When I bought mine in May, I found the same results, nothing in the entire state, but 1. Called to see if they have it, "yup" so drive out to see it, and he starts looking for it, and looking, and finally goes inside only to tell me, sorry it sold 2 days ago! But fortunatly he didn't try to sell me a gas version, he had an 06 with like 20k miles on it, stickered at like $25k (about 2-3k less than the 08 BTW).

So I go back home, do more internet searching outside the state, and found a dealer near Dallas that had a dozen listed online, called and he said yes, I definatly have the one your looking at, staring at it right now. In fact we have all instock, and 20 more on order, our owner also owns a Toyota dealership, so he's having a "green" sale (no discount BTW, but also not over MSRP either). Oh and we do not trade out our Hybrids. You can pay to have it delivered, or drive here to buy it (250miles away).

So we drove down that Sat am, bought, and drove back home, and love it ever since!

 

I ordered mine from a dealer in Bethesda Maryland on 5-24-07 a 08 Escape today is 8-8-07 and the salesman as of yesterday still does not have a build date. I am #1 on a list of 5 that have been ordered. Another person I work with ordered a 08 Escape from another dealer in Virginia and was told at least 10 weeks or longer. If I didn't have a bad back & knees I would get a Camry or Prius Hybrid but I had a heck of a time getting in and out to them.

 

There has to BE SOMEONE that has an internal connection within Ford Coroporation that can get us some answers. Maybe the letter to the board of directors is the place to start!

 

Its probably not as easy as making more. They contracted so many numbers of eCVTs and ICEs for a planned run, now that gas is gone up and the advertizing seems to be creating interest THEY ARE HOT. What will happen next is the dealers will probably order more and they will increase production but this may happen 6 months from now.

 

At my local dealer here in Canada, they had one in stock, until I bought it last week.
They said there was a big shortage in the USA, and that there will likely be less available up here in Canada, as they will service their local market before us. They did not know when they would have any more coming in.

Duncan

 

Mostly, California. Ford is up against the tougher CAFE standards in the state of California, so a number of units over the past two months have been shipped there. Combine that with a spike in demand, and you've got a shortage. And building these vehicles is much more complex than you'd think. There's commodity considerations--the supply of materials and parts--they rely on. The hybrid has always been intended as a limited production vehicle, and FMC is cranking them out as fast as they can.

 

This sort of thing is ill-advised and only creates drama, not results. This is a supply/demand issue and eventually all the cars will show up. If a person has ordered, and if their dealer has done the order right, they WILL get the vehicle. It has YOUR NAME on it.

Unlike the Prius situation back in 2004, with Ford at least you get more information. With Toyota, they told you nothing. You could ask for a car and give preferences, but Toyota never built a certain car for a certain customer like Ford does. They build what they think is appropriate, or what they have parts for, then let dealers request cars from that pool of built units. Compared with other makers, Ford's system provides much more information.

Ford built a lot of FEH units at the start of production in late January. For a while, there were 2-5 in stock at every dealer in the Denver area where I live. My dealer had the same three units in stock for 3 weeks in February, and almost half the Escapes at any dealer in March were hybrids. Once word got out that the new Escape was around, they started selling well. Factor together a sudden demand increase, the summer factory break, and the now-limited supply of batteries and you get temporary delays.

This same thing happened back in early 2005 and lasted about 6 months. It stinks, but it will pass.

 

Drama can most definately create results. My big issue right now with FMC is the fact that they are disclosing NOTHING. I have been waiting for just a VIN number for 8 weeks this Friday the 8/9.

If Ford cant complete orders in a timely manner, then they need to provide notification to the dealer, who then can in turn notify the customer. Currently they are just providing canned statements to me and the dealer.

It sounds like Ford was just tinkering with this product and really never intended to produce vast quanities of them. I am going to have to rent a vehcile as my other vehicles lease will be up. I ordered my vehicle 10 weeks ahead of knowing that my lease was up, assuming that would be adequate time. The dealer agreed with this time frame.

If you allow people to make orders, then you need to plan the fill the orders in a timely manner.

If you have an extra 5,000 orders, that have paid in full, but have not produced a product, then its pretty easy to show the cash flow as a profit.

 

If you still have only a partial VIN, then something about the vehicle is likely held up and the vehicle can not be built. What, exactly, did you order?

 

I ordered a 2008 Mercury Mariner FWD. I ordered everything. Silver was the color.

The DORA was confirmed 6/28 and I have a copy of the order for the 6/28 date.