Sean, after the car is "broken in" the battery will give you about 2 miles of EV per charge up, on level ground. 1 mile of EV when the car is new sounds normal.

Hopefully, your seat heaters are just due to a loose wire or something.
Should be an easy, and free fix from your dealer.

Great mileage for your first tank!
It will only get better!
Enjoy!
-John

 

As far as I know, the water pump issue only effected *some* of the '05 models, but no others. There's a story behind this and I was a bit skeptical, but after hearing the same story from a few sources I think it's probably true.

There are two cooling systems -- each has it's own pump. One is for the combustion engine, the other is for the electric motor. The failure involved the pumps that cool the electric motor.

The story is that there was a truck delivering the water pumps to Ford which was involved in an accident and a substantial number of these pumps were scattered all over the road. The parts were retrieved and sorted out by the supplier. Any part which didn't appear to be obviously damaged was shipped to Ford and installed.

Many of these pumps failed fairly early. My '05 FEH had the water pump fail at about 10,000 miles. It was replaced and has been fine ever since.

The good news is that the pump itself doesn't seem to be flawed -- the failures were only with the pumps that had involved in the accident -- and those pumps are long since gone.

 

Nice Urban Legend. One I have heard on every web site, about every car, with any problem. Just the model of the car changes to fit "x". So I can say with confidence that the "falling off the truck" story does not hold water, since that story has been recycled for decades.

I gave a short example. It was just that, an example.
There's 1000 other things that could go wrong, for sure.
I still feel an ESP is more appropriate for this car than a traditional Escape, since there are so few things the DIY'er can replace at home.
Plus this car has very little history.
Plus it's Ford's first go at something very new.

 

Did the dealer not mention a use it or refund it extended warrenty for the FEH? Mine said since the Hybrid is covered for what is it 8y 100k, the rest of the warenty can be extended for $1060, if you don't use it in 5 years/60k you get it refunded to you. It's non transferable so if you sell before the times up, it's just gone. It's a Ford ESP Preiem care w/100 deductible.

We decided before walking into the dealer, this time we're not going to get the warrenty, they never get used, or not enough to cover the cost, but hey who can pass up this offer!!!

The only "catch" I could see, is if any warrenty work counts against it, regardless of when it happens ie during the original 3/36 or after.

But I'll make sure I ask 3 times before any work is done, get it in writing somewhere, or ask for an estimate before any work/claims are started.

 

Thanks for the input everyone. Bryan, they did not mention anything like that but it sounds INTERESTING. The longest warranty they offered to me was to extend the 3/36 to 5/60 bumper to bumper. Tell me more!

08FEH

 

Thanks John,

We ARE enjoying the truck so far. My wife will be using the truck the majority of the time, so we went for about an hour ride yesterday and she drove. SHE did AWESOME on the gas mileage and I never let her look at the energy screen. I told her just to drive it like her old car. Don't change anything.. I told her. I reset the avg mpg just before we left. I noticed that EVERY time she took off the gas engine started right away, but we never looked at the screen. We did both some driving around town and went out on SR776 which has a speed limit of 55. She did mostly 35mph on the back roads and got right up to 55-60mph on SR776. I noticed that she had MUCH less trouble getting the truck going from a stop than I did. I have been struggling a little with keeping the rpms from jumping up when I start off, but she seemed to keep them lower and it wasn't as if we were crawling up to speed.

When I drove the truck around town before, I was trying to go electric electric electric.. but she was popping that ice on almost every time.

As a side note, it was over 90 here, so we had the climate control set to 74/74 (econ was activated) but because of her driving style and the ice on so frequently it stayed nice and cool inside!

We pull back into the driveway, and I am thinking I was going to beat her avg mpg with EASE... BUT we switch over to the energy screen and she is at 41mpg!!! What the HEY!!!

It's gonna take weeks for her to let this go...now she says she will be teaching ME a few things about what she calls "TRACYMILING". Maybe buying this truck was a MISTAKE

Anyways, I have TWO important questions!!!

1) Am I trying TOO HARD to go easy when I am driving??

2) How can I get the energy screen to give a FALSE and LOWER mpg reading when she drives so it doesn't go to to her head!!!

All in fun..

08FEH

 

Really? I've never heard this story before about any car. The dealer who replaced the pump was the first to tell me this, but dealers don't always have their facts straight and I was fairly skeptical. The odd thing was that I wasn't at my own dealer. The pump failed when I was about 80 miles from home, so it was taken to the closest Ford dealer that was authorized to work on hybrids. Next time I was back at my home dealer getting the oil changed one of the guys at that dealer was talking to me about my car and I happened to mention the recent water pump failer... and he then told me the same story (hmm... two Ford dealers that both service the hybrid and they're 80 miles apart... maybe there is something to the story).

In any case, the pump on my '05 Failed. I vividly remember one member of this site (this would have had to have been at least 2 years back) not only had the same failure, he had several of them (pump failed, replaced, failed again, replaced, failed again). However... I haven't heard of a pump failing on any other model year, nor have I heard of an '05 having the failure in several years (most of those that failed, failed in the first year and would long since have been swapped out for a new part). I don't think the cooling pump failure is an issue anymore.

 

Don't know what else to say, there's the copy of the money back guaruntee, and the I guess standard ESP copy. They didn't make it sound like it was a dealer exclusive thing. You might call the finance dept again and inquire about it. Maybe it's a backup to when you say no thanks to the higher priced standard (like most companies when you try to cancel something, well if you stay we'll offer you this).

 

I can assure you, that the new vehicle trucking companies do indeed run their own body shops. Damage does occur while they are transporting new vehicles, and I guess it is more cost effect for them to fix them themselves, than to delivery them still with known body damage to a dealership. Since it is handled "inside", the trucking company doesn't bother to inform either Ford nor the receiving dealership. I know that there is such a repair facility in northeastern PA, which is where any damaged vehicles in my area go.

It was years ago, but I remember seeing a new vehicle truck, with a full size van on the top that had its roof ripped off. It look liked someone took a can opener, and cut open the front, and both sides of the roof panel, pulled back the roof panel, and draped it over the van's tailgate. I didn't see it happen, but guessed that the new vehicle truck didn't quite clear an overpass somewhere. If an inattentive driver could do that, I assume anything could, and does, happen given the number of vehicles transported each year to dealerships all over the USA.

 

Maybe this is obvious, but I thought I would mention that it is the "butt" part of the seat that heats, not the back part.