As the rollout of the Ford Mustang Mach-E continues, the automaker is reportedly sending "charge angels" to identify faulty infrastructure.
Some public charging stations are older and don't meet Ford's standards for reliability, Darren Palmer, the automaker's general manager of battery electric vehicles, said in a recent interview with Automotive News.
"Over 99.5 percent of customers go into a charger and get a charge," Palmer said. "But a number less than that get a charge the first time they charge."
Having to try multiple times to successfully charge an EV is far from ideal, which is where the "charge angels" come in. These are Ford employees who will travel around the country in "specially instrumented" Mach-E electric SUVs to test public charging stations, Palmer said.
2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E at Electrify America fast charger
Ford will reportedly use connected vehicle data and social media posts from disgruntled owners to locate trouble spots.
Ford has been aggregating charging locations on its FordPass interface, and it now claims more than 16,000 charging stations, and several times that number of charging connectors. The purchase of a Mach-E includes the equivalent of a few DC fast-charges on the Electrify America network.
Despite some early experiences in which the Mach-E wasn't as fast as advertised, owners are now widely reporting seeing Ford's claimed peaks of 115 kw for the standard battery and 150 kw for the Extended Range versions.
As we've experienced repeatedly on charging networks outside the Tesla Supercharger network, there's often a lack of accountability for repairing charger issues, leading to finger-pointing between the charging network and the actual owner of the hardware. Perhaps some pressure from an automaker will help.
