‘08 Ford Escape Hybrid – a real truck with a heart of green?

I recently had the pleasure of driving the 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid for a full week and must admit that I like this truck…a lot.

It’s not overly big, but it is large and boxy enough to haul a decent amount of cargo. In fact, its gas guzzling big brother the Ford Explorer is hardly much bigger in the back end. But best of all, for those of us who need extra space and hate the high price of gas, it gets amazing fuel economy.

My tester averaged about 6 litres/100 km in both city and highway driving. I actually saw the fuel economy meter move to 5 L/100 km, but only briefly. My personal daily driver is an extended minivan which has an official city rating of 12L/100 km, but like most vehicles probably gets about 20% less than that in real world use. My previous vehicle was a Pontiac Vibe and that efficient little wagon is rated almost identically to the ‘08 Escape.

Now, much has been said about hybrid vehicles with inflated fuel stats but the front-wheel-drive Escape seems pretty true to its official rating of 6.5L/100 km city and 6.9L/100 km hwy. The AWD model, of course, fares worse at 6.8L/100km city and 7.3L/100 km highway, which is nothing to sneeze at either.

If you want to compare that with the regular FWD, 4-cylinder Escape, it claims at 10.3L/100km city and 7.7L/100 km highway. Not a huge difference on the highway, but if you spend most of your time stuck in traffic then it is a considerable difference. And if fuel prices keep climbing the previously weak economic argument for buying a hybrid begins to make as much sense as the environmental argument.

Speaking of price, the ‘08 FWD Escape Hybrid starts at $31,499, which isn’t far off from a mid-level Honda CRV or Toyota RAV4. Still, it is far above a base FWD 4-cylinder Escape priced at $23,999.

Getting back to the fuel economy for a moment longer, the Escape Hybrid works its magic by using a full hybrid system that not only shuts down the engine at stop lights, but can also power the vehicle on electricity alone at low speeds if you take it easy on the gas pedal. I also found that if you brake when approaching slower traffic the gas engine would shut down and stay off if you tread lightly on the pedal. This saves a tremendous amount of fuel when you’re stuck in stop-and-go traffic.

Having said all that though, there are a couple of things I didn’t like so much about the Escape. For one thing, if you need to fold the rear seats flat to move something larger, the headrests must be removed and there is no logical place to store them. This is true of not just the hybrid, but all Escapes. I also found the vehicle to have huge blind spots that kept me shoulder checking more often than I normally would. The vehicle is also a little sluggish from a dead stop, but if you’re trying to save fuel you should be going easy on the throttle anyway.

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