Thought I'd pop this back up to the top and see if anyone else had new info.

We're up to 2200 miles now on our Escape hybrid and the mpg is still terrible.

We've done a few 2-hour road trips over the holidays, and plenty of freeway driving and had excellent results - close to 36 mpg. Once we get up to speed, we simply feather the gas pedal to keep our speed. It's not uncommon to have the engine shut off for long periods of time while we're at 70 mph.

But in the city is a completely different story. We still can't hit more than 10 mph without the engine kicking in, and many times, despite accelerating as slowly as possible, the engine kicks in right away. No matter what we do, we can't get more than about 17 mpg in the city.

Overall, we're not even getting 23 mpg - which pretty much defeats the purpose of getting a hybrid in the first place.

Is anyone else having this problem? Could it be a software thing telling the engine to kick in too soon? Maybe a battery problem (although it says energy levels are normal). We're getting really frustrated at this point because no one (not even Ford) can help us!