I got my HAH on 12/26 and now have ~250 miles on it in mixed city/highway driving. Still haven't filled it up at all to see how my calculated economy compares to the car's number. My trip odometer economy meter shows 25.5 - I tried a 5 mile or so run on the highway with cruise engaged and got 32. Obviously it is too early and there is too little mileage to really see what will happen but I figure that the mileage won't get any worse given that I am driving a non-broken in vehicle in a bitter cold Cleveland winter (but the temps are actually staying above freezing today!).

I had almost no experience with hybrids before. I previously owned a Saturn VUE which I really did like but I got tired of the mileage which was starting to average 20-21 even with alot of highway driving. I looked at the escape a little but a combination of questions about how well Ford would pull this off on their first try and the fact that the mileage seems to lag a bit particularly given my driving environment. My main concerns with the HAH were the trunk/storage space and the spare tire situation. I got spoiled by my VUE which could take just about anything short of a lawn tractor that I might buy at Home Depot. Now I just have to plan ahead a bit more.

With the exception of the auto stop feature there is no doubt that anyone could get in one of these cars and drive it and really not know anything different was going on. Of course your mileage would suffer. It has taken some adjustment for me to maximize my time spent in eco mode but these are, in retrospect, just good fuel efficient driving techniques anyway.

The auto stop feature has taken a little more adjustment on my part, mainly to avoid unecessary starts and stops (I sort of stress about the strain on the engine and am trying to avoid those cases where it auto-stops only to restart immediately):

The loss of engine braking when the engine shuts off as you come to a stop caught me off guard at first but now it's not a big deal. In order to not have the car jerk backwards after stopping I have always let up on the pedal at the last second and I am still working on making this work with the auto stop so it doesn't restart. I do worry after a hard stop that leaving the brake on relatively hard may contribute to rotor warping due to uneven cooling but maybe I am overly obsessive with that sort of thing.

One mild annoyance is that when turning at slow speeds (the roads are a bit slippery) the auto stop will kick in briefly and then the engine restarts almost immediately. Perhaps there are some software tweaks to put in - maybe the car would not auto stop when the wheel was turned more than x degrees or whatever.

It also seems like Honda could have tweaked the electric motor to boost more, particularly when in eco mode. I feel like too often the engine drops out of eco mode without even trying to electric boost instead for those little speed adjustments like over a gentle hill on the highway. I suspect that the engineers intentionally traded off economy in this case for guaranteed instant power on demand to make mainstream drivers more happy. The way I see it is the car should at least try to use the electric motor and stay in eco mode unless you really punch it.

One final comment, even though I haven't really been able to really air this car out due to the weather I think you can really notice the boost from the electric motor when accelerating hard in higher speed transitions (like passing on the highway or merging from 40-70, etc.) The way it shows up is that the power is ready immediately instead of the usual little pause after the car downshifts. After that first few seconds the power then just feels like a normal V6.

Just some ramblings from a hybrid neophyte,

Craig