I emailed my sales rep telling her about delays I hear and she said her general manager was in some kind of Ford general mgr meeting and everybody was complaining about delays on Hybrids. They were supposingly told from Ford that they will increase allocation and ramp up production. no specifics were given though. I just ordered mine last week so I have some time to go.

 

Sorry guys! I may have "fixed" an error that, while broken, worked in our favor. Turns out fordpartner.com had been advertising the "Swap Bonus Customer Cash" for all cars, while forddirect.com had listed the hybrids as ineligible for the program. Well I figured that the hybrid inclusion was part of the X-Plan "special treatment". But after the third dealer said my information was flat out wrong, I started sending some emails to the web admins.

So after a few complaint emails that dealers are "selectively" honoring some X-Plan pricing, but not others, I got a "It's up to them" response.

After a few more "You need to get your stuff together guys, the dealers can't see your pricing" emails... something happened.

As of about 8pm CST, looks like they have put fordpartners.com in "check back later" mode. Try looking up the price for a Ford Escape Hybrid in the 77002 zip. You'll get a "Pricing for this vehicle is temporarily not available. Please see your dealer for pricing details."

So if you were trying to go out to fordpartners.com tonight... think I broke it

Actually surprised they take my emails that seriously. Really bad part is I directly questioned a few dealers integrity and doubt I can really work with them. Good news is that there are LOTS of ford dealers in Texas. Just burned a few big ones in Dallas is all.

11011011

 

X-plan is suppose to get the same incentives. No better. No worse. The only time there could be a difference, are those incentives which include a "dealer contribution". I haven't seen those in years; at least not from Ford.

That is true. A dealer can participate, or not. However, if they participate, they have to follow all the rules.

 

FEH prices seems to be temporarily still unavailable, but Mariner is still there....

 

Why all the difficulty lately? We had no problem getting X-Plan on our 2006 FEH purchased in early/mid-March 2006. We didn't order one from the factory, however; one with the color and features/specs we wanted happened to be on the lot. This was in San Antonio, TX, not hybrid-city-USA, btw. (I can go months without seeing another FEH, although I do see Priuses on parade daily.)

 

Well, unlike when you found your dream FEH on the lot & even earlier this year I understand the situation was the same (some sitting on dealer lots), right now they are like a Furby or Beanie Babie that just got released (from daze gone by). Nobody has them, some of those that do know this is a hot item & will get as much $$$ as they can. Factory orders are taking 8 - 20 weeks for some folks.

I'm just glad mine arrived & I get to pick it up later today! (8 weeks and a day from order not counting the weekend I ordered it)

 

Congratulations on your soon-to-be-in-your-hands new FEH. You'll love it!

I'm glad to hear there's finally something good about the timing in which I purchased my FEH... I bought before the 0% financing offer was extended outside of CA and D.C. (I assume that's gone, again?); I bought when the MSRP was $1k higher, before it was reduced for the '07 MY; I bought when gas prices were comparably lower and the press spent even more time slamming them as an unwise 'investment'; etc.

My FEH is going in for her 10k mile service today in fact (she's actually at 11k right now.) She's a beauty and doing great...this is a "well baby checkup" as it were. :-)

Enjoy!

 

Does anyone have hybrid sales numbers?

When the new '08 first came out, FE/MM sales were up by like 30%. However, now FE/MM sales are only up about 3% over last year. IMHO, that doesn't sound like an increase that can't be easily accomidated by the factory.

So, I wonder what's up? Is Ford getting, possibly, less batteries now than last year?

 

Check out http://www.hybridcars.com/market-dashboard.html

You can sales numbers posted monthly and compare to last month, last year or anything in b/t (with a calculator).

Very good tool....I'm monitoring the sales numbers as I'm trying to wait to the last minute before Ford hits 60,000 to replace my wife's car with an FEH. (Her car is great, 2003 Pontiac Vibe and has only 47k on it).

I really would keep it a few more years but a $3,000 tax credit could motivate me to trade early.

Nate

 

I hope you aren't waiting in vain. A lot of us never got the full tax credit due to the AMT "floor".