Bill Tuthill wrote in :

John Fereira wrote:

If I recall, the Escape Hybrid only gets about 36MPG.

According to Consumer Reports, 22 city 29 highway.

22/29MPG for a hybrid is pathetic. I just got back from NYC last night and
saw quite a few Escape hybrids used for taxis. I also saw tons of Toyota
Highlander hybrids.

The RAV4 (both
engines) gets the same on the highway, but only 15-17 in town.

For about $10 less than the MSRP for the Escape one could get a Jeep
Patriot which is supposed to get 29MPG.

Thanks for the heads up! Consumer Reports has not yet tested the
Patriot and I'm not inclined to believe EPA ratings, so who knows about
29 MPG. However one thing that excites me is availablilty of manual
transmission! For some reason (perhaps going downhill to put-in?)
boaters seem to prefer manual.

The manual transmission version also gets (according to Jeep) 3MPG better
than the automatic. CR has rated the Compass, which is supposed to be very
similar. I'm more interested in the Patriot because I would prefer
something with better off road capabilities. I wouldn't use them much but
there are a lot of seasonal roads in the area that I would feel more
comfortable on in a Patriot than the Compass.

I'm still bamboozled by "automatic" transmission on our Prius. It's
odd that you put the lever up/forward for reverse and down/backward for
drive. But you can't argue with 50 MPG.

We averaged 46MPG in our civic hybrid on our trip to NYC over the weekend
(about 530 total miles).