Hi All:

___The thing that steams me the most is that given a decent SUV, you can receive some truly great numbers from them without any hybridization.

___The family and I took the Acura MDX to a church sponsored community service event called Sharefest 2004 last Saturday morning. She (the X) was loaded down with ladders, paint supplies, and the 4 of us. The wife had previously succeeded in a relatively lousy and slightly below average for her, 18.4 mpg over the first 35 miles since her last fill per the FCD. After the church function which was an all city drive to and from, we drove downtown (Chicago that is) to participate in the “Light the Night” walkathon. This is a nation wide fund raiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma society. 30 miles of this excursion into and out of Lincoln Park last Saturday was an absolute nightmare of stop and go crawling for 15 miles into and 15 miles out of the downtown Chicago area. With that, we arrived home late that night and the X had 24.9 mpg displayed on the FCD after 124 miles. This is getting really close to 27.49 mpg for my 91 miles of ½ deep inner city and ½ highway driving in an SUV half the size of a small bus and just as powerful too!

___What I am getting at is hopefully the average Escape HEV owner will achieve at least EPA combined estimates but these numbers are so far below what is possible from this type of vehicle it makes me cringe at the thought of the average hybrid driver purchasing one to save fuel and then proceeding to achieve the fuel economy anyone with a bit of game gauge training could achieve in just about anything let alone what someone could receive in a Honda CRV, Toyota Rav 4, or heaven forbid, the regular and much less expensive std. 4 cylinder Escape which Ford conveniently excluded the PZEV HW in

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net