http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/...rid/index.html

I just bought mine a week ago, and I'm averaging 41.8mpg and that average includes an elevation change of +2000 feet. I am babying the car though for certain. Comfortable, plenty fast enough, but definitely not driving it like I did my 2000 Maxima GLE (A really nice rig, giving to a daughter). After the FFH is broken in (only have about 350 on it today) I will drive it in my former driving style and see where it shakes out. The problem with this though is that it is always tempting to drive the car . . . intelligently.

Noel

 

We are averaging 38 MPG in town after 2 tanks. We have a lot of hills in NW Atlanta Metro and the ICE provides additional power over the electric motor on each one. We try to recapture the energy going down the other side, but it is not as efficient as it would be in Oklahoma.

That being said, it still beats the crap out of the previous vehicle that got 16 MPG in the same drive cycle.

We have had 114 new vehicles over the last 40 years and this one is the most fun of all and certainly the most fuel efficient.

 

Yeah well motortrend drives everything like it's a sports car so they always get worse mileage. I get better than that without putting much effort. I usually accelerate normally from stop, get to speed, and then let off and try to use EV mode as much as possible, and I easily get around 40 mpg. The only time I see lower MPG is for really short trips, I presume because the ICE has to warm up.

 

Yeah, I thought the short trips would be on EV mode all the time, but the ICE warm up hurts the mileage. Most of our trips are less than 2 1/2 miles one way and hilly.

 

In my now 8-day old experience with this FFH, this is what I have found as well. Accel normally, then off the accelerator, then tickle to stay in EV. It really is easy to do this. It is, IMHO, a mistake to do a super slow acceleration unless one can stay in EV while doing that, which oftentimes traffic will not permit. I notice at slower speeds, the FFH is actually a little worse than the FEH at starting and STAYING in EV mode, at slower speeds. I wonder if it's the crazy heavy weight of hte FFH. I swear the thing has lead for body panels! I would love to see this thing designed with weight trimmed back with composite panels adn a few other ways of reducing weight. Though, perhaps like the freight train, once it is to speed it doens't take as much to maintain it, improving highway mpg.

Indeed, where the FFH shines is that once you get up to speed, it's pretty easy to stay in EV up to the stated speed of 47mph, and at 50 or 55, it's also easy to see 50+mpg in the instant FE gauge on flat roads. But yes, give it a little get it up to speed, then yer good to go. Is this what "pulse and glide" means? I started to research that topic, and the narrative was so long I gave up trying follow the discussion. I am staying nicely around 40.5 - 41.5 mpg with the above style of driving, which encompasses 1-4 mile trips, plus 20 mile commutes, and a rare 50 mile commute, and plus, this take still has one more 2000 foot ascent in it than descent. And what's cool: the car hasn't even begun to break in. I only have 378 miles on it currently. I know our FEH definitely improved around 5K miles or so. So it seem highly reasonable to expect 43-44mpg after break in, and pumping up the tires a wee bit more. I just today went from 37psi cold to 41 just to see how it goes. This car is a total gem and I am being one arrsshole with keeping people, including my beloved wife, away from it! I have to stop that as it's actually half her car! Oh well, give me a few more weeks of the fantasy world that I can keep the car brand new and use it at the same time. Ug! I'll get over the newness soon, I hope! Maybe I'll just go out to the garage and whack one side of it with a baseball bat so I can stop fussing over the perfection of it! Can you tell though, I'm pretty dang excited getting to buy one of these

Thank you for the perspective on Motor Trend. Yes, they are the performance/power geeks. Their results are very much out of line with user-reported results. User testimony can be a little biased too

 

Most of my wife's start ups are commutes to and from her work, which is about .6 miles each way. She drives in an AWD FEH. No way to get super mileage, but I can tell you compared to any other similar style vehicle she clearly gets the best FE possible. Her range of mileage is about 27.4 to 30, depending on the ambient temperature. In CA, you lose FE over some other states which to not use certain fuel additives that CA does that harm FE. When we took a road trip to Utah thru Nevada we got over 32 mpg, which was with a moderately loaded FEH running at freeway speeds of 65. Not too shabby for smaller SUV w/ AWD.

 

Many Escape and Mariner Hybrid owners will confirm that a "break in period" exists on these vehicles though I don't think anyone at Ford has ever admitted it. I know that mine behaved very differently after about 2500-3000 miles. EV was attainable much more easily and lasted much longer and gas mileage increased noticeably. I would not be surprised if Ford built in some sort of battery /system conditioning for the first X number of cycles.

 

Actually, I read it in the manual--as I recall it suggested not even measuring mpg until you've gone 2-3K miles or something to that effect.

 

Yes, I believe it does say that but I don't recall if it gives a range...maybe 1,000 miles....but it definitely says in the manual not to monitor mileage for a period of time.