I'll do my best but there are others who I hope will explain this better. I am just a plug and use person.

I do have the AC plug in. I used it a great deal (24 hours or more total and at least 4-5 hours consecutively) on my vacation while camping.

I have a six outlet power strip connected to it and I plug in adapters for charging my IPod, camera, and other things. All I did was leave the key on and start plugging things in. It is all automatic. The car's ICE will come on and turn off as required to keep a sufficient charge in the big battery pack. Normally it was 1-3 minutes on/off. I carry nothing else.

If you do not have the power outlet you could get some power off the 12V but that will come from your little battery up front and there is nothing to tell you when it runs down or when you have to restart the car. I suppose you could go buy a much better converter than what comes with the car but I am unsure how you would install it so it would work automatically.

 

Most aftermarket D/C - A/C inverters will automotically shut off when the incoming battery voltage drops below some pre-set level. In the case of my unit it shuts off at around 11 volts. This leaves plently of go juice in the battery, not that the 12 volt needs that much anyway since it dosn't start the ICE. I just run mine with the key off and I have never had it shut down because of low voltage. Of course I only charge electonics (camcorder, digital camera, R/C car batteries, gameboy SP and such) on it, those aren't much of a real load.

Chris Brown

 

I bought one of the first Escape Hybrids in the Wash DC Area back in Oct 2004. At the time you basically got whatever came in to the lot.

The Escape I got doesn't have the 110V outlet. Does anyone know if its available as an aftermarket item or its Ford Part #?

 

Thanks, I've seen the 3rd party aftermarket inverters.

I'd really like to get the Ford version as it integrates nicely into the console.
http://www.fordvehicles.com/suvs/escapehybrid/

Does anyone know if this is available through Ford and what its Part # is?