Should you get the Ford-branded mobile charging cord or NACS adapter for your new Mustang Mach-E?

If you’re looking at grabbing a new Mustang Mach-E soon, you might notice that the car no longer comes standard with a mobile charging cord or the NACS adapter to connect to the Tesla Supercharger network. The company includes both as an option on its build and price tool (mobile selected by default, NACS unselected by default), but you might be wondering if you need to get them. We’ll help you answer that question.

First, these are priced a tiny bit differently than on the Ford F-150 Lightning. On the Lightning, they are sold as a “bundle” for $600. Here, they are sold individually ($500 for the cable, $200 for the adapter), which makes them $100 more expensive on the Mach-E than the Lightning. That’s odd. But the nice thing here is that they are separated, so you can make two separate decisions.

Do you need the mobile charging cord?

If you get a Mach-E while Ford is still doing its free home charger installation, you probably don’t need the mobile charging cord at all. It’s nice to have a backup option in case you’re somewhere and want to plug in, but $500 is a lot of money to spend “just in case.” You can find alternative options for that emergency for a lot less money.

Preview	Product	Price
	AMPURE Go 1 Portable Level 2 EV Charger – 32A Fast Charging for Electric Cars, 120/240V NEMA 14-50…	$399.00	Buy on Amazon

Depending on the day of the week, there are a ton of options out there. Some are less if you only want the level 1 or level 2 plug, but if you want the option for both be sure it has both connectors like the one above..

Do you need the NACS adapter?

For the adapter to plug into NACS high speed chargers, we think that is something you DO need, as it opens up a ton more charging opportunities for you than relying on the built-in CCS connector. As more and more chargers support NACS natively, the newer (and more reliable) chargers will use this connector, so the $200 spend is worth it to us.

The price is actually quite competitive. If you can get the Ford one, go ahead and get the Ford one. If they are out of stock, or change in price, we have a Lectron one in our review kit that we use on EVs when we need to, and it works well for us. In fact, the Lectron one looks nearly identical to the Ford one, which indicates that they might be the OEM producer for Ford’s adapter.

Preview	Product	Price
	Lectron NACS to CCS Electric Vehicle Adapter – 500 Amps / 1,000V – Compatible with Tesla…	$183.00	Buy on Amazon

Final thoughts

We do like the idea of carrying around a mobile charger just in case, but the truth is we haven’t needed something like that in years reviewing electric vehicles. A dedicated, hardwired home charger is much better.

Now, if you buy one and can’t get the “Ford Power Promise” for some reason (perhaps they’ve stopped offering it), then a mobile charger makes more sense. You can have an electrician just install a NEMA 14-50 outlet in your garage, and the mobile charger can be used as your primary charging hardware. The benefit is you can take the cord with you if you want to, and its even easier to take with you if you sell your home and move. You may also be renting and have access the the NEMA plug, but your landlord won’t let you install a hardwired charger.

But most of the time, a mobile charging cord is redundant. So if it were us, we’d skip the pricer OEM option and just grab a less-expensive one in case of an emergency, or forego the mobile charger altogether.