2004 Ford Escape Hybrid - Escaping High Fuel Costs While Changing SUV Perceptions
What is well dressed, ice blue, sports around 200-horsepower, gets nearly 5.9 L/100 km (40 mpg) with almost 50% fewer CO2 emissions, looks sharper and has more gadgets than James Bond in a tuxedo (OK, maybe it's only equal to that last one)? The 2004 Ford Escape Hybrid SUV. Yes, a hybrid electric SUV, the first of its kind driving its way into our lives within the next year.
Perhaps by default, it becomes the flagship of Ford's green fleet, symbolized by the road and leaf logo featured on the auto maker's flex fuel vehicles. But it's much more than a vehicle with the ability to run on either gasoline or ethanol. It has a 300-volt nickel-metal-hydride battery, allowing the Escape to run on either the gasoline engine or battery power alone.
With the Escape Hybrid, Ford becomes the third player in the auto industry's high stakes powertrain poker game. The pioneer of the technology in North America was Honda Motor Co. Ltd. with their 1990 introduction of the Insight, followed last year by the Civic Hybrid. In between in North America, and first globally, was Toyota Motor Corp. making a play with its gas electric Prius sedan. But Ford could have the upper hand with a functional SUV, the vehicle of choice in the North American market. The Escape's "full" hybrid system, like Toyota's next generation Prius and unlike Honda's partial hybrid systems, will give it an edge as well.