, which have over 26 percent more energy content (91 kWh vs. 72 kWh). This one data point clearly shows why we don’t see LFP-powered Long Range versions of various models, but only the good-enough, entry-level ones. By the way, the NCM-versions probably even don’t have a cell-to-pack solution (as we saw in 2021 Munro’s video), which would potentially help a bit too.

• Mach-E SR (LFP) RWD: 4,609 lbs.
• Mach-E SR (LFP) AWD: 4,789 lbs.
• Mach-E ER (NCM) RWD: 4,646 lbs.
• Mach-E ER (NCM) AWD: 4,838 lbs.
  California 1: 4,786 lbs.
• GT (NCM): 4,991 lbs.
  GT Perf.: 5,018 lbs.

Below we have gathered all the main specs in one place:

* estimated/unofficial values, useable battery capacity

Comparisons

The move to LFP battery in entry-level version was announced a few years ago and is necessary to lower the costs. Let’s now take a look at how the new LFP versions compare with the outgoing NCM versions.

First, we will take a look at the Select SR LFP RWD version, versus the same trim (but NCM) in early 2023.

As we can see, there is a bit more usable energy and range, but the car is heavier and slower. On the other hand, fast charging time noticeably improved. The MSRP is slightly lower, but considering the increased DST and halved federal tax credit, the overall effective cost is a bit higher (it would be even higher without the switch to LFP).

A very similar situation can be seen when comparing the Select SR LFP AWD versions.

* estimated/unofficial values, usable battery capacity