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1. Seat is killing my back. I don't know why seat/chair designers think that you need extra support in the shoulder blades and not in the middle of the back. I'm going to have to get a pad or something. Wish I had the lumbar controls my Explorer did. It's also too high --- I'm going to wear out the bottom of the steering wheel quickly rubbing by it when I get in.
2. Other little things I miss from my Explorer:
a. outside temp
b. storage cubby holes at the front of the center console under the dash
c. cargo area door lock
d. split/dual visors (but I want extendors on them because the sun is invariably in the spot they don't cover!)
e. ashtray (coin holder) --- the little tiny pocket on the left end of the dash doesn't even begin to cover the change I usually have around.
3. On the other hand, I always preferred a floor shift over the column shift the Explorer had, and I'm happy to have it back in the Escape.
4. Down with the bloody lawyers! It's really annoying to have to Accept the stupid warning telling you to pay attention to your driving every single time you start up the nav system. And then they've disabled several of the useful features like "finding nearest X" if the car is moving. That makes it impossible for the passenger to be the navigator, which is perfectly safe, reasonable and probably common.
5. DVD drives are cheap now, and given the cost of the nav system, why not put one in so we have 1 or 2 DVDs instead of 9 cds?
5. I haven't actually tried putting down the back seats yet, but from what the manual says, you have to pull the headrests out, rather than being able to fold them down, like you can in the Explorer, to put the seats down. Looks like you have to pull up the seat bottoms too. I suppose this is the price of a smaller vehicle, but...
7. As for the hybrid system itself, aside from the standard "but I *want* to plug it in!" rant, they could at least have a button to prioritize the electric over the gas --- let me run on pure electric as long as I can without having to be super touchy about the gas pedal.
8. I would like a way to download the onboard diagnostic info and trip info from the nav system into my computer for analysis. Maybe a USB dongle. If it's going to be watching what I do, I at least want to be able use the data for myself too.
9. The gas mileage is disappointing. They were saying it would be 35-40, so I was expecting about 30. It arrives, and I find it's 29-33, and I actually get about 26. I'm curious what the 4 and 6 pure ICE versions typically get...
Other than that, I like it! ;-)