Anticipation high for 2005 Ford Escape Electric-gas hybrid economic in city driving

Area Ford dealerships are looking for escape.

Or Escape, rather.

Coming this fall, Ford will be offering its 2005 Escape Hybrid in 15 states, including Washington.

"A mild hybrid always requires some power from the gas engine to drive the vehicle," explained Bobby Jackson, new car manager at Discovery Ford in Moses Lake, which will also offer the vehicle when it becomes available in the fall. "The full hybrid can drive up to 25 miles an hour entirely on the electric engine."

"The Escape is a full hybrid, which means that it is basically electric over gas," said Gene Rogers, general manager of the Bonanza Ford at Interstate-90 Exit 270, near Cheney, which will be offering the vehicle. "There's two kinds of hybrid — full hybrid and mild hybrid. A mild hybrid is primarily gas with an electric assist motor, and a full hybrid is primarily electric with gas assist."

The easiest way to tell the difference is that a full hybrid gets better mileage in the city than on the highway, Rogers said.

Rogers said the Escape is the first American full hybrid sport utility vehicle (SUV).

According to Ford promotional literature, the Hybrid system components include a smaller gasoline engine to reduce emissions, an electric motor/generator that draws energy from and returns energy to the battery, which is designed to charge and discharge automatically without having to be plugged in.

Jackson said a recent Ford media unveiling in New York involved driving the car around Manhattan for 24 hours straight "or something like that."

"All in one tank of gas, they got like 600 miles with the tank of gas," he said. "It was like 35 miles to the gallon in an SUV … in stop and go driving."

On the highway, the car will get 30 miles to the gallon, which is better fuel mileage than the same vehicle with a gas motor, Jackson said.

"It's still a good thing; it's just that it kind of was made for around town, stop and go driving and the fact that you don't need to be burning gas at the stop light," he explained. "The engine shuts off when you stop at a stop light completely, and then there's a special starter that starts the engine in some crazy amount of time, short milliseconds, so when you push on the gas, kind of like a golf cart, it starts again."

The full hybrid Escape has full regenerative braking, which means that it takes energy and transfers energy back to the battery while its driver brakes or slows down, Jackson said.

Jackson said he believes a vehicle like the Escape should have been developed years ago.

"When you think about all the vehicles just sitting at all the stop lights all across the country, and just hundreds and hundreds of thousands of gallons being burnt just sitting there, you think, 'That's not good for the environment,'" he said. "It's a totally future thinking kind of thing, especially with the gas prices, just shot up there."

Rogers said that the Escape is "what is known as an ultra low emissions vehicle. It's the lowest emissions vehicle that you can get."

Jackson said that the cars, which start at about $26,970 for front-wheel drive and at $28,595 for four-wheel drive, will cost a little bit more in the beginning, but said that it would be worth it.

"It's headed toward where the future is," he said. "It's a step between going from burning all gas to maybe not needing gas at all. It's a transitionary period."

Ordering for the Escape isn't available for a couple more months, Jackson said.

"Probably we can only get a couple of them at the most in 2004, and the next allocation will be for next spring," he said. "They mostly chose the states that are on the coasts and in the northeast also, New England-type states."

Wade Jess, owner of Jess Ford in Grand Coulee, said that his dealership will not be offering the Escape this year.

"You're probably going to allotted one," Jess said. "The training that's involved with selling them is probably equivalent to $5,000, which is not a lot but if we're only going to get one, it's just not going to pencil out for us. We opted to go in next year when allocations go up."

The states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia comprise the other 14 — were selected because Ford believes those are where demand will be highest, Jackson said.

"A lot of people have asked us about it; there was a write-up on MSN that we saw," Jackson said. "With the gas prices — when they went shooting up, we sold out of Honda Civic hybrids right away. We had three sitting here, which isn't that many. I wish we would have had more; we sold all of them right away."

Rogers said he has had people come in on a regular basis asking when the vehicle is going to come in.

"They want to see it, they want to drive it, because it's a different driving experience," he said.

According to Rogers and Escape Hybrid literature, the vehicle's Electronically Controlled Continuously Variable Transmission (eCVT) is designed to shift gears seamlessly.

Even though his dealership is not offering the vehicle until next year, Jess said customers are still expressing an interest in the Escape Hybrid.

"There's actually been quite a bit of talk about it," Jess said. "It's kind of exciting to hear about something new coming to the market, and see what kind of an impact it's going to make."

More information on the Escape Hybrid can be obtained at http://www.fordvehicles.com/escapehybrid/home/, or by calling Discovery Ford, which is located at 1140 S. Pioneer Way, Moses Lake, 765-4551.