I am posting a 50,000 mile report on my 2009 FEH. While I do love my Ford Escape Hybrid (contrary to popular belief here), it is a vehicle that has much room for improvement and is laden with many annoying problems.

Ford has been helpful DURING the warranty period, but has been very stringent about ANY assistance outside of the warranty period. This is NOT Ford's responsibility, but it sure does help with customer relations and retention; both of which have been lost with me.

If you are considering purchasing a Ford Vehicle and are planning on keeping it for longer than the 3yr 36000 mile bumper to bumper warranty, I would suggest you use the information and pictures below to help you make your decision.

There will be VALID replies from folks that have owned their FEH's much longer than I, with much more mileage than ours, that have had NO problems at all.
While this SURELY is true, it was NOT the case for me. In FACT, if you will search here, you will find that it is NOT the case for many others!

Do a search ON THIS VERY SITE for the problems I am listing below and you will see that while there are a FEW exceptions, MANY have experienced the SAME problems AND the same Frustrations with Ford and the FEH product.

We've tried three different dealers... the answers (or lack thereof) are always the same.

Here is some background on our 2009 FEH.

The build date is 07/08 and we bought it in 08/08 from a dealer in Apopka Florida. (with some help from GaryG)

My wife is the real owner of the FEH and drives it 99% of the time. Her last vehicle before owning an FEH (besides an 08FEH that we owned for one year and loved) was an 02 Lincoln LS getting 17mpg.

She is NOT a hypermiler, not even CLOSE. She weighs all of 100 pounds and has the seat ALL the way forward when driving if you catch my drift. She gets in, turns the key, and drives it like any other car she has ever owned. I think this was Ford's intent with the FEH, but that's just my opinion.

So let's check out some info, movies and pictures that help explain what life has been like with the 09 FEHL.

All of my claims and information will be documented here. I have receipts to back each visit and claim that is made.

Here we are at just over 50k miles. Wifey drives 99% city/rural and we get an average of 33mpg. She drives back and forth to work TWICE a day and is all over the city doing soccer mom drop offs and pick ups.

The only other trips our FEH sees are when I drive it to Orlando one or two times a month on the highway at around 70mph. I get an average of 32mpg doing that.

Here is our FEHL




Mileage




First issue with the FEH was a complete failure of the radio on day two of ownership... covered under warranty.
The Sirius something or other burned out.






Hey! Where did my date and day go? On our 2008, the day and date always displayed when the radio was on, A very much missed feature in the 09. Dealer said "nothing we can do about it"






What is that ANNOYING clicking under the dash? Dealer removed the dash under warranty once to fix the clicking AND a heat blend door problem.

The ac would blow cold on one side and hot on the other, regardless of temp settings.

A week later the clicking came back, but the temp was working ok. Dealer said "sorry, that's a characteristic of the truck." If it's blowing the correct temp there is nothing we can do about it. FMC hotline confirmed they weren't going to help. Here's that great noise:







Then there is this annoying "crunching" sound in the motor compartment when backing and going forward. It sounds like a motor mount went bad or something. "normal" says the dealer....

Listen as I pull forward and back up several times:







The wife called one day and said she couldn't get the key in the ignition.
It just won't go in. The dealer claimed to have replaced it, yet it still doesn't go into the cylinder.... watch








Here's a nice scratch one dealer denied putting in the covers after their so called repair.






At 37k miles and less than two years old, the wife called and said she was stuck. The FEH would not start.

It needed a new 12v battery! Surely this would be covered!! NOPE- sorry out of warranty (by 1k). But we will sell you a replacement FORD battery that is warrantied for 5yrs or 60k! WOW.... that must be a much better battery than the one that comes in the truck....
Call to Ford Motor Company was another waste of my time....






Here is a bad gear sound in the left rear window regulator... out of warranty.






Faded and heat cracking factory running boards, they are almost WHITE:






New tires for the front at 45k. Which was actually very good wear in my opinion. I love the tire and bought the same ones.







If the other noises and vibrations don't drive you nuts, this back latch will.

look and listen:








There is a TSB for an engine vibration at 2000 rpms. It is for an engine mount revised crossmember. Not covered out of warranty, 400 dollars to fix. Not happening... let it vibrate... no pic of that.




Funny story...

The passengers door handle started not working intermittently, so the wife took it to the dealer TWICE! problem not found they said. Door opens fine.
On her last trip there, she forgot her receipt, so the service writer ran out to her truck. Guess what happened when he tried to open the passenger's side door HA! OWNED!

They replaced or adjusted the handle.






scratches in the glass from the window regulator, out of warranty....






Third brakelight bulb failure, wear item, customer pay...








I've saved the worst for last.

Here is the stitch tearing on the drivers seat. THIS is a shame.. out of warranty.

VERY VERY upsetting... FOMOCO could care less...





That's my 50k report on the 2009 FEH.

Flaming will be ignored. Fair truck at best, quality is far from job 1 Ford. You are going to have to do much better than this to be competitive in today's marketplace.

It STARTS with customer service,, then work on product improvement. The best product in the WORLD means NOTHING without loyal customers.




Sean

 

Where do you live, in a desert? Must see a lot of sun to bleach your steps. My wife's 2009 MM has steps and they're still black.

The only warranty work I've had done was:

• an airbag light when new... 4 visits to fix that and finally replaced the body wiring harness. Gave me a rental car for a week, then charged me for filling with gas they burned diagnosing/fixing it.
• creaking driver seat... happened about once every minute... fixed first visit.
• sync microphone TSB... excessive road noise

Everything else I had repaired was from reading the TSB and knowing what could be a problem:

• crossmember TSB
• unequal temps blend door TSB... caught it when it was a minor problem

I'm still under warranty for a month or two.

 

LOL Florida which can sometimes feel like the desert.

Interesting point on the sync tsb. We gave up on using sync for voice recognition and phone calls within a week of taking delivery!

It works great for playing songs off the iphone, we just have to select them manually.

I never could figure out how after saying call Michael, sync would return with "calling Susan!" That got old real fast!

 

08FEH, thanks for sharing your experiences - with video! Its always good to hear honest reports of the good and bad for any consumer purchases. You've had more than a fair share of issues with your FEH. Poor dealership repairs and customer service compound aggravations.

I'm not sure the internet is the best place for unbiased information. Car websites are mostly enthusiast orientented and populated. People join car forums to revel or gripe. Passionate owners love their vehicles and defend them vigorously; frustrated owners vent and report every single issue. The silent majority's feelings are probably in the middle - somewhat unremarkable. FEH ownership is no different.

I will soon be drafting a 100,000 mile report on our '07 FEH. Our vehicle has been very reliable and low maintenance (still on original Continentals!). However, I have NEVER had a 'positive' experience with Ford dealership service (10 years of Ford vehicles). Many negative experiences, some so-so.

***Edit - less than 24 hrs after my original post, the "Stop Safely Now" message popped up twice on a road trip. Dang.

Thanks again-

 

Thanks Aaron and I hope you are able to get your issue fixed quickly and reasonably.

I'm not so sure I can say my post was completely unbiased, but I did provide more than just words to back it up.


Sean

 

Sean,

I noticed a good bit of discoloration in the non-leather portion of the seat in your pictures. Is there any chance that you or your wife uses some type of skin care product (lotion, sun block, spray tan)? If so this could be causing the leather to dry and I would recommend using some type of leather care product to counteract the dry/cracking that is occurring. Of course, there's no way to repair the existing cracks but it should help prevent more from happening.

I can't speak on the other issues you've experienced as I don't have an '09 FEH and my '08 FEH has been pretty much trouble free (outside of the blend door replacement under warranty).

 

I regularly use a leather cleaner/protectant on my seats and they still look good. Sean's seats look dirty.

 

Sean, thanks for the informative report on your FEH.

My '07 is coming up on 35k miles and four years old. Apart from the blend door repair under warranty it has been totally reliable. However, I am getting some pretty annoying squeaks and rattles, surprising in a vehicle with such low miles and little off road driving. Both of the front windows rattle if not all the way up, the liftgate squeaks, and there's a chassis squeak coming from the rear somewhere.

My real disappointment is the highway gas mileage. Although the city/commuting mileage is excellent, I'm not commuting now. Twice a year we do a roundtrip from LA to Laughlin, NV (600 miles) to go climbing. The route is a mix of interstate freeway, local highways, rolling hills, but few surface roads. Traffic moves fast and you end up in the truck lane if you can't cruise at 75mph+. Under those conditions the FEH returns about 26mpg, spending a lot of time at 4000 rpm to keep the speeds up. For the November trip we took my friends 2009 Subaru Forester XT (turbo) and I did most of the driving. I was able to average 28mpg (needs premium fuel) on that 600 mile trip by driving it conservatively (slower acceleration, anticipating stops, etc) but cruising at 85mph. The FEH feels like it has a freeway comfort range of 50 - 70 mph, while the Subaru is comfortable at triple digit speed. Passing at any speed feels safe, unlike the FEH.

Bottom line, I'm planning to get a 2011 Forester XT in the spring and sell the FEH.

 

No spray tan, but absolutely yes on lotion and sun tan oil and moisturizers. I would expect the seat surface to last more than just over a year under just about any condition including people that wear shorts. Its depressing more than irritating.

The seats are used a lot ( see the mileage) but they aren't "dirty". Even if they were dirty, I still expected something a little longer lasting. Heck, I've got a 97 chevy astro van that she drives also with 250,000 miles on it and the seats are holding up better.

Chris, we had an 08 and foolishly sold it to get the 09. Every aspect of the truck was better in OUR OPINION, especially the mpg's. The seats in the 08 were leather also and were definately harder. I wonder if there was a design change and how they would have held up. It had 13k when we sold it, so we will never know.


Sean

 

Sean,

Please note that I wasn't attacking you in my post. I was making an observation regarding what I was seeing in the pictures and hopefully offering a path to reduce further wear in that area.

I understand that your expectations were higher for the leather but finding a possible cause and taking steps to reduce the impact is what I think the goal should be at this point. I also think that is one of the goals of this forum, for owners and others, to get together and provide advice, observation and knowledge.