And I believe a standard
Escape pulls 3,500 lbs. Why would you pay more to get less, towing wise? Hybrids have their place on the city streets, but not the open roads, pulling
weight. (except for locomotives, which I guess you could call "hybrids," except they use their diesel-generated current directly, without
battery storage).
My Subaru Forester gets 18 mpg with trailer and 25+ mpg without. That will do for me until I can buy a similar small SUV with a turbodiesel and a manual transmission. For me, that's a necessity in a tow vehicle (though VW's DSG 'box shows promise- you get automated or manual operation- but maintain a direct, fluid-free, metal-to-metal power train that avoids the usual 10-15% penalty claimed by the typical slushbox.)
I appreciate your curiosity about hybrids, whether you're coming from an economical or ecological slant. Consider alternatives beyond the hybrids. I lay on the big workday miles, over 100 a day, in a VW TDI. It's so quiet and clean you won't notice it's a diesel, coming or going or behind the wheel. I had the gas engine in the same car, and this is superior in every way (except for quietness at idle, though it's not bad, and much quieter at speed). I've saved thousands of bucks over four years. I get 35 mpg +, up 10 mpg from the gasser, but diesel does cost more. The bigger payoff comes in residual value-- these cars are in high demand and depreciate very slowly. Typically, there's not an 8-year-old TDI on sale anywhere on the net below $6,000, and they have over 200,000 miles on them.
Planetary-wise, I'm happy to say I haven't bought any petroleum-based fuels for that car in six months or so. Running B100 processed soy biodiesel, I'm carbon-neutral and totally renewable. I think it's a greener choice to burn 30 gallons of bio, every 1,000 miles, than 20 gallons of gas in some hybrid.
What does that have to do with trailers? My Golf doesn't have a trailer hitch. It doesn't even have enough ground clearance to negiatiate forest campground roads. But most of us tahe two cars, or more. The gas I save with my TDI helps make up for the pleasure trips with the "Scamparu".