Australian ROAD TRIP.

[greendwarf]

I know a lot of forum readers have looked at my picture posts without any comments. I guess the bulk of readers are mainly interested in BIK savings or seeing another PHEV while out.

Don't be disheartened. In my opinion landscape photos are never as good as the real thing, merely reminders of the experience and unless you've been "down under" won't trigger great responses from most people.

Two of my greatest memories of my two visits to Aus are of the Great Ocean Road and Sydney Harbour Bridge on New Year's Eve. None of my photos or video convey the thrill that being there was.

As I posted before, your photos make me jealous by bringing back these very pleasant memoriesand get me wondering how I can afford a third trip - last one cost around £15,000 in total

 

[gwatpe]

Hi greendwarf,

there is a lot of mucking around to post pics on the forum. The compressing of photos and uploading to a webshare site and then selecting and embedding them in a logical way that is not just a bunch of pics takes considerable time. I probably went a bit over with the number of pics, but I thought it was appropriate given the number of km traveled and the wide variety of roads and conditions my PHEV endured.

Will be going to Melbourne and Sydney later this year, and the Great Ocean Road and Sydney Harbour Bridge will be somewhere on the route there or back.

My Aussie Road Trip had some uncertainty with the ability of the PHEV making it. Limitations with ground clearance, water depth, petrol range and instrumentation were found. We did not get to all the places we had planned. We were not stuck or stranded anywhere. The reserve petrol cans and spare tyre will be a part of any future road trips.

Petrol supplies may be the first problem in the future. Even now, many road stops are closed and others, you have to pay for fuel before filling up, and some only take cash. Local drives on EV may be not too far away.

 

[Hypermiler]

Hi.
Well, I for one didn't comment cos words can't really describe the sort of travel experience you've had - the pictures are fantastic. I've been to Australia once for a month in 2001 - travelled up the west coast (Margaret River, Perth, Freemantle, Pinnacles, Shell Beach, Turquoise Bay, Coral Bay, Exmouth, Monkey Mia etc etc), and I am very jealous of your adventures. It takes a bit of nerve to travel in those remote areas too. Almost running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere is not something I would like to repeat...
I feel you should get sponsorship for your travels from Mitsu as it is rather a good advert for them I reckon! Are you writing a travel blog somewhere we could look at?
Cheers
H

 

[gwatpe]

Sorry H, there is no travel blog, and Mitsubishi sales of the PHEV in AUS don't seem to be matching those in the EU. I was really pointing out that the PHEV is really more than a cheap to run, urban run around, or work commuter.

PHEV has now had the 30000km service and a comment on "red bull dust everywhere" was an apt description. Oddly enough the next service is due in 10000km or 19months. This is probably another bug in the computer.

 

[sawman82]

Awesome post. I only just got time to read it all. We will be doing something shorter in September (about a week) just to get a taste for things and then probably do close to what you did next year some time and take a few weeks off to do it.

Taking the tent sounds like a good option as well as some jerry cans and spare tyre. Really can't wait to test the PHEV out and get it out of its comfort zone in the city. I have also been getting 8L/100km and am glad to hear the confirmed on even long drives while loaded.

Just can't understand why Australians are not buying these!

 

[sawman82]

Sorry to hijack the thread however I thought I would also post my recent road trip from Brisbane - Townsville - Mt Isa - Longreach - Brisbane up for interest to reinforce fuel figures that people are getting. After returning home I haven't filled up and thus the Roma - Brisbane leg is not in the table. Total trip was around 4700km. As gwatpe has stated in the past, not having a memory option on the SAVE button is a major pain for long drives. By the time you have realised you forgot to press the save button it is generally to late as it is good to have the power for any hilly sections or being able to leave the aircon on when you stop for lunch.

PHEV performed beyond expectations and there is little I can complain about, especially with the figures achieved. It has developed the odd rattle in the dash area at certain speeds, however doesn't really bother me. I also came across a blue PHEV Aspire parked at a motel in Longreach QLD of all places! Exactly same as mine except it had roof racks. Looks like it was bought at Bartons Mitsubishi (Brisbane area I guess). Wonder if this person is on the forums.

Averages for the trip are:

• 
  12.20km/L
  8.2L/100km
  $1.39/L

Notes:

• 
  Includes 2 passengers, spare tyre, camping and travelling gear
  Temperature 30 degrees plus
  Highway driving at 100km/h & 110km/h
  No charging from power points
  Engine used to charge battery while driving at highway speeds to use battery later in towns
  SAVE used when battery was at a reasonable level
  Adaptive cruise control used for majority of journey & don't think I could have done it without it

 

[gwatpe]

Hi Sawman82.

Your PHEV had a slightly higher average mileage, possibly as you had to use the CHARGE mode more, to make up for times you had not pressed SAVE at the right time. The winding, hilly sections returned poorer fuel economy as expected. The PHEV is a real good solution, compared to a 2 car alternative of a city buzz box and SUV.

I have no immediate plans for the sticky save solution. I am hoping MMC will offer it in a software update. Missed the first update, but there is still hope.

Will be travelling to Melbourne and Sydney again in coming months.

 

[anko]

... or being able to leave the aircon on when you stop for lunch.

Ah! Finally, I understand why you guys need as ticket Save option :mrgreen:

On a serious note: what did you consider "a reasonable level"?

 

[gwatpe]

From my travels away from the corded recharge, there is no magic reasonable battery level. Having the battery slowly drop over a week or more of driving is acceptable. I went for many weeks without even using the CHARGE button in Western Australia. The PHEV from a battery life perspective may benefit if the capacity is maintained between 1/4 and 3/4 most of the time, but you still need to fully recharge every few weeks to allow the battery maintenance/balancing systems to function. My present PHEV battery health is still over 37Ah after 38000km and 9months. I suppose the mainly EV drivers will need to weigh up any petrol savings with battery replacement costs. It may be possible that a new battery chemistry will be available that gives much longer battery life, so at some point replacement may be a benefit to all PHEV's. We are still very early on in life expectancy and unless MMC have taken a short cut like NISSan did with the leaf, we should expect 10 or more years service life of the battery. I am presently seeing 0.1Ah capacity loss every couple of months, so will keep monitoring for the next year and plot against time and km to see how it is going. I have my iPad programmed, with all the OBD2 codes, and I should be able to just get a screen capture of the hex data with a date stamp, so plotting later on will be possible. The iPad lives in the car, so capturing the battery data will be relatively easy. EvBatMon will hopefully be available with battery health and much more at a button click away.

 

[anko]

I was kind a curious how sawman82 saw that . Still am. Nevertheless ....

The PHEV from a battery life perspective may benefit if the capacity is maintained between 1/4 and 3/4 most of the time

Emphasis on "may". But even if it does, it is very hard to get the SOC below 25%, so without use of Save and / or Charge, you will spend more time with SOC between 1/4 and 3/4 than with extensive use of Save and/ or Charge.

My present PHEV battery health is still over 37Ah after 38000km and 9months. I suppose the mainly EV drivers will need to weigh up any petrol savings with battery replacement costs

First of all, anybody who wanted to burn fuel in order to prevent wear and tear of the drive battery should have bought a petrol car. No wear or tear on the drive battery whatsoever.
Second, one car is a very very small testset to base conclusions on. Most if not all other readings we see are from the Northern hemisphere, i.e. a totally different climate. And maybe slightly different specs?
Third, whether you use Charge and / or Save on long stretches without external charging or not hardly impacts how much power goes out of / goes into your battery. That would only be if you could stop the engine from recharging the battery, while driving in serial or parallel hybride mode.

Personally, I take this in consideration (like gwatpe, I keep repeating myself, but for the sake of newcomers ... :mrgreen: ):

Charge rate drops when SOC rises above 50%. And some more when SOC rises even higher. Take this sample calculation (not unrealistic, IMHO):

Under good conditions, at 100 km/h, you need about 15 kW to maintain speed.
At 100 km/h, charge rate is approx. 10 kW when SOC is below 50%.
At 100 km/h, charge rate is approx. 8 kW when SOC is above 50%.

At lower SOC, in one hour of parallel driving you do 100 km on petrol, and gather enough battery power to drive 10 / 15 * 100 = 67 km EV.
At higher SOC, in one hour of parallel driving you do 100 km on petrol, and gather enough battery power to drive 8 / 15 * 100 = 53 km EV.

So, the same number of revolutions of the engine will take you 167 km when driving around with lower SOC and 153 km when driving around with higher SOC. And that number will drop further when you keep SOC even higher. Utilmately, if you were able to keep SOC at 100%, the charge current would be 0 and you would be driving a very heavy petrol car.

Of course, fuel consumption during hybrid drive will be higher at lower SOC than at higher SOC, but that is easily compensated by the increased "EV range gain". If not, they would have never invented a Prius.

 

[maby]

...

My present PHEV battery health is still over 37Ah after 38000km and 9months. I suppose the mainly EV drivers will need to weigh up any petrol savings with battery replacement costs

First of all, anybody who wanted to burn fuel in order to prevent wear and tear of the drive battery should have bought a petrol car. No wear or tear on the drive battery whatsoever.....

That may be true for owners whose usage permits close to 100% EV operation, but for those of us using it as a more general purpose car, we know that we are going to burn quite a lot of petrol, so it is quite valid to ask what strategy will maximise battery life expectancy. For me, the primary attraction of the car (apart from tax advantages) was the electric transmission which, hopefully, will reduce maintenance costs and improve life expectancy.

 

[gwatpe]

The PHEV from a battery life perspective may benefit if the capacity is maintained between 1/4 and 3/4 most of the time

Emphasis on "may". But even if it does, it is very hard to get the SOC below 25%, so without use of Save and / or Charge, you will spend more time with SOC between 1/4 and 3/4 than with extensive use of Save and/ or Charge.

We have to distinguish %SOC from 1/4 and 3/4 full. We have a battery gauge that displays from 0 to FULL. %SOC is an internal number that does not appear on any factory supplied display. It is really easy to get the battery capacity display to read 1bar. Just drive in NORMAL mode at 100kph for about 25 or so minutes. With SAVE enabled from power ON, on my PHEV, the battery capacity display, depending somewhat on how the PHEV is driven, [excluding a lot of really short trips], the capacity is maintained in the battery at the save point.

Third, whether you use Charge and / or Save on long stretches without external charging or not hardly impacts how much power goes out of / goes into your battery. That would only be if you could stop the engine from recharging the battery, while driving in serial or parallel hybride mode.

I have noticed that on a longer drive, with SAVE mode enabled, that the ICE does power OFF for short periods at highway speeds. Slightly more energy is produced than is needed to drive the PHEV in parallel mode, and a little is stored, in the process of maintaining the SAVEd setting. Typically the PHEV will return a number of 15-16%EV driving on a petrol only trip of 300-400km. With CHARGE mode, the only difference I found was the battery was fully recharged and the ICE operation cycled about the full charge battery level, rather than the level when SAVE was pressed.

Charge rate drops when SOC rises above 50%. And some more when SOC rises even higher. Take this sample calculation (not unrealistic, IMHO):

Under good conditions, at 100 km/h, you need about 15 kW to maintain speed.
At 100 km/h, charge rate is approx. 10 kW when SOC is below 50%.
At 100 km/h, charge rate is approx. 8 kW when SOC is above 50%.

At lower SOC, in one hour of parallel driving you do 100 km on petrol, and gather enough battery power to drive 10 / 15 * 100 = 67 km EV.
At higher SOC, in one hour of parallel driving you do 100 km on petrol, and gather enough battery power to drive 8 / 15 * 100 = 53 km EV.

So, the same number of revolutions of the engine will take you 167 km when driving around with lower SOC and 153 km when driving around with higher SOC. And that number will drop further when you keep SOC even higher. Utilmately, if you were able to keep SOC at 100%, the charge current would be 0 and you would be driving a very heavy petrol car.

Of course, fuel consumption during hybrid drive will be higher at lower SOC than at higher SOC, but that is easily compensated by the increased "EV range gain". If not, they would have never invented a Prius.

I did test the CHARGE mode with a passenger help recording the numbers on a highway speed recharge from an empty gauge battery on a few occasions and typically the PHEV took 150km to recharge the battery to 15-16bars. I found the total economy was almost the same, to use petrol and battery, cycling the battery fully and then using CHARGE to refill it, compared to just using SAVE. I suspect that comparing the battery health in Trex's PHEV to my PHEV may reveal if there is a difference with battery life.

BTW my PHEV will not allow the driver to keep ICE operation only when the battery is at 100% when driven in CHARGE mode at 100kph. There is still about 15%EV driving, with ICE operation cycling that still occurs at 100kph.

 

[anko]

The PHEV from a battery life perspective may benefit if the capacity is maintained between 1/4 and 3/4 most of the time

Emphasis on "may". But even if it does, it is very hard to get the SOC below 25%, so without use of Save and / or Charge, you will spend more time with SOC between 1/4 and 3/4 than with extensive use of Save and/ or Charge.

We have to distinguish %SOC from 1/4 and 3/4 full. We have a battery gauge that displays from 0 to FULL. %SOC is an internal number that does not appear on any factory supplied display. It is really easy to get the battery capacity display to read 1bar. Just drive in NORMAL mode at 100kph for about 25 or so minutes. With SAVE enabled from power ON, on my PHEV, the battery capacity display, depending somewhat on how the PHEV is driven, [excluding a lot of really short trips], the capacity is maintained in the battery at the save point.

Oh come on. We all know this stuff, and you know we do. When you talk about "battery life perspective" and "capacity" it is totally logical one would assume 1/4 and 3/4 refer to SOC and NOT 1 the number of bars on the gauge. After all, this is the "Technical discussions" section :lol:

Nevertheless, it seems you meant to say that battery life may be best prolonged if SOC is kept between 47.5 and 82.5%. Okay, let's not be picky and say 50 and 80%. Is there any thought behind these numbers (other than that they conveniently support your choice of driving style :mrgreen: )?

I have noticed that on a longer drive, with SAVE mode enabled, that the ICE does power OFF for short periods at highway speeds. Slightly more energy is produced than is needed to drive the PHEV in parallel mode, and a little is stored, in the process of maintaining the SAVEd setting. Typically the PHEV will return a number of 15-16%EV driving on a petrol only trip of 300-400km. With CHARGE mode, the only difference I found was the battery was fully recharged and the ICE operation cycled about the full charge battery level, rather than the level when SAVE was pressed.
...
I found the total economy was almost the same, to use petrol and battery, cycling the battery fully and then using CHARGE to refill it, compared to just using SAVE.

Again, we know this stuff. But personally I don't put much value to the difference between Save and Charge, as IMHO when Save is pressed soon enough, you are already frustrating the car in its attempt to achieve max efficiency. (Sorry, that was to blunt ). I think it would be more relevant to compare differences in fuel economy when driving around in Save mode with more than roughly 1/2 of the gauge versus when driving in Normal mode with 1 just bar. It is so easy to test for you. Hook up your copy of DashCmd or TorquePro and monitor instantaneous fuel consumption. Than compare the value you get when the battery is below 1/2 and when it is above 1/2. I expect that you will see that fuel consumption in l/100km is significantly higher with the lower SOC. If you do, think about what that means .... If you don't see it, I believe it must be related to difference in software settings, as with me it is to clear.

I did test the CHARGE mode with a passenger help recording the numbers on a highway speed recharge from an empty gauge battery on a few occasions and typically the PHEV took 150km to recharge the battery to 15-16bars.

Did that passenger also note that charge build up started rather quickly and then slowed down towards the end .... ? Again, if he didn't see it, I believe it must be related to difference in software settings.

BTW my PHEV will not allow the driver to keep ICE operation only when the battery is at 100% when driven in CHARGE mode at 100kph. There is still about 15%EV driving, with ICE operation cycling that still occurs at 100kph.

This weekend I have a 150 km motorway trip coming up. I will try to obtain a number for %EV when driving 100 km/h in Normal mode. My expectation is that it will be higher than 15%.

Note: I must confess, I messed up a little bit. I clearly remember that when I started tracking the effect of SOC on charge current, I consistently noticed a significant "step down at 50%". But, come to think of it, at that time I did not have access to real time SOC data. So, the 50% I remember must be related to the gauge and not actual SOC. So, the first step down in charge current is at roughly 1/2 the number of bars and not at 50% SOC. Doesn't change much to my line of reasoning, though.

 

[gwatpe]

Lithium batteries are stored at 50%SOC, and my laptop, a Samsung Utrabook, has a performance setting of all the battery available, and a long battery life expectancy setting of maximum 80%SOC. I believe that temperature will kill my PHEV battery, and every bit I can do to keep the battery cooler, will increase the life.

I was passed this link, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxP0Cu00sZs&feature=youtu.be, about lithium batteries life expectancy.

anko wrote:

This weekend I have a 150 km motorway trip coming up. I will try to obtain a number for %EV when driving 100 km/h in Normal mode. My expectation is that it will be higher than 15%.

The test will only be comparable if you start and finish with the same battery level. I would get around 40% or maybe more, if I started with a full battery that was used first, for a 150km test drive. I had 15%EV for approx 4000km of petrol only driving at around 100kph with no corded recharging available. Returned 8L/100km, and this was 2L/100km lower than my Nissan MAXIMA would have given on the same trip. I have an economical petrol car for the longer travels as well as a super economical car for the local mainly EV drives. I made a good move to a hybrid car, and have found a driving style that suits my current needs. I am not a purist, and as long as the majority of other cars out there are not hybrids, or EV only, I will not lose any sleep continuing to use some petrol on longer drives.

The jury will still be out for a few more years re how a driving style affects battery life. I cannot have 2 cars, so a PHEV can satisfy my local driving needs as well as longer travels, with only needing 1 garage spot.

 

[anko]

my laptop, a Samsung Utrabook, has a performance setting of all the battery available, and a long battery life expectancy setting of maximum 80%SOC.

80% SOC in a PHEV means < 72% of the bars lit. All the more reason not to overdo it with Save and Charge?

The test will only be comparable if you start and finish with the same battery level. I would get around 40% or maybe more, if I started with a full battery that was used first, for a 150km test drive.

Of course you would. But that is not how I would test it. I would do it this way:

- First deplete the battery on the first 30 km or so.
- Then reset the trip computer
- Then record %EV over the next 120 km

 

[gwatpe]

I would do it this way:

- First deplete the battery on the first 30 km or so.
- Then reset the trip computer
- Then record %EV over the next 120 km

This is an apples and oranges test.

 

[anko]

Care to explain why?

 

[Grigou]

Care to explain why?

Same question.
My answer is that gwatpe has read your message too quickly.

And I think that % EV @ 100 km/h is much more than 15 %, too ... (but I let you to measure it )

 

[FrogPower]

Hi greendwarf,

there is a lot of mucking around to post pics on the forum. The compressing of photos and uploading to a webshare site and then selecting and embedding them in a logical way that is not just a bunch of pics takes considerable time. I probably went a bit over with the number of pics, but I thought it was appropriate given the number of km traveled and the wide variety of roads and conditions my PHEV endured.

Will be going to Melbourne and Sydney later this year, and the Great Ocean Road and Sydney Harbour Bridge will be somewhere on the route there or back.

My Aussie Road Trip had some uncertainty with the ability of the PHEV making it. Limitations with ground clearance, water depth, petrol range and instrumentation were found. We did not get to all the places we had planned. We were not stuck or stranded anywhere. The reserve petrol cans and spare tyre will be a part of any future road trips.

Petrol supplies may be the first problem in the future. Even now, many road stops are closed and others, you have to pay for fuel before filling up, and some only take cash. Local drives on EV may be not too far away.

Hi gwatpe

Just in light of your comment here about the mucking around involved re posting pics on the forum, what do you, and others, think of the idea of creating an Outlander Phev group in say 'Flickr' (a dedicated photo sharing website) that anyone can add photos to? I've checked 'Flickr' and there doesn't seem to be a group in existence at the moment.

Cheers
FrogPower

 

[Neverfuel]

It is easy enough to post pics on the forum. It also keeps the storyline together.