Yeah my “friendly” Ford dealer dropped me like a hot potato when I started dickering about paying less than MSRP. Made the RL choice much better.

 

My take on the Maverick is that it is good value in its lower trim levels. But when I looked (I think base engine choices changed?) the hybrid was only available in FWD, and I need AWD. Once to step up to higher trims with AWD, you lose the hybrid and the value drops with prices getting much closer to the RL for what is a tiny little truck. Then there's the reported Additional Dealer Profit, which supposedly can be circumvented by finding an honest dealer (!) and ordering and waiting. But watch the options carefully, since things you might think are standard may not be

What I was saying is that the statement
"within a decade if not sooner Imagine a RL that gets 50 mpg and does its own charging with no cables necessary That’s the dream and like a moon trip is attainable"
is not attainable, because of physics.

I am saying AI will not "make physics bend."

If my truck receiving that much energy without cables, then I don't want to be anywhere near it!

 

It’s no
Problem

My current hybrids receive that much energy from the ice and to my knowledge, nobody’s been electrocuted, leaning up against one yet

 

For 2025, Ford is offering the Mav with AWD as an option with the 2.5L Hybrid. In 2022/3 this hybrid setup was the standard and the 2.0L Ecoboost turbo was an option. That changed in the 2024 model year where the Hybrid became the upgrade and the Ecoboost was the Standard. I agree with other posts that higher trim levels (Lariat, Lobo) of the Maverick are essentially the same or nearly the same sticker at an RTL+ … and while they are fun tossabouts, they don’t have the Honda heft and trim quality … not to mention the functionality of the bed-trunk and the fold up rear seat. All this said, I am going to try to keep my Mav for a few years and NOT be tempted by the black on black RTL+ HPD that’s on a dealer lot near me … it’s calling out to me everyday when I drive by … 🤨

 

QUOTE]
Interesting. I shopped for a Maverick first as well. I ended up getting a Ridgeline Black Edition instead. I just couldn’t her over how a sweated like a pig sitting on their fake leather seats. No such problem with the Ridgeline. And I got to say, we absolutely love the Ridgeline.

 

As for me, a hybrid. Any thoughts if that will happen in G-3?

 

Based on the 2025 Pilot and 2026 Passport (I believe the updated model is coming out in early 2025) having the newest iteration of v6 and Honda 10-speed transmission, that will probably come to any updated Ridgeline. Though maybe there will be a mid-cycle refresh in a few years that offers a hybrid drivetrain.

One of many videos released this week about the upcoming Passport:

 

My experience with the Maverick:
My oldest son ordered one sight unseen because he had never owned a new vehicle. He haggled and got what I considered a smoking deal on it (remember, at the time none were on the lots and dealers were gouging prices left and right). He put the down payment on it and waited. And waited. And waited 13 months more. Still no truck. Remember the chip shortage? It finally arrived. He got the Lariat hybrid in that orangish color and loved it. For a while. Cue the recalls. They just didn't have the parts to fix all the recalls so it was deferred. I drove it once on a long trip for him from Atlanta to Orlando and really enjoyed the fuel economy, and it really was comfortable. But he and his wife had to attend a funeral in Panama City, and upon return they were about 20 miles from home when both front axles broke their CV joints! The dealership told him just to drive slowly home and they'd send a wrecker to pick it up in a few days. Instead, he parked it right in front of the main service entrance and told them to bring his loaner car to him the next morning. They actually did. Once they got it repaired (3 weeks and 5 days later) he went to get in it and it was dead. Stone dead. The dealership came and towed it away. This in a new vehicle with just over 22K miles.

He now has a CR-V.

 

I know sometime I'll do the parallel parking. Used to do it many years back with a long bed C-10, no power brakes or steering and a manual clutch. Never had a problem with any cars either.

 

My only comment would be that the Mavericks are bland uninspiring design low buck pick up trucks. Fine if on a tight budget, although I understand if equipped like the Ridgeline it gets fairly close in cost. Their blah lines just aren't attractive to me. So I guess I'm not a fan.

 

I think it would be easier to adjust to a Ridgeline after driving a Maverick than it would be to adjust to a Ridgeline after driving a body on frame truck. The Ridgeline drives and handles great but it does not have the same feel as a traditional truck and that can be an adjustment. I know that after driving a Nissan Frontier for several years I felt like I might break the Ridgeline at first but its tougher than you first think.

 

I drove a Ram for 21 years, and transitioning to the Ridgeline was an adjustment for sure. Neither one has a good turning radius, but the Ridgeline is a much more hospitable place to spend a few hours traveling. I didn't think the Ram rode that harshly, but in comparison the Ridgeline is buttery soft. I've towed a 5000 pound trailer for 31K miles and I thought I would destroy the Ridgeline, but actually it feels more surefooted than the Ram did. I do have angst when it comes to the 6 speed in the Honda though, but I try to keep the fluids topped and changed often.

 

Hydrogen will also leak away at the slightest provocation. Maybe Elon will mine it from the sun for us. 😅

 

Looks like Texas has found a massive quantity of hydrogen under ground. Go figure.

 

As others have said, the sweet spot for the Mav is the base edition hybrid. Great for stages of life where funds are needed for investment elsewhere, like funding education or paying down a house or retirement investing, or kids . Ford deserves credit for introducing a hybrid pickup and for offering the hybrid power train as the standard, at first anyway. Can't blame them too much for trying to increase the price by by 50% on the higher trim models for the addition of a few electronics add-ons and padding. Kind of shameful how the dealers gouged on the prices, but I was never under the impression dealers were capable of feeling shame, so no surprise there.

I'd go so far as to say that if I had chosen a high-trim Maverick over a Ridgeline, that I'd like to keep that information away from all the marketing databases. I'd be afraid it would mark me as a sucker.

 

And that is different how from the RL trims?🤷‍♂️ Oh yeah, I remember; at least the electronic add-ons do work in the Maverick, while not so much in the RL...😏

The price difference between the base/high trim is 16K for RL and 11K for the Mav. While you can call people who purchased high-trim RL/Mav whatever you'd want, keep one thing in mind. The high-trim vehicles get higher price at the time of the trade-in/sale, there is that....

 

I chose the trailsport primarily because of the slightly more trucklike feeling of the ride. I traded in a 2016 Tacoma for it, so i definately noticed the difference. Even the trailsport rides so much better. I was torn on the BE because of the ventilated front seats and it was only 400 more. But I liked the wheels and the grille and the ride just a tad better on the TS. The BE was just too much like driving a car for me. Probably coming from a Tacoma.

 

I chose the RL over the Maverick because the Maverick felt too much like an econobox and I wanted to be able to get sheet goods with minimal hassle. I traded a Lincoln SUV and sold my trailer. The seats were better in the Lincoln but everything else on the RL is good to go. I just could not go from a Lincoln to a Maverick.

 

My impression of the Maverick was looked cheap, felt cheap and if anything like my previous F150 would rattle and creak in short time. Like others have said the Ridgeline is a different beast in a different class all together.

 

I get to drive a brand new F-150 Lightning for work a few days a week. The more advanced Ford tech has its glitches too. Things like Carplay losing sound, occasional start up warnings about all the tech draining the battery, and the phantom rider in the middle rear seat. Seat belt warning kept going off and finally we had to buckle in the phantom rider to get it to quit blaring.

 

The last time I looked, there was no good way to measure the quantity of hydrogen in the vehicles high pressure cylinders. You can't really weight them because they need to be firmly strapped onto the structure for safety. For physical properties, the stuff is basically hardly even there. I think it was an article from NIST that talked about it being an unsolved technical problem. Here's an article that talks about some of the issues. On the plus side though, fast refueling. Yay!

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319919312194

Nothing is ever easy. It seems all the easy stuff was solved by the cave men, like flaking stone and harnessing fire. We've got to squeeze hydrogen atoms into helium and measure the level of hydrogen in car tanks, and figure out what to do with all the workers when the factories are staffed with humanoid robots. We need to be smart and work hard methinks.

 

I looked at the Maverick but it was simply too small for my needs. Two adults, a teenager some of the time as passenger and regularly a medium sized dog. No way the Maverick was going to work. I am also not a fan of being Ford's beta tester. Their quality is so poor it explains the 1.5 million to 3 million recalls annually. No thanks. I went with a 2025 RTL and very happy I did.

 

It's too small for me too, and has other drawbacks, but some versions get the same average reliability as the Ridgeline and some get an above average reliability rating. Reliability wouldn't be my reason for avoiding one.

 

Just drove the new 24 Tacoma TRD off-road with hybrid ……this is the big dog engine and got to say, I liked the power. The ride was more abusive than my Black Edition…..they were asking $55k and it was missing the large monitor, leather seats, no moonroof, no flat floor in the back seat, no flip up rear seat, trunk in the bed or dual action tailgate….nice truck but, going to wait for the next updated Ridgeline before making a decision.

 

I think this is pretty much the same drivetrain as the new Land Cruiser? I was unimpressed when I drove that (only $80K!). And to me, a mild hybrid (as in no plug-in) is the worst of both worlds - two completely different (ICE & EV) technologies married together so that a fault in one will hobble the other. CR reports hybrids have lower reliability (but Toyota is still tops and has lots of hybrid experience)

I wouldn't hold out much hope for a new Ridgeline anytime soon. Honda has other bigger issues. Recalling 1.4 million V6s is a nightmare. I mean, they can't even fix a fuel pump...

In a year or two we will have some data on the hybrid Taco and some will be coming off leases, so that could be a possibility

 

Isn't the maverick very small?

 

Not Very. Sits higher than the Ridgeline and LOOKS bigger... Not VERY

 

The Mavrick looks tiny to me.

 

The Maverick is about the same size as the first-gen Dakota, the original mid-size truck.

I wonder if the price if the Maverick will double in about eight weeks?

 

The Maverick is a Compact truck, not mid-size.

 

The RL is certainly larger; dimensions for both in the format of Ridgeline first and Maverick second:

Length: 210.2/199.7
Height: 70.8/68.7
Overall width without mirrors: 78.6/77.9
Wheelbase: 125.2/121.1
Ground clearance: 7.6/8.6
Curb Weight (lbs.): 4,475/3,731

Anecdotally, once I stumbled slightly next to my former Maverick and leaned on the rear fender. The body panel made a popping sound as the panel slightly bent in and popped back out. I doubt the the RL fender would do the same. Just raise the hood on both, you can raise the hood on the Maverick with one hand, but for the RL you'll need both hand. This is funny meme about the Maverick, but not without merritt:

https://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/posts/3372167/

The Maverick is what, three years old model? Yes, the reliability isn't bad, but remains to be seen for longer time period.

 

I’m super surprised that the widths are within an inch of each other. I remember during the test drive in the Maverick the saleswoman and I seemed to be shoulder to shoulder, while in the Ridgeline my wife seems ‘way over there’.

I looked around for a side by side pic. Unfortunately the caffeine assisted Google fu has not yet kicked in yet this morning. I found this one from a youtube vid, but it is not great.

I found a spec at cars.com that showed the Maverick exterior width as 72.6 inches, or 6 inches narrower than the Ridgeline.

 

Guess I'm a throwback, when I see $80K+ for a car I throw up in my mouth a little bit.

When the redo of the Jeep Wagoneer was announced a short time ago "starting at $99K" in TV ads, my butt took up a silver dollar sized piece of my recliner's leather. Good grief..

When I see complaints on here like, ".....I expect 'so-and-so' in a $45,000 truck" - I don't think the owner knows what a bargain an RL is...

 

"Shoulder-to-shoulder" - exactly how wife and I felt in the 2023 Tacoma....and then we test drove a Ridgeline, night and day difference.

 

The Ridgeline feels wider than the specs suggest. Does it have thin doors or something?

Edit: The Ridgeline is only 1.3 inches narrower than an F150. No mystery for why it seems roomy. No need to invoke time lord technology.

Specs from here:

https://www.newcars.com/reviews/ford-maverick-vs-honda-ridgeline-truck.html

and here

Ford F-150 Size: Weight, Height, Length, Width, and More - Four Wheel Trends

Nothing says America more than the Ford F-150. It has been named the best-selling vehicle in the US since 1981. That is 40 years of continuous innovation,

fourwheeltrends.com

 

I had a Maverick Lariat AWD on order this time last year and was waiting for the ship date. There were all kinds of shenanigans going on with trucks coming out of Mexico at that time. Some shipped out quickly, while others were delayed. Mine got caught in the delayed group due to an “factory stop-ship recall” and that gave me time to really think if I wanted the cheapest truck in America. The 2024 Ridgeline had just been released and the refresh caught my eye. The Mav’s shipping delay just kept getting extended week after week, and by the end of December I had decided I’d walk on the Mav order and buy a RL Trailsport instead.

Yes the RL cost me more, but I am thrilled with the decision. Drives/rides like a dream and checks all of my boxes. Like others, I’m frustrated with some of the tech limitations. But I drove plenty of cars that had none of that, so some tech is better than no tech.

I don’t doubt that the Mav is a good truck. Their owners rave about them, just as RL owners do. But, I have zero regrets about the RL.

 

Yes the RL cost me more, but I am thrilled with the decision. Drives/rides like a dream and checks all of my boxes. Like others, I’m frustrated with some to the tech limitations. But I drove plenty of cars that had none of that, so some tech is better than no tech.

I don’t doubt that the Mav is a good truck. Their owners rave about them, just as RL owners do. But, I have zero regrets about the RL.

The RL would even be better, if the limited tech it has would consistently work, or just work...

I don't regret trading in my Maverick for the RL. In my view, the two of them are not in the same class. That's not to say that the Maverick isn't a good truck, it is, but I like the RL better.