Who is going to jump to the Escape Hybrid?

[fbov]

What, no love for the Honda CR-V Hybrid, either? Must be a Ford man.

 

 

[homestead]

I agree the Rav4 plugin is ugly, at least on the front end.  What were they thinking?

But the spec's on the car look pretty good however.

 

[ptjones]

Just test drove a 2020 Escape Titanium Hybrid and only went 3.3 miles, but got 56 mpg. Hard to get use to the brakes being to touchy. The EV acceleration is very good and regen charges quickly.

Needed to do a test drive to get a $50 gift card from FORD that I registered to get at the Atlanta Car Show. 

 

Frank are you getting use to monitoring the gauges yet? It's going to take some time to get use to the shifter. What kind of MPG's are you getting?

 

Paul

[fbov]

The dash is a little busy; too many numbers. Analog displays work better, so I focus on EV Assist in real time. You can ignore the shifter half the time; it auto-parks. Same with the parking brake. This car does a lot of things for you. As to the mileage....

Frank

Edited March 8, 2020 by fbov

[homestead]

On 3/2/2020 at 10:22 PM, fbov said:

I'm assuming Toyota will use Ni-metal hydride battery technology in the plug-in, since that's what's in the hybrid RAV4. NMH batteries wear out. Li-ion, not so much.  

 

Checked on that Rav4 Prime plugin will use Li-ion batteries with 39mi ev range.  Also the batteries will be cooled by the car AC.

[ptjones]

12 hours ago, homestead said:

 

Checked on that Rav4 Prime plugin will use Li-ion batteries with 39mi ev range.  Also the batteries will be cooled by the car AC.

What if you don't use the A/C?

 

Paul

[homestead]

2 hours ago, ptjones said:

What if you don't use the A/C?

 

Paul

 

I think it cools the battery compartment if needed even if you are not running the ac on the dash.

[ptjones]

The FEH has coolant lines going around the HVB and the HVB is outside the vehicle. Something I just noticed about the FEH is the gas capacity of Hybrid 14.2 gal. and plugin 11.2, I'm a little disappointed in that.☹️  I guess I'm going to have to do a lot of charging to make up the difference.

 

Paul

[fbov]

3 hours ago, ptjones said:

... gas capacity of Hybrid 14.2 gal. and plugin 11.2, I'm a little disappointed in that ...

Three gal. is only 150 miles; you'll make it up in a week. 

Frank

 

[ptjones]

15 hours ago, fbov said:

Three gal. is only 150 miles; you'll make it up in a week. 

Frank

 

Not easy to make it up on all the long distance driving I do. I will have to get use to looking for places that have charging stations on my trips.  Around town driving I could go a month or two without filling up.?

Frank how's your mpg's?

 

Paul

[fbov]

7 hours ago, ptjones said:

Frank how's your mpg's?

Only bought gas once, my sig's the population.

[homestead]

37 minutes ago, fbov said:

Only bought gas once, my sig's the population.

 

Frank how close did the lie-o-meter match actual gallons/miles?

[fbov]

Yeah, the car thought I got 38.2 MPG. Trip odo doesn't tell you how much fuel you used, so I calculate the difference to be 0.311 gal. less in the car's "mind." Very Cmax-like. 

 

And remember, I spent an inordinate amount of time idling on the first tank. It took a while to set up menus, and it's cold in January. Avg. speed was only 27.9 MPH despite an estimate of 25% highway. And I'm assuming this was 87E15 fuel.  

 

The second tank is 91E0 fuel, and I'm trying to push the mode button twice to get into ECO mode. I'm at 933 miles now. and planning to take a trip this weekend, so I can report on a couple more tanks and some highway mileage. 

 

When I filled, the miles-to-empty (MTE) display was only 450 miles, despite filling at 500 miles with 50 reserve remaining. It was easy to add the odo (at 500 miles) to the MTE (450) and get an estimate of odo at the next fill (950 miles). I've still got 177 MTE, so the sum is now 1110 miles. The car thinks it's getting 43.1. I expect highway more in the high 30's with ECO-cruise set to 71-72 MPH. 

 

Have fun,

Frank

Edited March 11, 2020 by fbov

[fbov]

The reliability thread headed into mileage discussion, hit on road load horsepower, so...

I tried to replicate Plus 3's C-Max analysis:

 

To the extent that I've done this right, here's what the 2020 Escape Hybrid RLHP looks like. There are 4 tests reported, 2 vehicles each with 2 tests (HWFE and "Federal fuel 2-day exhaust (w/can load)"). Each vehicle has unique coefficients, A, B and C, used for both tests. The first chart is for a 3875 lb. vehicle, labeled FWD.

 

The second vehicle is listed at 4000 lb. and labeled AWD, since that's a 152 lb. option with clear impact on mileage. The tested weight difference is 125 lb., so perhaps FWD has the panoramic sunroof?

 

Let's see how that looks...

Edited March 14, 2020 by fbov
JPGs work better

[fbov]

Per the EPA, for speed v:

A is the rolling resistance coefficient (constant)

B is drivetrain losses (v)

C is the aerodynamic drag coefficient (v^2)

 

Comparing FWDs, the Escape RLHP curve is a tiny bit higher than C-Max. Significantly, the drag contribution is a full 10% greater for Escape at 30 MPH, consistent with its greater height and width. This is offset to a great extent by lower RR and drivetrain losses over most of the speed range. 

 

The odd result comes when looking at the AWD data, because drivetrain losses drop dramatically from ~10% contribution to just a few percent. That's more than offset by increased rolling resistance, such that the total RLHP is only a few percent higher for AWD than for FWD. Given that Ford's AWD system claims a "direct disconnect" capability, one wonders what they did here. 

 

And that all assumes I didn't screw this up....

 

HAve fun,

Frank

[plus 3 golfer]

11 hours ago, fbov said:

Per the EPA, for speed v:

A is the rolling resistance coefficient (constant)

B is drivetrain losses (v)

C is the aerodynamic drag coefficient (v^2)

 

Comparing FWDs, the Escape RLHP curve is a tiny bit higher than C-Max. Significantly, the drag contribution is a full 10% greater for Escape at 30 MPH, consistent with its greater height and width. This is offset to a great extent by lower RR and drivetrain losses over most of the speed range. 

 

The odd result comes when looking at the AWD data, because drivetrain losses drop dramatically from ~10% contribution to just a few percent. That's more than offset by increased rolling resistance, such that the total RLHP is only a few percent higher for AWD than for FWD. Given that Ford's AWD system claims a "direct disconnect" capability, one wonders what they did here. 

 

And that all assumes I didn't screw this up....

 

HAve fun,

Frank

Looks good.  
 

One has to remember that the coefficients are computed based on curve fitting coast down data to the three loss categories.  The speeds used for the EPA coast down tests are from around 71.5 down to 9.3 mph (see link / doc below).  So, test will likely require about a one mile outdoor track subject to slightly different conditions when testing to the standard protocol..  So, there will likely be slight anomalies testing the same vehicle in a different configuration like you point out.

 

Edited March 14, 2020 by Plus 3 Golfer

[fbov]

Well, my sig will show some Fuelly updates. I now have the lowest MPG (32.9) yet reported for an Escape hybrid. I had hoped to also have the highest (41), but some folks must live in warm climates. As of 4 tanks and 1,620 miles, I have:

- two with ~50% EV and <30 MPH speeds, 

- two with <9% EV and >60 MPH speeds. 

 

The question becomes how this compares with C-Max. Saturday, pi day, my son and I took a 650 miles road trip to buy pizza in my wife's home town. The C-Max was her father's car, and in 2014, we did some winter trips that might compare with Saturday's. It's a bad comparison for many reasons; I had started doing things to improve mileage, blocking the uppermost grill, adding vortex generators (neither to much effect) and raising tire pressures. Conversely, the C-Max had snow tires in January, it was 20F colder, and the trips were lower average speed, with lots of non-highway miles and much higher EV%

 

Escape averaged 33.60 MPG for a single 650 mile round trip that was 100% highway. 

C-Max averaged 33.66 MPG for two round trips totalling 1,660 miles, so ~360 rural miles with associated cold starts.  

 

Still kind of promising... only Escape mod is fuel; 91E0 going out, but I had to get 93E15 coming back.  Time for tire pressure, to 40 psi per the 41 psi load rating.

 

HAve fun,

Frank

[fbov]

On 3/14/2020 at 10:26 AM, Plus 3 Golfer said:

... there will likely be slight anomalies testing the same vehicle in a different configuration ...

In this case, we have two drivetrains, and the data says one has far more rolling resistance but vanishingly small drivetrain losses?

 

Wondering, then, if this is a real result or an artifact of the curve fitting process? 

 

Have fun,

Frank

[plus 3 golfer]

2 hours ago, fbov said:

In this case, we have two drivetrains, and the data says one has far more rolling resistance but vanishingly small drivetrain losses?

 

Wondering, then, if this is a real result or an artifact of the curve fitting process? 

 

Have fun,

Frank

I believe it is as the B coefficient is needed to fit the coast down data to the dynamometer. There are studies / tests on the development / refinement of the methodology used by the EPA for emissions / FE to convert the coast down data for setting the dynamometer coefficients.  In fact, for about 10% of the EPA 2013 vehicles tested, the B coefficient is negative implying negative drive train losses. See the bold/underline text below which is an excerpt from a recent study.

 

1.2 The physical principles of coast down testing
The coast-down test is performed to determine the forces needed to propel the vehicle forward at a certain velocity. This information is needed for the chassis dynamometer test of the emissions in the laboratory.

The simplest way to determine the resistance forces of the vehicle is to let it roll. Newton already noted that due to its weight the vehicle wants to stay in motion, the resistance slows it down. The balance between its weight, and the rate of slowing down gives the resistance:

Fresistance = M v/t

Where M is the weight, and v and t are the change in velocity and the time interval. The heavier the vehicle, the longer it takes to slow down. The higher the resistance Fresistance for the faster the vehicle slows down.

The are other methods to determine the resistance of the vehicle, however, quite often they are either interfering with the free and independent operation, or they are determined indirectly from separate measurements. The viable alternative mentioned in the WLTP text is the use of a torquemeter, to determine the amount of power exerted by the engine to retain a constant velocity.

The sources of vehicle resistance are important to determine the soundness of the coast-down test protocol. The total resistance F can be separated in two major parts: the rolling resistance, dominated by the rolling resistance of the tyres, but with other minor contributions like drive-train losses, and the air drag of the vehicle. The rolling resistance is dominant at low velocities and the air drag is dominant at higher velocities. The rolling resistance is more or less proportional with the weight of the vehicles, while the air drag is globally proportional with the frontal surface area and vehicle speed squared. However, the drag coefficient cD can vary substantially with the actual vehicle shape. The generic form of the resistance is therefore:

Fresistance = g * RRC * M + 1⁄2 v2 cD A

Where g= 9.81 [m/s2] the gravity, RRC the rolling resistance coefficient, M the vehicle weight [kg], the air density [kg/m3], and A the frontal area [m2].

This generic form of the resistance has no linear dependency to vehicle speed. In practice an extra term linear to speed is needed to explain (fit) the observed coast down results. This extra term can be positive or negative for different vehicles, indicating there’s no clear physical principle linked to. In EPA certification data of 2013 10% of the linear term (F1) in the equation below is negative.

Fresistance = F0 + F1 v + F2 v2

 
where F0, F1, and F2 are determined from testing. The association of F0 and F1 with rolling resistance and F2 with air drag is only generic.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Plus 3 Golfer

[joe]

I bought a 2020 Escape Titanium Hybrid at end of March.  I kept our 2013 C-Max.  I'm going to bet that the C-Max became the prototype for the Escape. 

I've driven over 300 miles, mostly local.  Averaging 45 mpg.  Filled up Escape ($1.69 a gallon - can you believe that).  It says I have a 630 miles to empty.

I really like the way it drives.  Seats are comfortable.  I like having a spare tire.  Like the keypad on the door.  Car came with privacy screen over the back storage area.  Like the various displays, including the  heads-up.  Sports mode is cool.  When accelerating quickly, it shifts gears (I think it is a simulated shift, not a real shift - but still cool.)  Haven't tried yet the lane keeping and drivering assist on the interstate.  Should come in handy on long drives.

[Billyk24]

A better option?  The PHEV Lincoln Corsair will have AWD (the Escape PHEV will not) via a third motor/generator that solely powers the rear wheels.    This is the setup I have in 2016 Toyota RAV4 hybrid that replaced my 2005 Escape AWD hybrid this past October.    This Toyota setup produces/creates much more regenerative charging than my 2017 Cmax Energi does and can push upper 30's (MPG) for gentle driving conditions.   The Lincoln Corsair will have the same engine size, same hybrid battery size and same transmission as the Ford Escape PHEV that is also due sometime this year.      The HP rating is suppose to be 266 but I do not know about the torque numbers.   Here is one link:  https://automotivemap.com/2020-lincoln-corsair-phev-debut-2641435102.html         https://www.thedrive.com/news/31102/2020-lincoln-corsair-grand-touring-plug-in-hybrid-debuts-at-2019-la-auto-show

 

Edited April 26, 2020 by Billyk24

[kyledamron1]

Boy that is... ugly... But also looks like a baby Rover?

[C-MaxA2]

OK - what are the MPG numbers?   I have this nagging suspicion they're really, really low.  Prove me wrong. 

[Billyk24]

At this time, there is no EPA ratings for the Lincoln Corsair PHEV.    

[ptjones]

FORD.COM has 2020FEH Plugin info, I looked and I couldn't find the block heater 41H option for $95. And there was a $645 Acquisition Fee too that wasn't on my Dealers Preview order. I'm sure we are at least 2 months yet.  They did have available incentives at $8,115. Then - $1400 for the X Plan I maybe looking around $31,000

Paul