[UPDATED: PICTURES BELOW] In a few days I'll be driving the '10 FEH Limited several hundred highway miles carrying at least 900 pounds of cargo + passengers, and I'll reset the computer and take pictures of the mileage beginning, during and after.

Right now, I'm at about 93,500 miles and my recent mileage in mixed city/highway use over about 400 miles is 32.7 MPG. I don't "baby" the car, I drive it like a normal person, whatever that is lol. I'm interested to see how that holds up or changes during the trip, so I'll reset everything before I go. This is the Limited model, 2WD. I won't be climbing any mountains, but I usually run at about 70-75 MPH in cruise on the highway and we will have some slower speed sections, I'm sure. The FEH is running great. EV mode is still doing what it should, 40-45 MPH in pure EV on flat ground for more than a mile is no problem, and the electric A/C is blowing very cold, down to about 42-44 degrees when called upon.

I'm guessing an overall MPG of about 31.2 MPG averaged over the whole distance, with the A/C on and plenty of cargo and people in the vehicle. The tires are grippy Pirelli Scorpion Verdes (a little noisy but they are *tenacious* just when you expect the car to 'push' they bite harder and it amazes you) inflated to 38 PSI all around, on the stock rims. I'm counting on using under a full tank of gas during the entire trip of approximately 420 miles. We'll see. Updates will be posted here when the trip is done.

I've been using my HeatShield reflective windshield thingamabob like a religious ritual this summer, and after two years it still works perfectly and hasn't frayed or otherwise come apart. It cuts the "direct sunlight/hot day" interior temperature down by about 20 degrees, which makes a big difference. I have not had a single battery self-discharge event this year (fingers crossed.) The car always starts in EV mode, "Ready to Drive", like it should.

I still love this car. It's always somehow "more than the sum of its parts" and as I've said many times, Ford should have kept making them a few more years.

There are so many "ordinary" Escapes from these years in my area that you can't throw a rock and not hit one, and they look GOOD, too. People take care of them. The basic platform is solid, and the peeps I've spoken to love them. A few days ago a woman pulled up next to me at a store with a 2012 Flex Fuel. It was beautiful outside so I rolled down the window and asked the mileage: "264 thousand miles!!" She loves them, too!

 

Taxis are using the hybrids here. I bet there are some '11 and '12 ones running around with that much. This summer I've been at 35.1-35.4 fairly consistently.

 

Update: due to many circumstances, I was only able to get one photo of the Mileage Information screen, after we got back. I will have pictures later today.

When we left, I reset the computer and the post trip result was 32.7 MPG, a little better than I expected. The trip took almost 12 full hours to go around 450 miles. We had to take a few detours in the NY/NJ area due to construction and traffic. With about 900 pounds of people+cargo on the outbound and around 450 (just people) on the return leg, the A/C was on the entire time, Auto Recirc at 72 degrees. We used under a full tank of gas, and the cost was approx. $55. Not bad.

I'm very happy with that number; it's about 1.5MPG better than I guessed. There were a lot of "rubbernecking" miles on the Interstates: you get up to 70, bang on the brakes, back down to 0, then back up to 70, repeat about 2 dozen times. In other words, this was not optimal highway mileage driving. We also went up and down a lot of elevation changes in southern New York State, so there was some legitimate hill-climbing involved, it wasn't all flat highway droning. Also, we sat in the car in a couple of parking lots with the AC on while we waited for various things to happen, for about 2 hours total - which drops the mileage because the FEH turns on the gas engine about every 20 minutes to keep the electric AC going. I'm sure that without those factors the avg. trip MPG would have been >33.

Trip notes: The car ran perfectly the entire time but we got THWACKED! with something that must have been a nut or a bolt or a Big Screw (see below) or a small piece of metal flung from a tire at around 70 mph on I-95 in Connecticut. Now I have a deep gouge and an almost perfectly symmetric star-shaped crack in my windshield, which hasn't expanded yet but I'm sure it will with a few heat cycles of the glass. So I need a new windshield. Fortunately my insurance will cover the replacement cost in full - my first and only insurance claim with the car in 38,000 miles.

We also visited what is billed on YouTube as "The Best Hamburger" joint in New Jersey - the tiny little goldmine known as "White Manna Hamburgers" in Hackensack. This place is a true throwback and a local shrine to all things hamburger. It's a tiny little restaurant that was absolutely PACKED with people at 3:30 in the afternoon. It took 30 minutes just to place our orders, but their prices are great ($2.20 for a cheeseburger with onions!) and I have to say, those are some TASTY cheeseburgers. [I don't know if they're as good as [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ7aQxu20c0]Big Kahuna Burgers, but they're **** tasty anyway ]Big Kahuna Burgers, but they're really tasty. Great fries and milkshakes too, and inexpensive. Ten times better than a McDonalds cheeseburger - for real. Really great taste and they're super-consistent because that's just about all they cook. Even if you don't think you like onions on a cheeseburger, you should try one - they're perfect. Not too strong, cooked just right, they add a subtle semi-sweet oniony taste to the burger. They have five or six people working the joint, and pretty much all they do is burgers, fries and soda/shakes. The banter with the grillmeister is pure NJ hilarious mock-insult back and forth. [Example: "Can we take a picture?" "Yeah you want me to smile?" "Will it break my camera if ya do?" "Do you think you wanna eat this cheeseburger?" Tremendous diversity of people in the restaurant - everyone loves the place. The owner reports that they serve more than 1,200 hamburgers and cheeseburgers a day off a grill that's appoximately four feet wide by three feet deep. They have one guy whose entire job consists of taking the tops off of burger buns, and a new stack of cheese eight or ten inches high lasts about 5-10 minutes, so fast does the food move in this restaurant. Amazing place if you're ever in the area:

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DT7DZLlE-4&vl=en] American Food - The BEST BURGERS in New Jersey! White Manna Hamburgers - YouTube

Finally: normally we take the "Mario Cuomo Memorial Bridge" (formerly Tappan Zee, and still is to us) to the Saw Mill River Parkway north on our return leg. However: the entrance ramp to the SMP North is blocked off due to construction! I guess they have finally decided that the pothole-strewn and precarious on-ramp shouldn't be allowed to collapse onto the road beneath it. Now you have to take an elaborate detour to get on the SMP North at that entrance near the MCMB. The detour signs are placed with almost complete disregard for legibility and we got lost; wound up cranking up the GPS and took a tour through Tarrytown, NY, where I don't think it's possible to spit on the street and hit someone worth less than $10 million dollars.

So it was a fun trip overall, despite the crack in the windshield. I remarked to my passenger: actually it's good that it hit the windshield instead of passing through the grille and putting a hole in the radiator or A/C condenser. Which it would have. It took a big chunk of glass out of my windshield and would have probably pierced the condenser or radiator, leaving us either stranded or without A/C, and with an even bigger repair bill that insurance wouldn't have covered. It was so loud when it hit, I thought the car had cracked in half. "Holy S***!! What WAS THAT?"

 

@ShadyEscape I spotted not one, not two, but FOUR other Hybrids of this vintage on our trip yesterday. Two Mercury Mariner Hybrids, one gorgeous Mazda Tribute Hybrid in Hackensack NJ, and another pristine-looking black Hybrid Limited (I could tell b/c of the NAV system and the little dots on the bumpers for the Park Assist system.) And that was just in our immediate vicinity. People are holding onto these cars and driving them.

 

Yes and the car looks great. No rust that I could see, the paint still shines, it was straight and even the interior looked good from what I could see of it. You can tell when someone isn't kidding around, this woman loves her car. I think it was an XLT Sport.

 

And here are the pictures. Actually, it was 32.8 MPG, not 32.7 ! I didn't check the final reading after we pulled off the highway! The windshield gouge/crack photo is a little blurry, but the thing is about 2.5" in diameter with a good deep gouge in the center that almost goes through entirely.


450 Mile NE Roadtrip 2010 FEH Limited 2WD Heavy Traffic with Cargo Average MPG


Windshield Gouge/Star Crack due to projectile flung from road into windshield THWACK! at about 70 MPH.

It's kind of a Jersey thing (I am from there originally, and proud, of course! lol) but if you say this in the correct accent, you know that sometime in the Tristate Area you're going to run into a Mutual Screw Supply. [I know, there's an Ampersand in there but you can barely see it.]


That's Jersey Baby

 

That's awesome mileage for an '09 4WD with the engine-driven AC during the summer. You're doing something right!

 

I ate a tire on the highway in June. Something went in at 60mph and I didn't notice until the sidewalls had bumps. Had to buy a new one and got a full size spare after using the mini wheel. The worth of the HEV escapes is way over the gas ones, people definitely keep them if they can. I think its like 5-8k vs $2k for a gasser.

 

We actually think there's a nonnegligible chance that it was a bullet that came down and hit our windsheild after traveling a long distance. The section of I95 we were on passed through a pretty rough section of a medium sized city.

I saw a 2012 FEH Limited for sale on Carvana with 21k miles recently - $18,500 IIRC.

I was offered $7500 for mine at a stoplight. I know I could likely get $10k, maybe more, from the right buyer, esp. if I did a full paint correcton and re-blackened the riding boards, detailed the interior, etc.

 

That's impressive. My fuel mileage has been in the tank since Florida's seemingly never ending heat wave started.