We'll probably only get one or two&quot

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"The demand is high, and it's growing," said Angela Coletti, Ford's spokeswoman for the vehicle line. She said the company expects to sell about 20,000 units a year and will consider increasing output if the market demands it. Coletti would not confirm reports that only 3,000 to 4,000 of the hybrid Escapes will be available for sale by the end of this year. But some local dealers say they don't expect any of the hybrid Escapes to arrive until January at the earliest - and any that come in then are most likely already spoken for. "We'll probably only get one or two" in early 2005, said Thomas Borah, a sales manager at Chapman Ford in Philadelphia. New York, California, and the Washington area will be getting the bulk of the earliest shipments, he said. At Echelon Ford in Stratford, car shoppers have been curious about the new Escape as well. Sales manager Chris Costello said the dealership expected to hear from Ford soon about how many hybrid Escapes will arrive, and how soon, but he couldn't offer specifics yet - not even how to get on a waiting list. "We have had a lot of people coming in and inquiring about them," Costello said. "We've just been taking people's names and information, and telling them we'd contact them." While Ford is the first American automaker to roll out a hybrid and has more models in the works, environmentalists say the company's efforts are too little, too late. They point to the poor fuel efficiency of some of Ford's biggest sellers, including the F-150 pickup (15 m.p.g. in the city, 19 on the highway) and the Explorer SUV (15 city, 21 highway). And the few thousand hybrid Escapes to be made available in the coming months will represent only a tiny fraction of Ford's output. "It gives tokenism a bad name," said Jason Mark, clean-car campaigner for Global Exchange, an activist group based in San Francisco. "They're moving way too slowly. "As an icon of American industry, we think Ford has a real responsibility to take a lead in breaking our addiction to oil." Ford spokeswoman Jennifer Biggs rattled off several green undertakings from the company, including devoting half its scientific research budget to environmental initiatives. But, she said, the company is ultimately limited by the law of supply and demand. "It's a matter of how quickly we can get the market to embrace the additional cost of these new technologies," Biggs said. The Escape will be the fourth hybrid vehicle to become widely available in the United States, following Honda's two-seater Insight and Civic Hybrid and Toyota's popular Prius. Also joining the hybrid list later this year will be the Lexus RX 400h, an SUV from Toyota's luxury line, and a hybrid Honda Accord. For the Escape, Ford