As an AH owner I find looking at the MPG database and comparing the Escape numbers to the AH numbers quite depressing. However in looking a bit closer it isn't really a fair comparison with the current distribution of drivers.

The average time/ride for the Escape drivers overall is quite a bit longer - if you ranked the whole pool together in terms of time/ride the entire AH group except for one driver would be at the bottom in average time and all below 20 minutes. The one driver that has an average time more comparable to the Escape owners has a mpg that is more competitive as well (of course I also think that he has more hybrid experience which helps also). In the cold weather I find that my car doesn't start activating hybrid features until 7-10 minutes into a ride if it was not previously warmed up.

It will be interesting to see how the numbers work themselves out once we have a more comparable distribution of drivers between the 2 vehicles.

On another note, I am pleasantly surprised with how my AH handles snowy and icy roads. I wasn't expecting much since I previously had an AWD SUV but it really does a pretty good job. I can't dash through snowbanks but I haven't gotten stuck in the more typical partially cleared/packed/icy streets typical around here and I have seen a number of theoretically more capable vehicles trapped (likely due to driver overconfidence). We have had a pretty good run of snow this year in Ohio and I haven't had any problems - even on my street which doesn't ever get plowed by the city.