Of course trying to stay in electric all the time is not really the point of a Hybrid. I could stay in electric drive all day long in out Honda EV+, but I could only go 90 miles at any one time, plus each one cost about $250,000 for Honda to make (according to them). The joy of a hybrid is to have full functionality, low emissions, fuel economy and unlimited range. The Honda won all but the last catagory. See http://archive.salon.com/tech/log/19.../electric_car/ to learn more.

I like to think of the FEH as an electric car that doesn't run out of gas, but the reality is the Esacape EV drive system is not nearly as strong as the EV+ (which toped out around 105MPH, electronicaly limited). The FEH is really a low power gas engine mated with a low power EV drive system which hopefully provided the best of both worlds, meaning you have to use both engines most of the time.

Chris Brown