The first SUV is worth the cost

An electric moment: If you want to drive greener, the first hybrid SUV is worth the cost

All the hybrid attention has been going to the Toyota Prius lately, including requests by Toyota dealers of the factory for more cars to sell, to meet the demand of buyers.

But Ford has been working on hybrids for more than 30 years (with commercial trucks in mind) and has been designing and developing the new Escape Hybrid for about five.

Because it’s the first hybrid SUV, it’s going to attract a lot of interest. It will go on sale in the fall as a 2005 model and cost about $3,400 more than the current ‘05 Escape, with its V6 engine and all-wheel drive, putting the price at about $28,000.

Ford says the hybrid will get about 35 miles per gallon. It would be fairly easy to calculate how long it might take to pay for itself, except that it depends on future gas prices — a wild unknown. But at the current $2.10 per gallon, using as a comparison the V6 Escape’s combined EPA mileage of 21, and driving 15,000 miles per year, you would save about $600 per year in fuel costs, so it would take nearly six years for the investment to break even.

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