Well I don't plan to did any maitenance on the Maverick myself. i want that warranty.
There's still basic ICE maintenance that is so simple there's no reason not to do it yourself, and you don't generally need to be a mechanic to change your oil, oil filter, air filter, and spark plugs and the like and dealerships can be expensive with Walmart guys being a crapshoot on whether or not they will screw up your vehicle since they are often minimum wage with limited work experience and most importantly don't really care. Even if you do have someone else do it, knowing if its well thought-out design can help you know how expensive maintenance will be, so you don't end up in a scenario like with the BMW V12s where a leaking gasket can cost you $16K in labor since the whole engine and transmission has to come out and the engine half disassembled just to work on the damn thing!
The Escape hybrid I can say looks like a PITA to work on for oil/filter changes, just because they put a big aero-shield under the vehicle that requires removal of numerous screws to get to before you have access to the drain plug and oil filter. The easiest vehicle we have to work on so far is a Mercedes GLA where since I use a vacuum pump for the oil out of the dipstick and the oil filter is on top of instead of underneath the engine, you can change the oil in minutes without driving on ramps or jacking up the vehicle. But if you want to see a truly user-friendly experience engine bay when it comes to self-servicing look at the Subaru Crosstrek, it has an inverted oil filter on the bottom right corner:
The only problem is that because its a boxer engine unlike an inline four, simple spark plug changes are going to be a huge PITA, where even if you aren't doing it yourself you still have to pay someone more labor hours for something that should only take 10 mins otherwise.
We'll need something like this that is for the Escape to be done for the Maverick. I have to say some of the choices here make future maintenance far more labor intensive than it should be:
I also didn't realize that the 8-speed they are using is the dreaded craptastic GM 9T automatic developed from GM in their partnership as pointed out by the reviewer in the video (already leaking too on that brand new vehicle), modified by Ford to remove fourth gear since they found that the extra gear provided no extra economy. In doing so, per the following link its actually acting as a 7-speed in most conditions, and seems a bit "ghetto-rigged" to make it work more like their superior 10-speed:
The New Ford 8F35 8-speed Transmission
Too bad its not the actual 10-speed automatic that Ford developed in-house, which is a much better transmission.
Knowing that, its another reason that I'm attracted more to the hybrid over the ecoboost.
