Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV 2017 Owner’s review — Part 2
Assistant functions
This article might be special useful for people who planning to buy an Outlander PHEV but can’t bring it to a full 2-dat test drive. I will list all the tech features and how they work in real life scenarios.
Driving assistants
Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) — It works, but could be better.
As most of the things in this car, it’s for people who love to press buttons! To activate, you have to press two buttons: 1. enable ACC with the ACC button and 2. set the speed by tilting down the set switch. Then, you will probably press the distance button twice because it is set to the farest distance by default (and you can’t change that default). There are 3 selectable distances but the nearest distance is still feels so far.
It keeps the speed and the distance quite smooth. If a car suddenly get in front of you — e.g. by taking over — it won’t break hard to keep the distance and it doesn’t accelerate too hard when returning to the set speed.
But the most annoying thing is the beeping. If a car in front gets out of ACC range, it beeps. The purpose of it is to notice the driver of a sudden acceleration. This is because the ACC does not have a minimum speed when it’s on (you can’t turn it on below 50 km/h though). So it can slow down to 1–2 km/h, and only disable itself when the vehicle comes to a complete stop. This means if you follow a car while arriving to a roundabout and the car in front of you enters the roundabout, it will probably loose the car and will accelerate. So you have to be careful and I suggest to step on the break to disable ACC before approaching a roundabout.
So the existence of the beep sounds logical, but it’s annoying. Especially when a car in front is not traveling on a constant speed and it’s just at the position where ACC still can see it. It can cause a series of beeps because the car in front arrives and departs from the range and arrives again and departs again, so on. I think it would be better to de-activate ACC below a certain speed (e.g. 30 km/h) or make this beep speed-dependent (e.g. not beeping on highway speeds).
Oh, highway… when taking someone over on a higway, it beeps of course (because the car that you just taking over is moving out of the range). Result: constant “What was that?” from the passenger next to you.
Another issue is when I take over a slow car on the highway, it will start to accelerate only after loosing the car in front, when I’m in the other lane. This means I arrive into the inside lane in a low speed, and just slowly accelerating. And sometimes it breaks in the inside lane if there is a car in there. Lane changing should be done with accelerating, not with breaking. Other wehicles know when you want to change lane (operating the turn signal).
Speed limiter
The speed limiter can be operated the same way as the cruise control: just press the button and set the speed. The car won’t go over that speed even if you press the accelerator all the way down. It’s a bit weird to me and doesn’t look useful.
Forward Collision Mitigation (FCM)
In theory it senses cars, bike, humans. When there is something in front of the car, first it gives a visual and audible warning, then apply the breaks if you don’t. The sensor distance is configurable, there are three available distance (once you set it, get saved so you don’t have to set again). I use mine with the “Middle” mode. Sometimes it does false alerts, but not often. Furtunately it didn’t had to apply so far.
When it was set to “Far” and I was travelling on a curved country road at about 85km/h speed, a car with a small trailer attached to it turned from the road and it slowed down. It wasn’t on the road technically but the car thought that it was and without pre-warnings, applied the breaks. Didn’t go to a full stop because it then sensed that the obstacle is not really in front of it. I would say it’s a bit overcalibrated, but this was the only false-breaking I’ve experienced so far so overall I’m happy with the fact that the car can save me.
Lane Departure Warning (LDW) — thank God it can be turned off forever!
I declare it as the most useless feature in the car, I assume most people turn it off and keep it like that forever. All it does is annoying beeping when the car goes out of the lane without using the turn signal (above a certain speed, I think it’s 60km/h). So it’s only audible, it doesn’t assist with the steering like other cars do.
If you don’t know how to disable it, this video will change your life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65tQFqhKqk
I turned it on only once when I was driving on the highway at night and I was a bit tired and bored.
Break auto hold
There is a button next to the parking break switch, if you press it, the LED on the button goes on and it activates the auto hold. Then, if you go to a complete stop, it will hold the car until pressing the accelerator pedal. Really useful for city traffic when you have to stop at traffic lights often. Not so useful when parking so I used to turn it on when starting to park the car.
It is off by default and you can’t tell it’s state until going to a full stop (unless you look down to the button itself which might be dangerous in traffic). When it’s active, a green (why green?) “HOLD” icon appears on the dashboard. It goes off then you turn the car on and when the driver releases the seatbelt (in that case the parking break is applied automatically).
Blind spot monitor/warning
Nothing super-exciting here, does it’s job as in other cars: LED in the mirror gets yellow when a car comes to the blind spot, flashes and beeps if you operate the turn signal. As this car can’t steer itself, it does not try to avoid the collision.
Parking assistants
360 degrees camera system
It is a piece of art. It’s so easy to park the car even in tight spaces. The screen shows the rear or front camera and a fake drone view of the car. It’s a combination of the image from the 4 cameras and a drawing of the car and it looks like there was a real drone above the car, filming you while parking.
There is a button on the steering wheel which activates the front camera, while the back camera goes on automatically when switching to reverse. The front camera button can be used to switch modes as well: toggles between the fake drone view and the right camera’s image.
All in all, this system works great with the sensors.
Parking sensors
The annoying part: don’t know why it beeps for thing at the front of the car while reversing. Our garage is so tight we have to literally touch the wall with the front of the car (I’ve put a block of foam there). It’s all good when going in, but when going out and putting it to reverse, it beeps like hell for the front sensors. Except for this, the sensors works well, they sense any small obstacle. And in case you don’t need it, you can disable with pressing it’s button.
Rear cross traffic alert
Sometimes I find challenging to get out of a parking lot due to the length of the car but this alert system works perfectly. It senses moving objects from a pretty good distance — and when it does, it displays a yellow warning on the dashboard, beeps and flashes the blind spot LEDs in the mirrors. The beep is totally different from the parking sounds so you will instantly know what’s going on.
Verdict
The assistant functions are good enought to make the car safer but the lack of proper UX makes some of them annoying. If there would be one thing to choose what I miss, it’s definitely the power steering. I’ve tried a 2016 Mazda 6 last year and it’s lane assist really kept the car in the lane, making highway driving way less tiresome. In the event I tried to change lane while there was a car in the blind spot, it slightly moved the steering wheel to the opposite direction. The car literally helped me driving. Thankfully I’m not driving on highways so often and the low noise and smoothness of the PHEV beats any petrol car. Despite the lot of annoying or not well designed electronic features I love my PHEV, it is really a good car. But it’s good to know these little bits before buying, so you won’t have false expectations.
Thanks for reading this long article! Don’t hasitate to comment and tell me how you liked it. Other PHEV owners out there, I’m looking forward to hear your experiences!
Up next in this series: Mitsu needs (better) UX engineering.
