Have any of you removed the Hybrid badges from your vehicles? I removed the WRX badge from my Subaru to not advertise what it was. Now with the FEH, my quest for high fuel mileage is resulting in slower acceleration and more conservative driving in general. I try to never annoy or impede other drivers, but I'd hate to have what appears to be low performance blamed on the vehicle being a hybrid. That's bad advertising for hybrids.

Seems like removing the rear Hybrid badge would make me appear to be just a normal Escape with a slow driver at the wheel.

 

I would be reluctant to remove the badge for safety purposes. One of the things first responders are being trained on is to look for the hybrid badge. They need to know it's a hybrid sooner, rather than later, in an accident. That way they know to look for the high voltage wires, as well as making sure the engine has really turned off.

 

Yeah, good point, I hadn't considered that. But, I was just going to remove the rear badge, the side badges would remain.

 

Im sure it is not a safety issue, otherwise Ford would have used something better than double sided tape to stick them on. Many of the Escape hybrids I see on the road have crooked badges which is the start of the falling off and here in San Francisco where Escape hybrids are used as taxis and are everywhere, every one I see is missing some of the parts of the badges.

Im sure that given enough time the badges on all of our escapes will fall off on their own.

 

Hi everyone,
Newbie here but have been surfing this site for about a year. Anyway, since debadging my FEH of hybrid status was one of the first things I did, I felt I should share my experience! I've also been in a multiple rollover accident (that I walked away from-thanks safety package!) in a debadged FEH. None of the responders at the scene had any concerns about their safety because the electrical system shuts down in a collision anyway. As we gathered around my upside down FEH, rescuers were impressed by its independent suspension and 4WD though.
Bottom line is-I say go for it in removing the badges. It only took 10 mins tops.
Don

 

This is a very interesting topic. Most, like myself are pround of the "Hybrid" igsignia. We WANT to stand out. I even have additional stickers on my rear window glass. However... it was discussed many times, that most people, most who drive super conservatively, also don't want to give a poor impression... an impression of poor performance... one that would actually discourage someone else from buying a hybrid, based on what they saw.

So I can certainly understand both sides of this coin.

One thing I do that really helps is drive behind a big, slow vehicle.
( bus, truck, motorhome, crane, etc. )
That way, people behind me blame the person ahead of me for the relative slowness.

I do not have any safety concerns about the hybrid lettering being removed.
The car is VERY safe. The gas tank is more dangerous than the battery.
I personally think that since we paid about $5k extra for that Hybrid badge, we might as well proudly display it. That being said, I normally only do my super-high ultra hypermiler routines on vacant, rural routes. I drive "normal" in normal traffic, and still beat EPA 9 months a year ( winter excepted ).

 

It is interesting the way people relate to their vehicles...for me although I really enjoy my FEH like many others here, I think personally that owning one is its own statement. I also think it's fun to crawl through parking lots silently and get odd looks and 'oh that's a hybrid' comments.
Come to think of it, I think debadging a hybrid is probably safer in an accident because that way people won't try to protect themselves from a danger that really isn't there.

 

It's funny when you mention Escape Hybrid taxis.
Most of them in use around the nation -- the first generation anyway - were re-painted by the fleet owners to correspond with the colors of the rest of the fleet ... in fact here in NYC the first FEH taxis were repainted from white ... and one can see some funky re-pastings of the FEH badges on each car .... Now taxi fleet owners are becoming more savvy and are pre-ordering FEH's in the standard NYC orange-yellow color from Ford Fleet sales ... just like they order their standard Crown Vics.

 

Yeah, it's funny you mention that. I live near a bunch of the taxi maintenance yards in Queens and I remember when I started to see the new FEHs come in for painting.

I saw one that had the badge re-applied as "HYBIRD."