We now have a 2020 AWD Ford Escape Hybrid - RV-Dreams Community Forum

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

We now have a 2020 AWD Ford Escape Hybrid

LarryW21 · RV-Dreams Family Member

Sounds excellent. Please post again after towing for first time. All should be fine IMO. Great mileage.

arcaguy · RV-Dreams Family Member

Congratulations on the new ride, new, heck even just new to you, is always nice.

Barbaraok · RV-Dreams Family Member

Remember to coast up to red lights! You’ll find you will so get to doing about 1/2 time on the electric motor.

-- Edited by Barbaraok on Wednesday 15th of July 2020 03:52:41 PM

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

We are still getting used to driving it It does like to tell us how much power we recover every full stop and tells us the stats every time we turn off the vehicle. Adaptive cruise control is "interesting", since it wants to keep less following distance than we are used to and makes us nervous. If we go to the Astoria Sunday Farmer's Market we will probably try the automatic parallel parking system, since most parking is parallel. We are getting used to using a dial for the transmission, which is a new feature for Ford. They want it really obvious the vehicle is fly-by-wire, so it seems more like a video game to drive. We have now filled the tank ourselves and got about 44mpg, if it was full on delivery. Our Equinox averaged about 24mpg.

NorCal Dan · RV-Dreams Family Member

How do you toad an AWD vehicle?

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

Many AWD (all wheel drive) vehicles have been towable 4-down over the years, but the list changes each year. Previously we towed a 2002 AWD Honda CRV and a 2012 AWD Chevrolet Equinox. For the Escape we set a tow model in the instrument panel and have to run it every 6 hours of towing to keep the vehicle lubricated. Only the hybrid transmission on the Escape is towable. The plug-in hybrid version only comes in FWD and they want about $5K more for it, so it was a no go.

RonC · RV-Dreams Family Member

Congratulations on the new ride. It sounds pretty cool with all the technology it has. I had a vehicle with adaptive cruise control ... it made commuting in traffic much better.

Someday · RV-Dreams Family Member

Bill, we are really looking forward over time to hearing how you get on with towing this Escape. We have two x 2010 Escapes both of which we were told were towable even in our manuals, but alas we've had correspondence with a few folks that had their transmissions go very quickly after towing, and Ford then confirmed that it was a mistake and these should never have been detailed as towable at point of sale. One of ours had to have a new transmission when it was still barely under warranty = they refused to do it without a fight and we were right it had transmission issues and finally they swallowed the bill. That one has had issues on running somewhat ever since.

We (daughter & I) have so loved our Escapes for very many reasons, especially the old style ones and are saddened we can't tow, so we will be keen to hear how things go with yours and maybe look into replacing. Thanks Bill for all your sharing over the years.

SD.

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

Someday: We will see if they get it right for this Escape. The dealer also sells RVs and was told by Ford that they want to have vehicles that can be towed 4-down in their lineup, since they make motorhome chassis. Maybe that is BS, but we will learn.

BiggarView · RV-Dreams Family Member

You'll probably roughly breakeven on operating costs as it sounds like the Equinox was starting to run into maintenance issues. Our 2005 Equinox started running into the same issues and worse about 6 years ago but it was cheaper to keep fixing it until we finally caved and we got a Hyundai Elantra that has been trouble free so far and gets 36MPG combined compared to 18 on the Equinox. What you save on fuel and comparatively little maintenance now should offset your expenses(higher fuel and repair bills) on the Equinox against the loan payments and the higher insurance premiums... More or less.

But you can't beat that new car (SUV) smell. LOL Nice ride.

bjoyce · RV-Dreams Family Member

We are now set up for towing and the dealer finally got the license plates. The Escape tows well and setting it to towing mode using the car's computer will get to be second nature. Getting it out of tow mode is easy, just move from neutral to park. Since we recently learned that getting mail is slow, we will make the drive to the dealer next week to get the license plates. We went with the new Roadmaster Nighthawk towbar and Roadmaster Invisibrake using a wireless braking alert instead of the wired alert we had with the old vehicle. We are glad we went with the new easy to remove baseplate attachments, since the car sensors detect the attachments and think we are going to hit something.

While we were at Roadmaster in Vancouver WA they fixed two drive in customer's problems with their installs from dealers. I didn't find out the first person's problem, but it was fixed in 5 minutes. The second was the car wiring was never hooked up to the motorhome by Camping World, which took about 15 minutes for Roadmaster to fix. It is worth it to go to the factory and get it all handled right, even if you can save 8.4% sales tax by having the install done in Oregon, which is just across the Columbia River.