The term “hybrid SUV” or “hybrid crossover” probably won’t elicit much of a response from someone today. A buyer on today’s market can bring home an hybridized version of everything from the Toyota RAV4 and the Honda CR-V to the Lincoln Corsair and the Jeep Wrangler. Two decades ago, the words “hybrid” and “SUV” were seemingly mutually exclusive. In 2005, Ford was the first automaker to change that, putting the very first hybrid SUV on the American market. Here’s how Ford predicted the future of big hybrids with what was then the innovative Escape.
Hybrid cars and crossovers are all over the marketplace today. If you head over to a site like Consumer Reports, you’ll find that 58 of the 151 electrified models currently rated by the publication are some form of hybrid. Of those 58, a whopping 38 model variations are crossovers and SUVs.
Check out any car buff mag’s rankings and it’s a similar story, where you might find a Honda Civic Hybrid or Honda Accord Hybrid breaking up a huge list dominated by crossovers and SUVs from several automakers. Best-seller lists are populated with the likes of the Toyota RAV4 hybrid and the Jeep Wrangler 4xe.
What I’m getting at here is that hybrid SUVs are a pretty big deal in today’s world. It’s easy to see why, too. The Honda CR-V hybrid, one of the most popular hybrid crossovers in America, scores a combined rating of 40 mpg in EPA testing. For reference, my beloved Smart Fortwo got 41 mpg at best in EPA testing.
A hybrid crossover offers the kind of fuel economy that small hatchbacks used to get but in a larger, arguably more family-friendly package. This makes a hybrid crossover a total no-brainer for countless American families.
Yet, when you check out hybrid crossover and SUV ratings, there’s one entry that is curiously missing from the podium, and it’s the genesis of this whole movement. That’s none other than the Ford Escape Hybrid. Today, it’s a crossover that Car and Driver puts into eighth place in its compact hybrid SUV rankings, behind the Mitsubishi Outlander Hybrid and ahead of the Dodge Hornet Hybrid. It’s a sad place to be for a crossover that was once so ahead of its time that it kicked off hybrid SUV sales in America.
Ford Fills In A Gap
As the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2000, Ford had realized that it had left a gap in the SUV market. The Explorer and Expedition were hot-sellers, and the Excursion was holding its own, but losing some steam. Back in the 1990s, there were some new kids on the block. The Honda CR-V, the Toyota RAV4, and the Subaru Forester all offered the sort of security and all-wheel traction that buyers expected from traditional SUVs, but in smaller packages. Then, even Hyundai joined in with its Santa Fe in 2000.
The crossover SUV, as some still call it today, had SUV style, but a car platform. Crossovers have long exchanged raw off-roading capability and towing capacity for better handling, better fuel economy, and a carlike feel.
When Ford decided that it needed a car-based SUV of its own, it turned to Mazda, which had a controlling interest at the time. The Los Angeles Times notes that while the Escape and its Mazda Tribute sibling were the result of the cooperation of Ford and Mazda, it was the latter company that took the lead in development. The Escape and Tribute would ride on the CD2 platform, which was derived from the GF platform that underpinned the Mazda 626. Despite their mechanical similarities, both SUVs took different approaches to ride, aesthetics, and marketing. Ford, in explaining all of the work put into the CD2 platform, specifically told MotorTrend in July 2000 that the Escape is not based on the Mazda 626.
In Mazda’s case, the Tribute was a big deal because its last SUV in America was the Navajo, a rebadged Ford Explorer Sport that sold slowly until Mazda finally killed it in 1994. This time around, Mazda wanted the Tribute to be a bit of a near-luxury vehicle with a little more emphasis on style and driving. From the Los Angeles Times:
Tribute brand manager Gary Roudebush says Mazda is positioning its truck to be “an upscale, sophisticated SUV with the soul of a sports car.”
Meanwhile, Ford wanted to target the same kind of customers that Honda and Toyota were; people who lived active lifestyles but didn’t exactly need locking differentials or body-on-frame SUVs. The Washington Times reported Ford’s strategy:
Ford insists it’s not abandoning the company’s heritage of producing durable, rugged SUVs but rather is reaching out to new customers looking for a versatile, affordable vehicle that fits active, urban lifestyles.
“We believe Escape will appeal to a wide variety of consumers, including those who have not owned an SUV before but now require the space and versatility an SUV provides,” says Stuart Smith, Ford Escape brand manager. “Whether they are young singles, newlyweds, small families or empty nesters, Escape is designed to be an affordable and fun option.”
This wasn’t exactly the original plan. As WardsAuto wrote in 2000, a major reason why Ford was late to market was that it had identified that small SUVs were going to be big, but Ford was indecisive about which one of its divisions was going to lead development. Apparently, WardsAuto notes, the indecision alone delayed the SUV by about two years.
However, WardsAuto reported that being late also allowed Ford to watch how buyers reacted to the small SUV market and change its SUV accordingly. This would turn out to be a winning formula. Keith Takasawa, chief program engineer for the original Escape, noted to the Los Angeles Times that the Ford Escape was designed to scream “truck” to a Ford customer and to hopefully ride on the wave that was Ford’s sizzling truck sales. But like other baby sport utilities, the Escape had to be softer and more daily driver-friendly.
As a result of all of these differences, the original Escape and Tribute actually shared little bodywork. The siblings even had similar, yet different interiors to match.
Ford’s Great Escape
The mission of a softer SUV was reflected in the bones of the Escape. It was built with a unibody construction like a car and it rode on a fully independent suspension. MacPherson struts hold down the front while double lateral links and semi-trailing arms bring up the rear. Drivetrain choices included front-wheel-drive or front-biased all-wheel-drive. The Escape’s Dana and Mazda-developed AWD system, which utilized a viscous coupling as a center differential and twin clutches, drove just the front wheels in normal conditions. Once a difference between the driveshaft and the rear differential’s pinion gear speed is detected, the AWD system kicks in, and is able to deliver up to nearly all of the available power to the rear axle. A switch on the dashboard can also command the system to lock itself into a 50:50 torque split for more demanding situations. Yet, the Escape wasn’t really designed to go where an Explorer could.
To further drill in how much this wasn’t an off-roader, MotorTrend noted that the Escape had an approach and departure angle of 28.5 degrees and 22 degrees, respectively. Ground clearance was 7.8 inches. MotorTrend reported that all of these off-roading numbers were actually worse than the competition, and those crossovers already weren’t meant for off-roading, either.
At launch, the Escape’s base engine 2.0-liter Zetec four good for 130 HP, and the higher engine was the 3.0-liter Duratec V6, which punched out 200 HP. At launch, the four was reported to hit 28 mpg in EPA highway testing while the V6 sipped with a respectable 24 mpg. However, it should be noted that these numbers came before EPA revised its structure in 2007, which devalued mpg ratings.
It wasn’t enough that the Ford Escape looked like a bigger Explorer, it also had to be smart. WardsAuto said that one feature that made the Escape stand out was its $1,695 ($3,111 in 2025) roof rack. This expensive bit of kit had a set of top rails that extended over the tailgate, connecting to vertical rails that went down the tailgate. This invention, which was created by Ford designer Roger Kim, allowed the Escape to carry luggage on its roof and two bicycles on the rear, or a total of four bicycles.
Ford was so proud of it that official marketing materials displayed the neat hat trick:
The Ford Escape launched in 2000 for the 2001 model year and it was a hit out of the park. Car and Driver complimented the SUV’s acceleration, handling, and interior, concluding that it did not expect the Escape to be as good as it was.
MotorTrend had so much fun with the Escape that the publication treated it like a proper 4×4, getting impressive airtime with the little guy. However, MotorTrend‘s test also revealed that the Escape wasn’t really supposed to be an off-road rig as the Escape got stuck in a shallow stream.
WardsAuto declared the Ford Escape the king of the segment before the first year of production was even over. That’s how hot sales were. Indeed, the Escape would almost immediately go on to battle the imports for the top spot on the sales charts. The magic? WardsAuto noted that the Escape had that V6, which MotorTrend was so powerful that it could only be bested by a Honda CR-V with a manual transmission and an abusive clutch drop.
Going Hybrid
Ford had another trick up its sleeve as it announced that by 2003 (later revised to 2005), it would have a new version of the Escape, one that would combine the gas engine with a hybrid system. This was huge news. Remember, Hybrids were sort of weird and experimental in the early 2000s. The Honda Insight was an eco-nerd’s dream and the Toyota Prius was still finding its bearings. Yet, here was Ford saying that it was going to put hybrid power in a small SUV.
As Fast Company writes, then-CEO Bill Ford Jr. wanted to create a new image for Ford. The automaker’s gargantuan SUVs and gigantic trucks had earned it the scorn of environmentalists. At the same time, America was also expressing tons of interest in green vehicles. After all, the country had spent the 1990s getting teased about an all-electric future, only to have that swept out from under them. The California ZEV mandate might have been gone, but the thirst for green vehicles was not.
In the late 1990s, Bill Ford wanted to up Ford’s green cred and dramatically up Ford’s fuel economy ratings with a project that, at the time, must have felt like something like the Ford equivalent of the NASA Apollo program. Ford was not only coming out with a hybrid, but its hybrid was going to be the first mass-production hybrid SUV of any kind in America.
Leading the Escape Hybrid program was Phil Martens, and Fast Company writes that the Escape Hybrid team was filled with geniuses. This team was assembled after one interesting drive, from Fast Company:
Ford’s Escape Hybrid program got its start in a Toyota Prius, of all places. After being tapped to head the team in late 1998, Prabhaker Patil went for a test drive with then-chairman Alex Trotman. As the two had suspected, the soon-to-be-released Prius sacrificed too much performance. Trotman insisted that Ford’s hybrid do better.
To develop its unconventional vehicle, Ford created an unconventional team. Typically, researchers and product engineers don’t work closely together. At Ford, in fact, they work in different buildings. Researchers act as consultants; they share their expertise while commuting from the Ford Scientific Research Laboratory. But Ford’s team would itself be a hybrid: scientists and product engineers inventing and building software and hardware together, then shepherding their creation through production. “The people story is as interesting as the technology story,” says Wright.
Patil, 54, was a hybrid himself, a PhD scientist who worked in Ford’s lab for more than 15 years and then in product development for the past four. He sought team members he knew would be open to collaboration. They included Anand Sankaran, 39, who holds a doctorate in electrical engineering and is a nine-year veteran of the research lab. “It has always been my wish to take something into product production,” he says. Still, Sankaran was curious about the fit. “There was a little bit of concern, because I come from a background where I deal more with solving problems technically but it’s not fine-tuned to be put easily into production.”
Fast Company notes that while the Escape Hybrid team was packed full of people known for solving some of the most complex problems, collectively, the team actually had little experience in putting solutions into production. There is a difference between solving a math problem and putting that solution on a production line.
To keep the engineers on track, Martens got Mary Ann Wright on board, a gearhead with a knack for hitting deadlines. Fast Company continues with the struggles the engineers had to deal with:
In December 2002, for example, just nine months before the first media test-drive, the team was scrambling to prepare the car for a cold-weather battery test in Canada. In early February, the temperature was expected to reach 40-below — just right. “If you miss it, you’re out of luck,” says Gee, the power-train control supervisor. Ford would have to wait another year — a disaster.
Meanwhile, researchers were still tinkering with the battery, one of the hybrid’s main muscles and one of its trickier components. At 330 volts, it’s about 27 times more powerful than a standard car battery, and it’s stashed under the rear cargo space. It provides power to the electric engine and gets recharged when the brakes’ heat is converted into energy. In extreme cold, the battery is vulnerable to overcharging; it can only generate and receive so much power, and if it overcharges, the cells can become damaged. Instead of tossing the problem over the wall, as is often the case at Ford, the researchers worked with the engineers to make sure the vehicle’s computers were constantly taking the battery’s pulse — calculating its state of charge some 50,000 times a second — and providing enough, but not too much, power. The team made the deadline, but just barely. “We were working 16-hour days, seven days a week, right up until February 7,” says Gee. “I took Christmas and New Year’s off. I didn’t do any Christmas shopping. My wife did it. She recognized the situation.”
Internally, the hybrid team is simply Team U293. It occupies a long stretch of gray cubicles a one-minute walk from the tinted glass door of one of Bill Ford’s offices. The bulletin board celebrates new babies and new patents (“Method for controlling an internal combustion engine during engine shutdown to reduce evaporative emissions”). Schedules wallpaper the conference room, along with a banner that says, “By When?”
Fast Company‘s reporting only escalates the story from there. Ford had considered just licensing Toyota’s technology, but this sat the wrong way with Ford because it meant that Ford would have Toyota’s first-generation hybrid technology while Toyota was already working on a new system. No, the only way Ford was to beat the competition was to design its own system. Ford did license Toyota hybrid tech, but just as a legal formality. The Escape Hybrid was all Ford.
Fast Company continues by noting how the development team had to engineer different ways out of huge issues. For example, the engineers constantly had to make changes to the vehicle’s main computer system. To streamline this, they had a laptop hooked up to the prototype’s “brain.” They’d test the prototype, retrieve the data, and then re-write the module’s code right there on the laptop.
At one point, the team reportedly had about 300 sensors hooked up to the car and when they tried to start the prototype, it wouldn’t come to life. This became a roadblock stretching several weeks long as the engineers figured out why their car wouldn’t even run. Reportedly, it took hundreds of changes before the prototype Escape Hybrid even fired.
Still, development stalled, with Fast Company claiming that some issues had been unresolved for months. Martens had a solution: The team would be able to develop the Escape Hybrid for half of a year without management breathing down their backs and slowing things down. This was enough to let the engineers run wild and solve issues.
From this point forward, development was in high gear. Fast Company noted that the word “no” no longer became an option. For one example, the Ford team ran into a language barrier with its battery supplier in Japan. Ford’s solution was to find a battery engineer who was fluent in Japanese and sent them out to Japan.
America’s First Production Hybrid SUV
Fast Company called the Ford Escape Hybrid “the most complex project in Ford’s history — and maybe its most important product since the Model T.” Maybe it was true because Ford was doing something that hadn’t been done before. Until that point, no automaker in America had been crazy enough to try to sell a hybrid SUV.
Sure enough, the Escape Hybrid was a huge deal when it launched in 2004. This green — literally — Escape featured an Aisin HD-10 hybrid CVT, a Sanyo 330 volt 1.8 kWh 250-cell nickel metal hydride battery, and a 2.3-liter Atkinson cycle four-cylinder engine good for 133 HP. Toss in the 94 HP electric motor, and total system power was 155 HP, but the instant torque of the electric motor actually gave the hybrid specs that were closer to the V6 in performance.
The Escape Hybrid was also thoroughly modern, with drive-by-wire, regenerative braking, and the ability for the vehicle to run primarily on engine power, electric power, or a combination of both. In August 2004, the EPA certified the Escape Hybrid for 36 mpg city and 31 mpg highway, which would be good even today.
MotorTrend‘s first drive was very short, but got straight to the point in only a single paragraph:
This may be the best-engineered hybrid product to date, making more use of its electric motor with less dependency on the gasoline engine than on any other hybrid we’ve tested. Eighty-five percent of the vehicle’s parts are recyclable, and Ford claims that the Escape will release less than one pound of emissions in 15,000 miles of driving. Score one for planet Earth–and for those of us who inhabit it.
CNET Roadshow had mostly good things to say:
With a larger electric motor than the Toyota Prius, the Escape remains in electric mode longer, and its gas engine shuts down at every stop. The electric motor consistently fires up at about 30mph and can be gently persuaded to about 45mph before making the electric-to-gas transition. Whenever you start driving uphill or stomp on the accelerator, both power trains kick into gear for lively acceleration. Unlike the Prius’s undetectable transition to gas power, there’s a slight nudge when the Escape’s gas engine hooks up. The Escape’s continuously variable transmission always has the right gear ratio for fuel economy and acceleration, and the gas engine and the regenerative braking system charge the battery while you drive. As is the case with the Prius, the Escape has an addictive screen in the middle of the dashboard that shows the power flow as you drive but adds a first-rate fuel economy screen that combines an average for the past 15 minutes with an instantaneous gas mileage bar gauge.
The all-wheel-drive Escape is one of the fastest hybrids on the road today, with the ability to accelerate to 60mph in just 8.5 seconds. That’s hardly sports car territory, but it’s several seconds faster than the Prius or the Honda Civic hybrid (10.3 seconds and 12.1 seconds, respectively) and is on a par with a V-6-powered Escape. Plus, the Escape hybrid can go from 30mph to 50mph in just 3.5 seconds–plenty of midrange torque for freeway on-ramps. However, it’s not entirely a smooth ride. The truck registers an annoying 75dBA (decibels adjusted) at 60mph to make for a bit of a noisy drive that’s on a par with the Honda Accord Hybrid but much noisier than either the Prius or Civic Hybrid. The MacPherson front strut suspension and a multilink trailing-arm rear suspension hug the road, but the suspension is also stiff enough for plowing over dirt roads. On the downside, the four-wheel disc brakes aren’t up to the competition, taking 163 feet to stop from 60mph, nearly 30 feet longer than the Honda Civic Hybrid. Also, the drive-by-wire system leaves the brake pedal feeling stiff and lacking tactile feedback. That said, the Escape weighs 1,000 pounds more than its sedan cousins, so there’s more car to stop, and its range is on target with that of other smaller SUVs. We were able to get 30.4 miles out of each gallon–good enough for a 450-mile trip before requiring a fill-up.
The 2001 Ford Escape had a low base price of just $18,160 ($33,339 in 2025) for the XLS. That got you front-wheel-drive, the four-cylinder engine, and a manual transmission. $19,710 ($36,185 in 2025) upgraded you to the better-equipped XLT (which netted you with aluminum wheels, anti-lock brakes, cruise control, and fog lights), but you still needed to pay another $1,480 ($2,717 in 2025) for the V6 and $1,625 ($2,983 in 2025) for AWD. $25,750 ($47,274 in 2025) bought you the XLT with the V6 and all of the trimmings. The price for the 2005 hybrid was $27,400 ($46,480 in 2025), and that was before you added options.
CNET noted that this price was $7,000 more expensive than Honda Civic Hybrid or Toyota Prius, but it was also more vehicle. It was pretty much as close to a guilt-free SUV that money could buy.
The Escape Hybrid was a hit out of the park, too, with Ford noting that it sold more than 17,000 examples in the second half of 2004 alone, or four times its expectation. Between 2004 and 2012, Ford managed to sell 114,000 Escape Hybrids. The Ford Escape’s upscale twin, the Mercury Mariner, also got a hybrid, but the Mazda Tribute did not.
One Of Many
The Escape Hybrid would never rise to the level of the sales seen by the iconic Toyota Prius, the Honda Civic Hybrid, or the Toyota Camry Hybrid, it was still a huge leap forward. It wasn’t long before America saw other American hybrid SUVs like the Chrysler Aspen Hybrid and the Saturn Vue Hybrid. Meanwhile, there was also a Chevrolet Silverado mild hybrid in 2005 as well as GM hybrid SUVs as well.
But Ford was first. The Escape Hybrid was ahead of the curve on chunky hybrid SUVs and crossovers. If period reviews are to be believed, the Escape Hybrid even worked better as a hybrid than other first-generation HEVs. Ford predicted a future where people would want hybrid SUVs and it was right.
Sadly, being first doesn’t seem to help the Escape Hybrid much today. While I have not found sales data specifically for the Hybrid model, Escape sales as a whole were well into the 300,000 range in the first half of the 2010s. Now, the Escape regularly sells less than half that each year. As I noted earlier, the Escape Hybrid doesn’t usually rate on the top of the hybrid crossover charts, and the Escape itself has been rumored to be discontinued this year. Ford Authority has clarified that the Escape will live on until at least 2026, but it’s unknown what will happen after.
Still, regardless of what happens to the Escape, it’s awesome what Ford was able to achieve in 2004. The company could have just slapped a Toyota powertrain on a car and called it a day. Instead, Ford spent five years grinding it out to create its own hybrid system, and in doing so, did something that no other American automaker had done at the time.
Top graphic image: Ford
Nice article! I thought these cars were cool when they debuted.
> Ford claims that the Escape will release less than one pound of emissions in 15,000 miles of driving.
Something is off about this quote. Burning 1 gallon of gas emits about 20 pounds of CO2. So, at 30 mpg, one pound of emissions will be emitted after 1.5 miles of driving.
Interestingly, the current Ford Escape Hybrid has a very similar powertrain to the original. The 2.5L is an updated version of the original 2.3L Duratec, and the transmission concept seems very similar (Toyota actually copied it in the later ’10s). The new ones use a slightly smaller Li-ion battery instead of a NiMH, though.
I have a friend who bought one of these when they first came out. She put roughly 150K on it and then replaced it with another one. She loved both. I never drove it, but it did not feel like a penalty box to ride in.
I’ve read about the first-generation ones before, and other articles led me to believe they were more reliant on Toyota engineering than you suggest. But what do I know? I also remember reading that these things were almost indestructible as cabs in NYC.
Maybe you can do a shitbox showdown with one of these and your Nissan.
Anyway, thank you for another interesting article.
Basically, Ford realized that its homegrown solutions might run afoul of Toyota’s patents, and Toyota also realized that improvements it was making could potentially violate Ford’s patents. Rather than fight it out in court, Ford and Toyota decided to cross-license all their hybrid tech to avoid all of this.
That’s a surprising level of corporate common sense.
It happens more often you might think; this was just an unusually public case due to the nature of the companies involved.
Interesting to read these positive views about the Escape Hybrid. My parents were Prius fans and decided to try the Escape Hybrid. They hated it. When it got hit during a construction zone slowdown, they happily ditched it for another Prius. Later, they paired the Prius with a Lexus hybrid SUV, so it’s not an anti-SUV thing.
I should ask them what bothered them so much about it. I got the impression it was quality and reliability issues.
I still see a some 1st gens and even more 2nd gens on a daily basis. It was a long lasting vehicle except for the sub-par rustproofing.
Naturally you can’t expect Prius fuel economy with it and that might have pissed more than one. I guess you can’t have it all
“Ford did license Toyota hybrid tech, but just as a legal formality. The Escape Hybrid was all Ford.”
Sure, if you ignore the fact that Aisin (Toyota’s powertrain subsidiary) was literally the one manufacturing the transmission.
That’s like saying Volvo and VW are licensing Toyota’s ICE tech because they use Aisin transmissions. Aisin is an A-tier OEM supplier after all.
The transmission is a pretty important part of the Hybrid tech equation since it’s where the electric motors are.
Given that the Toyota RAV4 is the #1 seller in the US now with the hybrid leading the charge one can only ask what happened to Ford?
The 3rd and 4th generations went more car-like as other crossovers were adding cladding to look more “off-roady”. Now the Bronco Sport is probably cannibalizing Escape sales
Ford bet heavily on the Ecoboost engines and let the Hybrid powertrain out of the 3rd gens. They heavily marketed the 1.6 Ecoboost as having a better EPA HWY rating than a 2nd gen Escape Hybrid but in real world it never bested that powertrain. Pair that with far from stellar reliability of the volume leader 1.6 Ecoboost (and the1.5 Ecoboost that followed) and they ended up with a losing customer recipe.
The 4th gens got improved in many ways and most importantly brought the Hybrid back. But the bland design and damaged reputation had already done their thing.
The current Escape is truly an underwhelming, phoned-in design. The handsome ’05 Escape Hybrid caught my eye back in the day, but I already had a 1st gen Insight.
Fast Company really biffed their technical explanation on the Escape’s brakes, writing:
This is obviously not how regenerative braking works.
I mean since they did the hard work they’ve had a solid hybrid system to build on ever since, and are still ahead of the other US brands in that regard, so the investment paid off not just in Escapes but Fusions, cmax, Lincolns, Mavericks, etc
This is an Excellent point AND to me is THE argument for why companies need to continually be thinking about what is their competitive advantage…
This is precisely why in the new tech. shift to EVs companies that look to maximize what they do in house can have such a substantial advantage…
While I’m not a fan of crossovers I have to admit that the Escape was a good product at a good time and was exactly what a lot of people wanted. They also tended to be very satisfied long term and likely created a good amount of brand loyalty.
I’ve never worked at a company with more than 550 employees and generally prefer ones around 100-200, but these statements shock me. In a past life doing industrial engineering I wasn’t even allowed to submit CAD drawings for new designs to be built until I knew how to use the mill, the bender, welder, etc. Also isn’t the most obvious solution to the language barrier and should have come even before you first contact them to see who already knows the language? I’ve been roped into projects that otherwise have nothing to do with me but my ability to very poorly speak Russian and Polish, and would be the default guy relevant to my job on visits that involve Mexico or Germany for the same reason. This almost sounds like a culture that is intentionally trying to do less with more instead of the other way around.
An unspoken part of ‘understanding the language’ is of course understanding the cultural tendencies and understanding that which is not said And How things Are said matter tremendously
If you are going to buy a boring, autotragic, CUV-thing, you might as well buy the most efficient one. <shrug> I see no reason for every boring car today to not be a hybrid.
“Fast Company continues with the struggles the engineers had to deal with:”
“Meanwhile, researchers were still tinkering with the battery,
…
It provides power to the electric engine and gets recharged when the brakes’ heat is converted into energy. ”
Hmm, I think I see your problem…
“The team made the deadline, but just barely. “We were working 16-hour days, seven days a week, right up until February 7,” says Gee. “I took Christmas and New Year’s off. I didn’t do any Christmas shopping. My wife did it. She recognized the situation.”
So did they get super duper overtime? A huge bonus? How about stock options? Did they get ANYTHING for that sacrifice? Or just the pleasure of making their bosses bosses look good at their bonus time?
Next stop: Burnout. Maybe a clock tower. Or the union.
“Fast Company noted that the word “no” no longer became an option. ”
And that kids how you get nothing but yes men even if what they really need to say is no.
“Ford claims that the Escape will release less than one pound of emissions in 15,000 miles of driving. ”
By my math and using the overly optimistic 36 mpg city EPA figure 15,000 miles @36 mpg works out to 417 gallons of gas. Each gallon of gas burned yields at least 8.89 kg of CO2 or 19.6lbs/ gallon:
https://consumerecology.com/carbon-footprint-of-gasoline/
so burning 417 gallons of US blend gasoline yields 8,154 lbs of CO2 emissions alone.
This is what happens when you have a company of overworked yes men.
Yes there’s significant emissions related to extracting, refining, and transporting the gas but I think your numbers are WAY off. I find it very hard to believe that when 1 gallon of gas that weighs 7Lb suddenly turns 19.6Lb after combustion. Also if we simply stopped producing gas but kept on making diesel, jet fuel, and plastic there will always be emissions related to those steps even if we choose not to produce gas with the crude stock. Yes it would go down, but only by how much our total crude input went down by. I could probably do the math and figure out exactly how much gets converted to H20 and how much to CO2 but would assume roughly 65% ends up as CO2 and doesn’t get converted to water.
BTW, I think ford’s numbers are completely wrong and you are if not the same ballbark, at least the same city.
I think your numbers are WAY off. I find it very hard to believe that when 1 gallon of gas that weighs 7Lb suddenly turns 19.6Lb after combustion.
Here, this may help clear things up:
https://climatekids.nasa.gov/review/carbon/gasoline.html
Also if we simply stopped producing gas but kept on making diesel, jet fuel, and plastic there will always be emissions related to those steps even if we choose not to produce gas with the crude stock
There are very few options for aviation other than FF. Batteries and hydrogen are a bad joke for anything but very short range flights and the costs of those will make those short range flights unaffordable for everyone but the very, very rich.
The US military has spent billions on bio-algae jet fuel with almost nothing to show for it.
AFAIK biodiesel is in the same boat as bio jet fuel. WE can make some but its a drop in teh ocean to what’s needed to make an actual difference.
For me plastics are harder to gauge. There are some excellent non-FF based polymers (e.g. Triexta from corn) and some plastics are recyclable BUT weaning off FF won’t be easy or fast.
Technically you’re right. From my perspective the oxygen was already in the atmosphere both before and after the combustion process, so shouldn’t count as part of what’s added to the environment, but this may not be the best way to think of it.
Without that oxygen you have no CO2. You just have really fine soot.
Loving these model histories! I think if you stack Bronco Sport sales on top of Escape sales, it flattens the drop off in Escape sales substantially. I think it looks like 2nd Gen too
The Mazda Tribute did get the hybrid version after the first mild refresh in 2008. I owned one, and it was truly fantastic. Mine might have been one of the very few AWD Tribute hybrids in the US. I have never bumped into another one!
The main issue was that, Mazda not having any other hybrids, if there was an issue with the car, the “hybrid specialist” (probably from Ford) would have to come to the dealer to look at the car, and that meant days of waiting.
Still, I regret selling it to this day.
Mazda finally have a plug in for their SUV.. I have to say, Mazda’s product planning is probably up there in weirdness as Mozilla / Firefox.