By Ariel Schwartz •
August 12, 2008
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Part 1: The Hybrid
Last week, I had the chance to visit Ford’s headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan. I test drove a variety of vehicles while I was there, including the Ford Escape Hybrid. I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical of the SUV at first—after all, if you’re going to go the extra mile to drive a hybrid, why wouldn’t you buy a smaller car? But overall, I was impressed with the new Escape model.
According to Ford, the hybrid delivers 34 MPG in the city and 31 MPG on the highway—an improvement over last year’s model and an achievement that makes the Escape the most fuel-efficient SUV on the market. One Ford employee told me that he had heard of people getting up to 42 MPG, though that is obviously not the norm.
By Nick Chambers •
June 13, 2008
First Flex-Fuel Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle
As part of a push by the US Department of Energy (DOE) to make plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) cost competitive with other cars by 2014, Ford has delivered a plug-in hybrid electric flex-fuel Escape to the DOE to join its test fleet of other PHEVs currently undergoing research and testing.
The vehicle is equipped with a 10 kilowatt lithium ion battery that can take it up to 30 miles at speeds under 40 mph before needing to fire up its fuel-fed hybrid-electric engine. After that, the hybrid-electric engine kicks in and can deliver a fuel economy of 88 mpg in the city and 50 mpg on the highway when using E85 (85% ethanol/15% gasoline blend).
