syrinx

The rear Hybrid badge
 
The charge/assist gauge
 
The battery heat duct

A short while back our car was destroyed by an idiot driving while on his cell phone. As the car was less than two years old we'd had no intention of purchasing a new car for many years. Now we had little choice. We did our research and found that hybrid vehicles were now a viable alternative. Since we have two large dogs, a sedan wasn't really an option. Unfortunately the Toyota Sienna Hybrid Minivan won't be available until 2007 and there are currently no other choices in hybrid minivans.

That left an SUV. Seems almost like an expletive, doesn't it? But our research showed that the available hybrid SUVs were more fuel efficient and had far, far lower emissions than most of their gas-only cousins. In fact, they were better in both respects than almost all standard sedans and minivans!

Now we had a path to follow. We looked at all available SUVs and ended up choosing the Ford Escape Hybrid SUV. It has the best fuel economy of the bunch and was the least costly. Unfortunately one still has to pay a premium for a hybrid vehicle, but hopefully that will change as more come available. We're very happy with our choice so far.

There is little difference driving a hybrid vehicle—at least that's our experience with the Escape. Externally it looks almost identical to its gas-powered equivalent. The only clues that this is a hybrid vehicle are three "Hybrid" green leaf badges and a heat duct behind the cargo bay window to help dissipate heat from the battery pack. Personally I would have liked more visible indications of the hybrid nature of our vehicle as there is definitely a stigma attached to driving a standard SUV. Also, we'd like to spread the word and show people that these vehicles are out there. We're looking into some sort of decal to paste on the back bumper.

Internally there's also little difference. Aside from the charge/assist gauge you can't really tell you're in a hybrid vehicle. The real difference comes in actually driving the car. After the gas engine has warmed up and you come to a stop, it shuts down. Now that's weird. If you turn off the fans inside, the car is absolutely silent. Upon acceleration the electric motor powers the car silently until you hit 20–30 kph. At that point there's a slight vibration and the gas engine fires up.

There's an extra LCD display under the tachometer that can show your average fuel economy, among other things. That little display is going to save me a lot of money in gas! When you can see the effect of your driving habits in real time you tend to try maximizing the economy. In order to do that you end up accelerating more smoothly and driving slower. Well I do, anyway.

As I said earlier, we're very happy with our choice so far. I'll come back with an update after we've been driving our hybrid vehicle for a while.

tags: hybrid emissions ford escape renewable energy