Saving Money
For these numbers to mean something, you have to compare them from multiple sources or find one that best matches how you plan to use the vehicle. After 10 years or 150,000 miles owning a hybrid may pay off, but there are few running around now with even eight years on them, and eight years/100,000 miles is the point at which most hybrid system warranties expire. So far they've proven reliable, but it's another variable to think about. Some experts suggest hybrids won't sell in conventional numbers until the price gets near $1000, on par with what some diesels cost.
And what about the hybrid battery packs themselves? Potential owners have heard stories ranging from five-digit replacement costs to complete failure if you park for two weeks. While the NiMH battery pack in most "full" hybrids is designed to run at 40 to 80 percent of charge to avoid "memory" issues, the site www.hybridcars.com and other sources familiar with hybrids note only that if a hybrid is stored it should be run for 30 minutes every three months; there's a good chance your conventional luxury 'ute would need the same because of the multitude of sensors and computers that want to be kept up to date. While owners' manuals for hybrids didn't contain precautions for extended parking or storage, they did include instructions for jump-starting the conventional 12-volt auxiliary battery-this won't "crank" anything but will enable the hybrid-drive system components to switch to the "ready" mode. A replacement battery pack may be expensive, yet the packs are made up of many modules and cells, each of which could be changed separately if they failed, and Honda and Toyota recycle the packs; Toyota offers $200 for any battery pack as incentive. Eventually, the battery packs in hybrids may be replaced with capacitors similar to those powering huge car-audio systems.
Ford Escape Hybrid
This full hybrid uses electric power for autostart and vehicle propulsion alone or combined with the gas engine. Here, the Duratec 2.3-liter runs an Atkinson cycle with compression bumped from 9.4:1 to 12.3:1 and is rated at 133 horsepower at 6000 rpm and 124 pound-feet at 4250. What that gives up to the standard 2.3-liter is delivered by the added electric power and 330-volt NiMH battery pack for total system output of 155 horsepower fed through a CVT. The result is a 42-percent increase in EPA composite ratings (over the standard I-4) that Ford labels 99.4 percent cleaner than an unregulated vehicle.
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