As you see from Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash test data, the Prius is a much safer car than the Escape with much higher mileage.

Other issue was interior room, passenger dimensions about the same, 96 cu. ft passenger volume for the Prius and 99 cu. ft for the Escape.

The lack of stability control and the lower crash test ratings combined with the higher roll over rating all make the Escape a much riskier car to drive.

Plus the FWD Escape is about $3K more per www.cars.com.

Ford wants your money and your life .

You can use the 3k you saved on buying the prius to help pay your medical bills for your passengers since the prius only got 4 stars for the front seat passenger in a frontal collision and 4 stars for the rear seat passengers in a side impact.

The escape got 5 stars in both those locations and tied the prius with 4 stars for the driver in a frontal crash.

Maybe you could have your passengers ride with you in your drivers seat with all that interior room?

Toyota wants to send the profits from your car back to Japan.

After thinking about this information some more it is obvious that the SUV single vehicle rollover deaths at 24 vs 16 for CAR gives a 50% higher rate of death for SUV.

What isn't so obvious is that removing the SVR from the SV deaths leads to SUV deaths in non-rollover of 10 while for CAR it is 17, or 70% higher deaths for cars that don't roll vs SUV.

I can visualize possibly that in multiple car accidents a car may cause more deaths since their is a good chance that one vehicle is larger than the other.

I can't visualize why there would be so many more cars with deaths from crashes with no rollover?

No one uses the antiquated (1994) US government crash test ratings other than US car mfgs who designed them.

The IIHS crash tests are the consumer standards (see Consumer Reports for more information).

Prius does much better (Good) than the Escape (Acceptable, head injuries, pelvic injuries) in the crash test ratings.

Additionally the Prius has stability control which, due to proven safety benefits, all US cars will have by 2010. Escape being a high center of gravity vehicle, the roll over protection offered by stability control is a key factor in making it a less safe vehicle to drive.

Since cargo volume was one of the original concerns, the person might want to look at the Toyota Highlander Hybrid which has more cargo, better crash test rating and same mileage as the Escape but costs a lot more.

Sounds like you are defending your purchase vs. analyzing factors in buying new car.

After reading your other posts, (13 of them). It sounds like you think the only hybrid to own is yours.

I wonder who is defending their purchase as opposed to being realistic.

Regardless of whose test ratings you use, no small car is a match for a larger SUV in a vehicular collision. Trust me on this one I know. When a small (tinny) car gets smacked in the side by a larger SUV, or on any type of angular collision with a larger SUV, the results are in favor of the larger SUV occupants.

Type what you please, but that is reality, not statistics (even though the escape earned more stars staistically anyways).

Be a man and accept responsibility when you are wrong, it's ok really.

You have the better gas mileage, that is for sure. With a 1.5 litre compared to a 2.3 litre and with the prius significantly less in poundage, I would hope the car would have SOME advantage!!


08FEH

"Regardless of whose test ratings you use..."

Nope. Either use reliable, scientific credible tests like IIHS or not. You keep referring to the discredited US gov't crash tests, designed by US car mfgs and not updated since 1994.

The reason IIHS created the more rigorous and technically accurate crash tests is insurance companies were paying out for crash injuries that the bogus US/NHSTA tests said would not be happening.

The Prius is a safer car vs. the Escape per the crash tests. Add in Prius having the soon to be required stability control which the high center of gravity, more roll over prone Escape lacks adds to the Prius being demonstrably safer car.

The original poster was worried about being "claustrophobic" in cars and Prius at 96 cu. ft vs. Escape at 99 cubic feet of passenger room are equivalent.

'ats it pard. You hit the nail on the head. Let 'er go, can't discuss anything with the Toy faithful.

Aside, bought a Milwaukee Sawzall yesteday. My son and I agreed it was a better made tool than Bosch, Dewalt, Hitachi, blah, blah, blah.... Priced right with the rest.

Box said:

Tool: Made in the USA
Case: Made in the USA
Blades: Made in the USA
Box: Made in the USA
Printed: In the USA

Dig it.

Take Care,
Steve
Oregon

Please Don't Feed the Trolls


4WD

"You have received an infraction at GreenHybrid - Hybrid Cars"
At: http://greenhybrid.com/discuss/showthread.php?t=12748

talking in terms of rough roads:

the escape has a higher ground clearance....

does it also fit in 4 persons easier than the prius or the same way (especially leg room and knee room, so i hope the escape has no big center console)...

best wishes

euro website about consumption

I posted a little more detail waaaay back toward the top of the thread. I'm 6'4" and I own BOTH the Ford Escape Hybrid *and* the Prius.

Both rear-seats seem roomy. Rear seats are never as roomy as front seats, but even the Prius has surprisingly more room than I would have expected.

Front seats, on the other hand, are not at all similar. Legroom is a major factor for me. I knew the Prius didn't have as much front-seat legroom when I sat in it, but I thought I could "put up with it." Well... though I love my Prius, there are just one or two complaints about the car, and front-seat leg room ranks right up there at the top of the list. Knee room is also a problem. The double-glove box design on the Prius takes up a lot of space. This is a wonderful design for short people because the car has a lot of storage... it's an awful design for those with long legs because your knees may be scraping the glove box door (my partner is 6'6" and his knees are constantly nicking them.)

I love to give credit where credit is due, and there's lot of great features in the Prius, but front-seat legroom / kneeroom is a real problem on this car. It's quite obvious that all the key stake-holders who made the design decisions at Toyota were "short" people who didn't give any thought at all to customers who are over 6' tall. =(

As for the FEH, neither my partner nor I have a legroom problem with it. I wouldn't characterize it as being super-generous on legroom (I've had even roomier cars), but I'm 6'4", my partner is 6'6" and neither of us have any complaints about the legroom or knee-room.

The Prius wins in most other categories -- Fuel economy is, of course, no contest... Prius wins by a lot. I like the voice command in the Prius (ok, I _mostly_ like it... sometimes I hate it), I like the Nav system but am really annoyed that most of it's features are locked out if the car isn't stopped and there is no way around it and Toyota is hell-bent on modifying it the moment they find out that a work-around was discovered to ensure that we owners will be eternally annoyed. I also really like the Bluetooth phone integration and have no complaints about that system at all -- works flawlessly for my old Treo and my new iPhone. I hate the Prius' auto-dimming mirror. I normally like auto-dimming mirrors -- but the Prius has a cross-bar on the back-hatch (to which the spoiler and 'cyclops' light is mounted) and this casts a shadow on the mirror so that the mirror isn't really aware of the bright headlights behind me. I really wish I just had a manual flip-level to dim the mirror. Toyota needs to ditch it or find a way to mount the light sensor in a spot that isn't blocked by the shadow of the back hatch.

I normally never consider things like 'ground clearance' since I don't drive in places where that's an issue. Yes, I know people say things like "we get a lot of snow here" but frankly that's a few storms per year and I don't really _have_ to drive in a snowstorm. I'd hate to sacrifice 20-25mpg in fuel economy 363 days out of the year because there are 2 days out of the year when more 'ground clearance' would have been nice to have. ;-)

I know people compare the interior cubic-feet of space and claim these cars compare similarly. Remember, I own both -- and I'm nobodies fan-boy. I'm happy to praise or criticize either Toyota or Ford equally. So there's no bias involved when I say that if cargo space is a concern, the Ford doesn't just "win", it wins by a mile. In the same way that these two cars don't even come close when it comes to fuel economy (Prius wins), they don't even come close when it comes to cargo space (FEH wins). The Prius doesn't compare and I don't care what those engineering specs say, I own both. I can easily fit a LOT more into the FEH without even trying and can go on and on with examples of what wouldn't fit into the Prius but would fit into the FEH (I've loaded my Prius with gear I thought would fit and halfway through loading it, had to unpack it all and decide to take my FEH instead because it just wasn't gonna work out with the Prius.

I think the comparison was the Escape to the Highlander not the Escape to the Prius.

My problem with Escape was that it had a poor crash test rating vs. the Prius, safety first, saving oil and environment won't pay medical bills.

At this point, I'm thinking Jetta Diesel Sportwagen at 40/60mpg which will be 10% more fuel efficient than Prius, close to 50% more fuel efficient than Escape.

I'd like AWD but figure traction control, stability control and Nokian snows will work just fine.

Audi Diesels coming out with Jetta's will likely beat Escape fuel efficiency by 10% and provide AWD.