Ford Escape Hybrid mileage

My Ford Escape Hybrid was running primarily electric-only for a stretch of about 6 miles in heavy traffic approaching the Benicia Bridge from Concord yesterday. On a couple of uphill stretches the engine started and ran for maybe 20 seconds and shut down again. I was at speeds from standstill up to about 25mph. I didn't think to reset the mpg reading when I first hit the heavy traffic, which was at 29.6 from the start of a 50 mile trip from San Jose at 70-75mph with three people and some luggage. The overall mpg did go up to 30.8 during the stretch, and then dropped back down to

29.8 shortly after the bridge. That might be 54mpg for the stretch of very slow traffic.

Otherwise, the Escape seems to average 26 in rural driving, 31 in city, 29 highway.

Reply to
dold
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That's darned good mileage for an SUV. How has it been in terms of reliability and performance?

Reply to
Rex Tincher

Reply to
Nathan

At first look I was thinking "Thats not great, I've seen gas powered cars get this mileage". Then I thought about Nathans reply. It's an SUV stupid!(to myself). And it's not tiny! ~30 MPH is pretty amazing. I'd be interested in the reliability and performance also.

A good friend had a well (often) maintained 84 Olds 98 Diesel. About 5 years ago we went from Cleveland to Detroit. That whale got ~30mpg at 55-70 MPH. The Olds Diesel was an Idea that flopped, but a lot of newer diesel and hybrid technology sprouted from those cars. I had an 86(?)Escort Diesel for a while and it got better than

30MPG...when it ran. We've come a long way. Tom
Reply to
Tom Adkins

That's about what my wife and I are getting. We got up to 30.8 while driving in FL. But back to 29.4 around home (Scaly Mountain NC).

The reliability seems to be very good. We had a hybrid vehicle extraction class at our fire house a few weeks ago. We had a Toyota Prius and a Ford Escape Hybrid side by side. While they are very different, they are also quite similar. Ford put a lot of thought and design work into the safety side of the design.

We even took our Hybrid off-road. We drove to nearly to the top of a

4wd trail (Rabun Bald jeep trail for those near GA/NC/SC). The only section we didn't do was the last 100 yards. Hurricanes Frances and Ivan did a lot of damage up here. The Escape never once scraped. It did take some spotting in areas. It made it and back without any problem. It's stiffer suspension made a big difference.
Reply to
mark gramlich

I've only got about 1500 miles on it. Reliability has been excellent so far ;-) Performance is very good. It seems to like to raise the RPM to around 4000 under moderate load, which seems too high for a "normal" vehicle, but that's where it seems to like to be. It goes just fine.

MotorWeek says 0-60 is 9.5 seconds.

Some article that I read said that the 0-60 performance is held back because you can't do a good "high stall" takeoff, and normal driving is very good performance. I just have to ignore the RPM... The CVT transmission makes it seem like you aren't gaining any speed, and it's heavy enough and quiet enough that 80mph sneaks up pretty quickly. Full throttle, passing somebody, the RPM jumps to 4000, sometimes higher, and the speed climbs with the RPM changing very little.

Reply to
dold

I don't think there's anything from Toyota in it. Ford entered some licensing agreements with Toyota because they had so many patents it might have actually infringed on Ford's ability to design the vehicle the way they wanted to.

There are some fundamental similarities, but how many different ideas can there be, really?

Reply to
dold

The Escape's EPA MPG numbers from

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36/31 hybrid 2WD 24/29 4-manual 2WD 22/25 4-auto 2WD 20/25 6-auto 2WD 33/29 hybrid 4WD 22/26 4-manual 4WD 19/22 4-auto 4WD 18/22 6-auto 4WD

For comparison, other Ford SUVs, wagons, vans:

26/32-35 Focus wagon 19-20/24-27 Freestyle 19/25-27 Taurus wagon 17-18/23 Freestar 14-16/18-21 Explorer 14/18-19 Expedition 13-15/17-19 E150 Club Wagon
Reply to
Timothy J. Lee

Howbout these numbers for the new European Focus

1.8 Duratorq TDdi (75 pk) 6,8 l/100km city, 4,1 l/100km highway, 5,1 l/100km combined, 168km/hour 14,7sec 0-100km ,14,9 50-100km/hour

1.8 Duratorq TDdi (90 pk) 7,2 / 4,4 / 5,4 / 178 / 12,4 / 11,0

1.8 Duratorq TDCi (100 pk) 7,0 / 4,2 / 5,2 / 185 / 11,6 / 9,9

1.8 Duratorq TDCi (115 pk) 7,2 / 4,4 / 5,4 / 196 / 10,6 / 9,4

So thats 4.4 liter = 1.15 gallon to 100km =64 Mls = (about) 1 gallon to 58 mls on highway ???? Not to bad, and still get 0 -> 100km/hr in 10.6 seconds

Also see

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for the new european focus

Johan

Reply to
johanb

We towed a horse trailer for years with a Dodge Dakota V-6. The Escape isn't rated to tow the trailer, but neither is our Dakota. Now that we've had the Escape for a while, I don't know if we would want to tow the horse trailer very far with it, but I intend to get a hitch and check it out. The Escape weighs more, has more horsepower and less torque than the Dakota. The Escape has ABS and AWD, so it might actually be better with the trailer than the Dakota.

Reply to
dold

4.4l/100km = 53mpg. The conversion for mpg l/100km is 235/1.
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Reply to
dold

(...)

I hate to break it to you, but Peugeot and Mercedes were selling deisel cars in the US before GM started selling V8 deisels in the 80s. I think VW and maybe Audi and Volvo sold a deisel car before that in the US. And they still sell them, at least outside the US.

In fact, I remember when Olds or another GM make was advertising that its car with 4-wheel independent suspension was the first US car with it (in the late 80s). My '74 Peugeot had it.

The GM V8 deisel was a gas-based engine turned into a deisel. Not a good idea. What GM and other car makers learned from the fiasco is that you design a diesel engine from scrach, not from a gas engine.

Jeff

Reply to
Jeff

Jeff opined in news:cqt2pb$ snipped-for-privacy@library2.airnews.net:

And I had several friends with diesel Jettas and they vowed they would never buy another

And BTW... anything Peugeot does is irrelevent except in how not to run a car company.

And GM sold an IRS car in the sixties...so what!

True... but I think if you look at the problems they had it was not just in the long block. A diesel block would have still had a lot of service problems

Bottom line... for domestic use, I cant see anything less than the Tdi being worthwhile.

I'd rather have an Escape Hybrid than a freakin diesel.. unless it was MAYBE a hybrid diesel like this:

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Reply to
Backyard Mechanic

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