Owners review: Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV 2017 — Part 1
First impressions, driving, charging.
In the middle of April I got a new Outlander PHEV (2017 model) and I thought I will share my experience.
First impressions
We took the dealer’s test car for a day in January so the real first impressions happened during the test drive — and we had really good impressions. It was a 2016 model but it’s basically the same car (will talk about the new features of the 2017 model later). It is comfortable, quiet, nice and relaxing to drive. I have never driven any electric, PHEV or hybrid cars so I can’t tell the differences between this and those but comparing to a pertol or diesel car it’s much better in terms of handling, especially at low speeds. The car is driven fully electric on low speeds, the petrol engine does not start (usually) which means no engine noise, just quiet and smooth rolling.
The interior has good quality overall, the seats are comfortable. It was the first time I’ve tried an SUV but I could easily adapt to the car’s dimensions and could drive it like my own (didn’t have this feeling with other cars e.g. a VW Tiguan, Passat).
Hybrid drive
There are tons of articles and videos about the drive system in the car but in a nutshell it has two electric motors driving the axles (one motor per axle) and there is a 2.0 l petrol engine that can drive the generator to charge the battery or can drive the front axle in higher speeds. There is no transmission unit and no drive shaft between the front and the rear axle. (More info here: http://www.mitsubishi-cars.co.uk/outlander/explore-phev.aspx#driving-phev)
This means the drive is smooth without transmission switches and hitches. Basically you can’t tell when the pertol engine gets into parallel hybrid mode (driving the front axle). It’s a very pleasant feeling and you can’t compare it to other pertol/diesel cars.
EV button
A new addition to the 2017 model is the EV button (EV priority mode to be more precise). I was expecting to use the car in full EV mode in the ciry wihtout the need of petrol and exhaust and this is where I was a bit disappointed.
- The car always starts in Normal mode. This means if it’s cold outside and you have left the heater on before turning the car off, the petrol engine might start when you power on the car. You can avoid it by turning heater off before turning the car off and press the EV button immediately after powering on. Why the heck they didn’t make it possible to set EV as default? — I don’t know.
- Even if the car is in EV mode, the ICE (internal combustion engine) can start on certain conditions:
- When you press the accelerator pedal too hard and the drive battery can’t produce enough power to the motors. According to Mitsubishi this can happen also when you use the cruise control and it requires more power, but I haven’t seen this happening so far.
- When you turn on the defroster/demist on the AC unit.
It’s spring here so I will write an update about the EV mode when it’s getting colder in winter.
Battery life / electric range
Mitsubishi claims this car has a 53 km electric range. Everyone knows that it’s almost impossible to get near to the factory EV distances but in spring — when no heater or aircon is needed — it’s possible to drive 45 kms or more in EV mode. I live in a small town and sometimes I don’t charge the car after I drive into the town centre and back, because the battery indicator is still on > 90% and (according to the manual) it’s not supposed to re-charge when it’s almost full. So it looks very sufficient. I will do a full city range-test soon.
Fuel consumption
The car gets hungry on highway speed. If I would drive it only on high speed (130–140 km/h) it would probably consume around 9–10 l/100 km (23.5–26.1 mpg), but in reality the worst average I’ve seen (it was after an Eger-Budapest-Eger trip ~70% highway, boot loaded with ~150 kgs of Ikea stuff) was 8.6 (27.3 mpg). On another occasion when going to my parents, drove ~160 km on country road with hills and valleys it did 6.2 l (37.9).
Charging at home
When I first had the idea of buying a hybrid car I tought they can be charged in the garage without any problem. But this is only true if your electric wires and grid is in a good shape and meets the standards. We rent the house we live in and it’s electric system is made by someone who should have never built anything. I’ve called our trusty electricians, they inspected the house and suggested to do some upgrades. First I had to upgrade the main fuse box from 16A to 32A (this has to be done by the provider), then we decided to pull a dedicated 3x2.5 mm2 wire from the main box to the garage. We also installed residual-current device and lightning-protection.
Color choice
We have chosen pearl white — which I admit now because although it’s beautiful, it can get dirty quickly and easily. Especially bugs “paint” it’s front bumper and hood with red, brown and yellow patches (it’s spring here).
The smallest amount of mud and dust is immediately visible too, so next time I will choose a brown or gray colour (I heard brown is getting scratchy easily though).
Next week
This is the first in a series of post I plan to write weekly. Next up I will talk about driving and park assistant features. Follow my articles to keep posted. Please let me know in comments what you want to hear in the next articles.
