Ford has come up with an exellent oxymoron: a hybrid SUV, specifically a hybrid version of their Escape model. There’s a Ford SUV cartoon posted on suvsuck.org that’s interesting in the face of this announcement (mirrored locally):

It’s pretty much well-known that SUVs aren’t very good environmentally, so this might take a chunk out of it, but the likelyhood is that people who already own SUVs will simply buy the normal model (and the same is true of others who are looking for SUVs). This is more a “feather in the hat” of Ford, and it’s fairly unlikely given the current state of the SUV market that anyone will care about the hybrid version beyond the usual intrigue over what they percieve as an oddity on the roads.The better (and far more admirable) approach on Ford’s part would be to scrap the Escape entirely and only market the Escape Hybrid version. This might lose them some customers, but I’m wondering how many people would really notice such a switch and be compelled to buy one regardless of whether it was “good for the environment”. This assumes, of course, that people don’t care too much about the slight differences between the two versions.

Overall, my reaction is negative: there’s far too many downfalls to buying an SUV that this is only a minor tweak. It does nothing to improve the fact that, in a high-speed collision between a compact car and an SUV, the people in the SUV are far more likely to survive. It does nothing to improve Ford’s bad environmental image, and means nothing if they refuse to follow up with higher MPG ratings or hybrid versions of other vehicles across their expansive brand line. Really, what is this but an attempt to enter into an unestablished SUV market that probably doesn’t need establishing?