A hybrid SUV such as the FEH is a good stop gap for people who are convinced that SUVs are the only "safe and comfortable" transportation on the road. I would much rather see someone getting high 20s (or even 30s) than low teens in mpg.... I realize that this is only perpetulating the myth of SUVs being safer, but since you can't make people smarter, you can at least make their cars more efficient!

In our situation, we have driven the MMH a total of 355.5 miles over the last two months. Now that ski season is over, I doubt we will put more than 500 miles on it the whole summer. My wife is a telecommuter so while she needs a car, she hardly ever drives it. We could have gotten away with a Prius with snow tires 90% of the time, but that extra 10% is when the skiing is the best so I'm willing to spend 34.6mpg vs 60 for the luxury of AWD. Besides, we use the HCH 90% of the time so I'm not too worried about our gas consumption.

Granted, I would rather have a small, AWD station wagon hybrid, but since nothing like that exists, I'm very happy with the MMH.

Commuter car, grocery getter, and summer road tripper--average 10k miles per year.


Winter road trips and ski trips, bad weather commuter and my wife's "daily" driver--expected average 4k miles per year.