Four Years and 52,000 Miles in a Ford Maverick Hybrid

This is my 2022 Ford Maverick XLT. I've had it just about four years, put over 52,000 miles on it, and it has been an absolute workhorse. I'm handing it over to Carvana later this week, so before it goes, I wanted to walk through what I loved, what I didn't, and what I wish Ford would change on the newer ones. Short version: I really don't have many complaints, and I'm going to miss this truck.

Forty Miles to the Gallon. In a Truck.

Mine is the front-wheel-drive hybrid. In 2022, the first model year, you had two choices: the all-wheel-drive EcoBoost or the hybrid powertrain with front-wheel drive only. There was no Tremor, no Lobo, none of the packages that exist now. I took the hybrid, and I'd take it again.

Around town and out in the country where I live, it averages right around 40 mpg. On long road trips it drops to about 35 — a little worse on the highway is exactly what you'd expect from a hybrid, since it can't lean on the electric motor at 75 mph. With the 14-gallon tank, a fill-up gets me anywhere from 375 to 450 miles depending on the driving. About 80% of my miles are in Eco mode, when I remember to select it — more on that in a minute.

Reliability has been about as boring as you could hope for. I've replaced the tires once, and only because I caught a sidewall puncture on the rear driver's side when the set was close to worn anyway. I have not done brakes. There was exactly one weird episode: a cool fall morning, I parked in the garage, came back the next day and it was completely dead — wouldn't start, wouldn't jump. Then it randomly came back to life throwing every warning light it had. Ford service cleared them, they never returned, and I'm going with "one-off." As a flagship-year vehicle it has also had a couple of recalls, and Ford's mobile service handled those in the parking lot at my work without me noticing a difference.

Velocity Blue, Ceramic, and Five Percent Tint

The color is Velocity Blue straight from Ford, and about two weeks after I got the truck I had the whole thing ceramic coated. I still take pictures of it. It's one of the perfect blues for a car, the coating gives it a shine that sheds water, and against the black trim, black wheels, and the black MAVERICK lettering I added from Amazon, the blue-on-black theme just works. This color isn't for everybody, but I'm a fan.

I also went 5% ceramic tint all the way around, windshield excluded. Partly that's privacy — I keep a lot of camera gear in the back seat, and I didn't want anyone walking past to see what's in there. But the heat rejection from a ceramic tint is the part I'd recommend to anyone, in any vehicle. Two little visual notes while we're on the outside: the license plate is intentionally off-center on every Maverick, which makes them easy to spot from behind, because from the front they can pass for a Ford Escape. And the XL trim that year came with steelies that made it look like a cheap truck. This is a cheap truck. That doesn't make it a bad one.

The FlexBed Actually Does Truck Things

The Maverick is a unibody, so the bed and cab are one structure on the same bones as an Escape or a Bronco Sport. The bed is four and a half feet, six with the tailgate down, and I've caught plenty of flak for owning a "baby truck." It has hauled motorcycles. It has hauled 4×8 sheets of plywood. It has done truck things.

The bed itself is where Ford clearly thought hard. Locking D-ring rails run down both sides so you can put a tie-down anywhere you want it, plus fixed D-rings at the corners and bottle openers on the side that double as extra tie-down points. There's a 120V / 400W household outlet, a bed light that's surprisingly bright at night, and pre-wired 12V accessory ports on either side, so if you want to add lighting or anything else you don't have to tap into a tail light. The tailgate isn't damped — it just drops, which is fine once you know, but it has surprised a few people helping me load. Unstrap it and it locks in a mid position level with the wheel wells, which is exactly the right height to carry a 4×8 sheet flat so it doesn't warp. The optional spray-in liner has held up perfectly; I hose it out and it drains.

Ford also claims three cupholders in the bed. I would classify those as indentations. Thank you, wife.

For a photographer, the bed and the onboard power are the reason this thing has been a great work vehicle. Bed full of Pelican cases, back seat full of gear, video lights charging off a real household outlet on the drive to the shoot. I ran a bed cover for a while — you pick up a bit of mileage without the drag — but took it off for a bigger load and never put it back on. Towing is rated at 2,000 pounds with 1,500 of payload, which I've barely touched.

Inside: Five People, Illinois to Texas

It's a three-across bench in back. I'm six-two, and sitting behind my own driving position is tight — a couple of minutes, not a road trip. Behind my wife's seat it's manageable. That said, we have done Illinois to Texas with five people and a bed full of suitcases. I wouldn't recommend packing it that full, but it worked, and we got great mileage doing it. Rear passengers get real cupholders, a USB-C, a USB-A, and another 120V / 400W outlet, which I've used constantly for charging batteries between shoots.

The honest downside of a cheaper interior is that it shows wear. The driver's-side rear door panel is visibly scuffed from stacked Pelican cases sliding around on a hard turn. There's decent storage — a compartment behind the rear seats with the jack, and deep under-seat bins where I kept towels and a change of clothes.

Two Ford-wide things I'd miss: the door keypad, where two taps locks the truck as you walk away, and the FordPass app, which handles remote start, lock and unlock, fuel, and mileage from my phone or watch. Being able to warm the truck up from my desk on a January morning never got old.

Features I Didn't Think I'd Care About

The Luxury Package added heated seats and a heated steering wheel. I ordered the heated wheel without caring about it at all, and it became one of my favorite features in the truck. If you live in the Midwest or anywhere cold and you've never had one, put it on the list. Heated cloth seats are underrated too.

Co-Pilot360 lane centering nudges you back toward the middle of the lane when you drift and yells at you to keep your hands on the wheel. After two corrections without you intervening, it stops helping — so it's an assist, not self-driving, but on long highway drives it's a nice safety net, and it toggles on and off with one button on the stalk. The rotary shifter is another one I expected to hate and ended up liking: spin it all the way to Drive, one click back for Reverse, and if you shut the truck off in Drive it puts itself in Park. Brake hold is the same story — come to a stop, take your foot off, and it stays put until you touch the gas. Some people hate that. I liked it.

Drive modes are Normal, Tow/Haul, Slippery, Eco, and Sport. Sport gives you instant torque but almost never lets the hybrid system go electric. Eco is where I live. My one gripe is that it starts in Normal every single time, so it's four presses to get to Eco on every drive. This is a hybrid; it should remember, or just default to Eco.

What I'd Change

No keyless entry or push-button start. This is my single biggest frustration. The XLT in 2022 still uses a physical key in the ignition, and digging it out of my pocket every time when my wife's 2015 C-Max has push-button start is maddening. It was a Lariat-only feature that year; Ford has since added it to the mid-level trims, and if I were ordering again I'd have stepped up.

Standard cruise, not adaptive. Another Lariat-only item in 2022, and another reason to regret not going up a trim. For perspective, the 2022 XL didn't come with cruise control at all. Newer models have adaptive cruise even on the XL.

Single-zone climate. I knew that going in. Then I met my wife, we got married, and we now spend our drives adjusting the temperature back and forth. My next vehicle will have dual-zone. The newer Mavericks offer it.

The seatbelt chime. After one of the recall software updates, the truck gives you virtually no grace period. Pulling from my driveway to my garage takes about eight seconds and it's yelling at me halfway there. If you're using this as a job-site truck, be warned.

SYNC 3 and a cubby where the screen should be. This one is a supply-chain story. The truck was spec'd for SYNC 4 with onboard Wi-Fi. Because of the shortages, Ford dropped SYNC 3 into a dash designed for the bigger screen — which is why there's an odd little cubby above it — and instead of Wi-Fi, I got a $25 credit. As a photographer who edits on location, I would take built-in Wi-Fi over twenty-five dollars every time.

The Ordering Saga

I ordered this truck in October 2021, at the height of the supply-chain mess, with delivery expected around February 2022. In January that slipped to July. In July I got an email from Ford Corporate saying my truck could no longer be produced and I should contact my dealer to roll the order into 2023 pricing. The next day I went out and bought a used 2015 F-150.

Three months later, in September, the dealer called: my truck had arrived. So for a while I had two trucks — a used F-150 I hadn't chosen, and a custom-built, custom-color Maverick with every package I'd wanted. Obviously I kept the Maverick. Going from the F-150 into it felt like a downgrade at first: you sit lower, the bed is smaller. But for the work I do I'd still take the Maverick. My wife loves driving it, it fits in parking garages, and I'm never worried about a giant vehicle in a tiny space. It doesn't feel like a truck from the driver's seat; it feels like a mid-size SUV that happens to have a bed.

Should You Buy One?

Yes. If you want to get into a truck without a truck-sized payment or a truck-sized fuel bill, a Maverick is the answer, new or used. Forty miles per gallon in a pickup is close to unheard of, and you still get a bed that works, onboard power, and something your spouse will happily drive. They hold their value well, which stings a little as a buyer and helps a lot as a seller.

Two weeks after I took delivery I drove it from Illinois to Montana just to break it in, and it hasn't given me a single problem since. It was the right truck for the stage of life I was in. That stage is changing, and I'm moving on to something different — there's a video coming on the Carvana trade-in, and more on what comes next. But I'm sad to let this one go.