I recently celebrated the 20^th anniversary of being involved in weekly automotive reviews in Colorado, stemming back to the fateful day when a new Range Rover was delivered to me while I was working at Glenwood Springs’ Post Independent newspaper.

Since then, there have been literally thousands of new vehicles and a massive transformation in the way that automobiles work and interact with their drivers. The biggest change, of course, has been the introduction of hybrids and fully electric vehicles, including cars such as Ford’s Mustang Mach-E, and the expansion of electric charging infrastructure, especially in far-flung mountain communities.

A friend of mine offered me a good perspective on the reason that so many of my electric vehicle reviews of the past decade have offered negative experiences. While gasoline-powered vehicles have really changed very little in more than a century, EVs need a revised frame of reference. Lacking home charging facilities and, in most cases, given no manufacturer support for public charging – plus the invariable low-friction summer tires most EV test vehicles come with, even in the middle of winter – has been a recipe for failure, for the most part.

My drive with a well-seasoned 2023 Mach-E, Ford’s crossover-styled electric counterpart to its F-150 Lightning truck, was a mostly positive experience, though not without the regular foibles that every EV user sometimes encounters in the public charging infrastructure.

As you may have seen, this is now less of an issue for owners as late February saw Ford distribute the much-anticipated adapters which allow Mach-E drivers to also charge at the more reliable Tesla Superchargers. A win for Ford, and probably a disappointment for Tesla drivers, but so it goes.

I had a Premium Mach-E, stickered at $68,370 and equipped with electronic all-wheel drive and the 91-kilowatt hour extended-range battery. That gives the not-exactly Mustang-y Mustang an EPA-rated 290-mile range, excluding cold weather or 11,000-foot uphill drives, both of which are of course the norm in Colorado. Mine also had passably grippy all-season tires, though not dedicated winter tires, so I was glad I had a weekend with clear skies and mostly dry highways.

I hadn’t been in a Mach-E for almost three years, and while brands from Kia and Mercedes to Polestar are now more ubiquitous with their own EVs, not much has changed with the Mach-E since its debut, minus a longer range.

In this configuration, the vehicle has both a main electric motor for the rear axle and a secondary electric motor for the front wheels, producing a total of 311 horsepower and 427 pound-feet of torque.

Like all EVs, that torque is most impressive from a stop, silently hurtling the not-insignificantly-sized vehicle into action, with the extra front-wheel grip adding extra pull. It’s not blindingly fast – the higher-power Mach-E GT can run to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds – but it allows competent highway speed and gave me the boost for clearing an 18-wheeler plodding on Loveland Pass.

I did not, however, spend a lot of time driving in a fashion one might with a gasoline-powered Mustang, given both the sometimes tenuous road grip and the mystery factor regarding the Mach-E’s mountain range. On fully dry highways, Mach-E does have some fun built into its SUV-styled stature, but the Mustang name still seems like a misnomer here.

Driving from Lakewood to the top of Loveland Pass, the Mach-E used about 40% of its battery charge, which had dropped to a 270-mile total range in cold Front Range weather. And after sitting in the Summit County cold overnight, the available range dropped lower and lower, but caught up a bit with a 10% top-up after two hours at a lower-power ChargePoint station in Frisco.

I was excited to discover two newer, higher-voltage ChargePoint stations at the Breckenridge library, but one was occupied and the other was impossible to access – piled-up snow and power cables that won’t fully deploy.

I did manage to make it to the ChargePoint stations in Georgetown, which have never failed me in the past several years, but three of the four stations had connection faults with Ford vehicles (a woman in a Lightning confirmed that). Plugged in to the one that worked or another in Denver later that week, Mach-E’s other issue is a slow charging time, compared to more recent EVs.

As usual, your own results may vary, and your experience will likely reflect your own dedication to emerging technology. In the meantime, I’d personally probably go with a more traditional choice like the 2023 Ford Escape I also drove a week or so earlier. This most recent rendition of the long-running small SUV is available as a plug-in hybrid model; the $43,650 ST Line Elite all-wheel drive model I drove featured the more powerful 250-horsepower 2.0-liter EcoBoost turbocharged engine and an eight-speed transmission. It’s rated for 31 mpg on the highway.

The ST Line package provides black-painted 19-inch aluminum wheels and darker trim, while options included a panoramic sunroof. Modern Escapes feature a refreshed look with a broad line of LED headlamps, fog lights and taillamps, and as the shared underpinnings for the newer Ford Bronco Sport, you’ll find a similar rotating shift control and improved displays.    

Andy Stonehouse’s column Mountain Wheels publishes Saturdays in the Summit Daily News. Stonehouse has worked as an editor and writer in Colorado since 1998, focusing on automotive coverage since 2004. He lives in Golden.

Andy Stonehouse’s column “Mountain Wheels” publishes Saturdays in the Summit Daily News. Stonehouse has worked as an editor and writer in Colorado since 1998, focusing on automotive coverage since 2004. He lives in Golden. Contact him at summitmountainwheels@gmail.com.