Australians down under

[gwatpe]

There must be enough drivers here to make a collection

 

[emeraldgreen]

I would think so...maybe others will also

Grace

 

[thegurio]

Present and accounted for - only one of two in tassie so far.. Shame I coukdnt be first, but sadly the finance company dragged their heel too much...

 

[sawman82]

Hi all,

Nathan from Brisbane QLD.

After reading this forum over the past couple of weeks I contacted my local dealer last week for a test drive. Surprisingly, I was offered to take the car out on Saturday morning and return it on Monday. Wasn't hard to convince me as I wanted to see if my mountain bike would fit in the back!

After having it for the weekend my wife was happy enough for us to go ahead and fork out cash. We had a very tight budget but the dealer ended up coming to the party and did us a fairly decent price (well I think it was anyway) for a brand new Aspire model with all the accessories that we wanted.

Scheduled for pickup this Friday everything going well. Is there anything I should be aware of when picking up the new car? New cars are a first for me and I'm 32 this year!

The dealer said I am only the 2nd PHEV customer at his dealership. Can't say I have seen any around either, though the dealers seem to have a fair few demonstrators for sale. Unfortunately our government isn't doing Hybrid owners/buyers any favours. I pay extra for 100% green energy on my power bill, so I'm trying to do my bit.

Nice to meet you.

 

[emeraldgreen]

Welcome to the slowly expanding group. I must admit I haven't seen any other outlanders on the roads arouind Sydney but I am sure there must be some around. Not many of the dealerships in Sydney actually stock, sell and service the car. Hopefully, that will change with time.

Grace

 

[sawman82]

Righto, well a lot of dealers in Brisbane seem to stock them, which actually surprised me. Oh well, I certainly don't mind cruising around on electric, love the torque!

 

[sawman82]

Just to clarify a few things that I have seen going around on the net. I have read an electrician claiming that a Jcar 15A to 10A conversion unit with RCD and 10A circuit breaker is Dangerous and could burn down your house. As an electrical engineer I can say that this in not true. A 10A circuit breaker will trip at 10A for its rated long time thermal trip, which is well beyond the thermal damage curve of a 1.5mm2 cable.

- This is confirmed in the manual as 10A for Maximum rated current with an *1(when using a genuine charging cable with control box).
- It is also stated that 3.6kVA is the Maximum power consumption (which some have incorrectly confused as relating to the standard 240V charger that comes with the car), however some have failed to take note of *2(When using a home or public charging device, EVSE:Electric Vehicles Supply Equipment). IE a dedicated charging station that you have had installed or a public one.

Ratings on the control box supplied with the car are 10A max, thus is not going to pull more than its rating. I have taken some reading with a power meter and posed a picture below. It does draw very close to 10A, so i suggest any extension cable you use is in good condition and not enclosed as it does get warm. Any wiring in your house should also have the appropriate circuit breaker at the main switchboard to protect it against overload so I cannot foresee any major issues here.

 

[1Engine]

Collected mine 2 weeks ago.
I have connected mine to off peak power
All is running well, I am getting 44kms out of a charge in the Far North Qld heat

 

[sawman82]

Nice stuff 1Engine, yeah i think that is about what i get out of mine. Still haven't been bothered enough to do a real test as I don't do a hell of a lot of driving at the moment. Serves me well around Brisbane on a weekend though. Only used $10 of petrol so far! Though i'm not expecting as good economy once summer kicks in.

 

[Sopley13]

Hi, we picked up our PHEV on 20 July from a dealer in Perth and almost simultaneously installed 4.2kW of panels on our house roof in the very sunny WA. We are retired, so are at home most days and charge the PHEV up from about 9am onwards when the panels are producing over 2.5kW. We are getting about 40Km a day out of a charge and that's enough most days. In the past (nearly) 3 months we have only put 15 litres of petrol in the tank as we were told to do so by the car (!!) due to low ICE usage. Our long term cost of solar is 7 cents per kWh so on total solar our cost of motoring is about 2.1 cents per km. However, we do use a bit of mains supplied electricity on the cloudier days which has blown the cost out to 3.5 cents per km. Running on just petrol we got about 100km for 7 litres (14km per litre) which equates to 11 cents per km.

 

[1Engine]

Hi,
Just to let the community know how we are going.
In 1346kms the PHEV used 301 kW of electricity & 8 lts petrol.
Most of the travelling has been in 30+ temps so the AC has been working hard.
The PHEV is usually charged of a night on off peak power
Thanks

 

[NAPpy]

Picked our Aspire up yesterday in Perth.

We also have 6.5kW of solar so we try to charge it through the 15 amp charger during the day.

Most of our trips are <50km so we should not be using the ICE too often.

My understanding is that these machines are walking out the door like hot cakes so we should be seeing a few more on the road.

Cheers

NAPpy

 

[user 457]

In 4 months normal driving we have averaged 3.7l per 100km. A great result, spending bugger all on fuel compared to my old fuel hungry ford - saved $800 in fuel over 5,000km. Our commute fits neatly into battery and we charge off peak each night. Doing the calculations comparing it with a Mazda cx-5 diesel (one of the most fuel efficient suv's) the PHEV cost $270 less in fuel. Awesome car.

 

[sawman82]

Had for more than a few months now and for cruising around town within battery range, this car just cannot be any better (well apart from the MMCS but I'll let that one go...for now). Sure a Nissan leaf will have better mileage but not much space to carry anything. I haven't done a heck of long distance driving but when I do I am getting around 7L/100km, after the battery has depleted. This is using Adaptive Cruise Control and AirCond. during summer with 2 people in the car.

Until i read a post on these forums the other day I did not know you could turn Adaptive CC off and just use CC to increase fuel efficiency. However I really like Adaptive CC as I can relax a bit more when driving and not worry about slamming into the car in front of me as much.

I am disappointed that there is no fast charge socket on this car in Australia. Would it have cost them that much more to leave it in? Pretty much makes the few charging stations around here redundant as I'm not sitting in the cafe for 5 hours waiting for this thing to complete charging.

I am not sure that combining electric charge and fuel into one fuel efficiency is fair. When friend ask me "What's the fuel efficiency like?", I tell them, well when i drive around town under 35-50km it only costs me the electricity charging price (which is about half the cost of petrol). I may not use petrol for weeks. On the open road about 7L/100km in petrol. The 1.9L/100km that Mitsubishi states kind of needs to include the cost of electricity.

 

[Princess]

Hi all. We're 99.9% sure we're going to purchase. Did you get your local electrician to install the 15amp power point, or did you get one of the charge point stations?

Ps, I'm in Sydney.

 

[1Engine]

I had a 15 amp socket installed
We also had it connected to off peak power also, the power is available for 18 hrs a day.
It works well with us as the PHEV is out most days

Enjoy the sound of quiet motoring

PS I am in Port Douglas Qld

 

[sawman82]

You can run it off any regular power point no problem (using a 10A to 15A unit for about $90). Otherwise you can install at 15A power point which is probably the best long term solution if you are not moving soon. Most the car will ever pull is <10A.

We recently got a 2.5kW solar system installed so have set the timer to charge it during the day. Off peak power plans don't seem that good value to me when you factor in the higher daily charge. Depends on how much you drive I guess.

 

[zzcoopej]

Just thought I'd say hi.
I have a 2010 iMiEV and 2015 PHEV.
Couldn't resist the cheap prices for EV's in Oz at the moment, I guess due to the lower fuel price and the new Outlander coming out later this year.

 

[ufo]

Well, I even got my PHEV in June 2014 and have been on the forum since July 2014, I've just noticed this tread. I am in North West Sydney (Cherrybrook) but only saw one other PHEV on the road since I got mine.

 

[NAPpy]

I just made up a 15A female and 10A male lead to charge ours with no issue on the not used much circuit in the garage. I also made up a 5 pin 415v 32A to 240V 15A lead for those times when that is all you have to charge from.

Cheers

NAPpy