HUG TREES ON SUNDAY, SELL CARS ON MONDAY; The Escape Hybrid shows how green Ford's future is.(News)

Byline: MARK VAUGHN

** The guy at valet said that to get to the Ford event we should go down the stairs and to the right. So we went downstairs and to the right and wound up in a hallway packed with Hacky Sack-playing, hemp-wearing, yoga-practicing peaceniks drinking (we are not making this up) organic lactose-free milk shakes. Maybe this is some new image Ford is cultivating. It is trying hard to be seen as the "green'' car company, and the guys in the hemp outfits and beards saying, "Alright'' and "Cool'' might have just been actors. Hmmm...

Ford likes to beat into the ground (some say "tout'') its Earth-friendly corporate outlook. It boasts of the "living roof'' on the new River Rouge plant near its world headquarters in Dearborn, about how it makes more alternative-fuel vehicles than any carmaker since, like, Woodstock, even if most of the "flex fuel'' vehicles spend their entire lives running on gasoline. But when we heard the first speaker who stood before the Hacky Sackers say, "Everybody close your eyes, just close your eyes, and imagine an area of your life that you'd like to improve,'' and the second speaker says, "Let's all pull together to fight the power!'' we knew this was probably not the Hybrid Escape new product intro.

Ford's Hybrid Escape is not about fighting the power, it's about creating more of it-in a more efficient way. When we finally found the right presentation, it wasn't all that different from the first one we saw. Ford COO Jim Padilla (who bears a powerful resemblance to the Wizard of Oz) was speaking about "a better world.''

"We're serious about a better world,'' said Padilla, in case anyone thought he was just kidding about it and what he really wanted was a worse world.

The way to Padilla and Ford's better world is through hybrids. Hybrids are the next logical step on the way to... well, we don't really know what's next. Maybe hydrogen or electricity or coal or perpetual motion. But before we get there we have to make better use of the increasingly precious petroleum that is left. Doing that means less CO2 into the atmosphere, yes, but it also means a corporate break for Ford in CAFE, which is ever tougher to meet since all anyone buys nowadays are big, lumbering sport/utility vehicles.

Ford's Hybrid Escape carries 200 pounds of nickel-metal hydride batteries that produce a peak output of 400 volts and 70 kW or 94 hp. That works in concert with, and sometimes apart from, the 133-hp, 2.3-liter four-cylinder gas engine under the hood.