That info has been around for about 6 months.
The 2008 does get better MPG, and it does shut of the engine more often than older models. I got one of the first 5000 2005's produced, and in my opinion, Ford was very conservative with the demands they put on the battery pack, since they did not exactly know how well it would do in consumer's hands, and god forbid, they should have problems and get bad press with their debut hybrid. After the 2005's proved themselves, the later models were tweaked a little at a time, in favor of better performance and MPG. I think they were smart to start off conservative and slowly improve. Do you agree?