Australians down under

[Wanginit]

Hi there,

This is my first post. Doing some home work before buying an Aspire. Found this demo in Qld for under 40k drive away. Is this as low as people have seen them? Its a bit far for me to travel.

http://www.carsales.com.au/demo/details/Mitsubishi-Outlander-2014/OAG-AD-9131231/?Cr=0

 

[sawman82]

Hey Winginit,

Welcome. I paid ~$52k for Aspire with all accessories for mine new a year ago, so somewhere around $40k awesome. First port of call would be your local dealer. Go see what they can do and tell them about deals you have seen elsewhere and I'm sure they will get in the ball park and save you the drive. My wife keeps mentioning that her car is getting older. I was thinking a Leaf however at these prices I could probably just get a second PHEV!

 

[TRT]

As sawman82 said in September the AUS PHEV charger is rated at 10A, and will not draw more than that.

Just to be clear, it is the PHEV supplied EVSE (cord and box) which limits the charge to 10A, not the onboard charger per se, which is rated at 15A (3.6kVA on page 12-7 in the specs).

eg When I plugged the PHEV into the free Chargepoint at the Macadamia Castle near Byron last month, I got 2.033kWh in 37m30secs = 3.253kW per hour = 13.5Amps @ 240V. So the PHEV charger is being derated to 10A by the EVSE (cord and box) supplied with each PHEV. If you wanted to at home you could charge a bit faster by using a different EVSE etc. Little point IMHO when it easily does a full charge overnight, unless you do multiple daytrips and need a slightly faster turnaround.

Yes it is the transformer on the charging cable, not the car electronics, that is limited to 10 amps. However, I understand that there is an intent to make a 13 amp charger available in Aus as well.

TRT

 

[sawman82]

With the present size of the battery pack it probably isn't worth bothering with a 13A charger for the PHEV. 5 hours vs 3 to 3.5 hours. Mitsubishi now has a 10A plug on the charger and I reckon this would be a good point for prospective buyers.

 

[nacameron]

Just noticed this post...

I have had my Aspire for a bit over a year now, lower north shore Sydney here!

I currently live in a rental, not garage or car port, would love to install a charge point though to make it easier to power up! Any recommendations?

 

[sawman82]

Hey, that is a hard one. Going to be hard to install a power point that isn't on your property. You would have to go through owners and body corporate as well. Depending on how long you want to stay there you could look into it, however I would just move the next time your lease runs out to somewhere that has a garage or car port with power point in it.

 

[zzcoopej]

Just noticed this post...

I have had my Aspire for a bit over a year now, lower north shore Sydney here!

I currently live in a rental, not garage or car port, would love to install a charge point though to make it easier to power up! Any recommendations?

Why not just put a powerpoint in as the PHEV EVSE only draws 10A? How far is it from the PHEV to the nearest powerpoint as you may be able to use a 15m caravan extension lead?
A friend of mine who owns an iMiEV has a business called Recharge NSW that sell charge points if you really want to go that way.

 

[rabbit]

Hello all!

Trying to work out if it the car for me. Basically I want an efficient wagon. Currently have a Skoda diesel.

Done up a spreadsheet to track our daily mileage that we doOn school run days, doing 40km. Doing some longer drives on the school holidays though.

Assuming 45km to a charge, it is working out that 40-50% of the km driven would be on electric for a total of about 25000km per year. Is 45km per charge a fair assumption?

 

[zzcoopej]

Is 45km per charge a fair assumption?

You should achieve that easily on a brand new battery without a/c or heating use. I get 47km around Gosford NSW with 2-3 occupants on a 1.5yr old battery.

After 11,000km fuel consumption for the entire distance is currently 3.6 l/100km so there must be many EV km as we've done 2 trips to QLD which would be 5000+km alone. Highway fuel economy on Save mode is about 6.7 to 7.3 depending on A/c etc.

 

[Threefurryfaces]

Hi from Melbourne

New to this forum and to the PHEV. Bought my Aspire two days ago from a dealer in Adelaide. Waiting for it to be delivered next week,

I have a few queries that I hope the kind folk on this forum can help with:
1. Should I charge the battery every day regardless of the state of discharge or should I wait for the battery to be near exhausted?
2. What mode should I drive in on expressways?

Thanks!

 

[zzcoopej]

New to this forum and to the PHEV. Bought my Aspire two days ago from a dealer in Adelaide.

Well done, they are going very cheap right now so I'm sure you will be a happy owner.

1. Should I charge the battery every day regardless of the state of discharge or should I wait for the battery to be near exhausted?

Good question, and I don't think there is a straight answer as it will depend a lot on your usage. Bear the following in mind -
(a) Apparently Lithium don't like to sit full or empty for a long period of time, however the PHEV limits the DOD somewhat,
(b) the battery will only get you 50km (without aircon or heater) so unless you do very small trips you'll need to charge quite regularly.
(c) Making use of off-peak rates via the Aspire timer means the habit of plugging in after each drive usually makes sense.
(d) Finally, if your life is sometimes unpredictable, do you want to miss out on EV driving by only having say 20km range etc?

2. What mode should I drive in on expressways?

Good question, and again no straight answer, however you should use fuel for the fastest part of the trip due to parallel mode driving being more efficient than serial. Usually that means hitting SAVE when you get on the expressway, assuming you will have an opportunity to use the remaining battery before you have the opportunity to charge again. There are threads and threads of discussions of SAVE vs CHARGE, I'll leave it to you to figure out if they apply in your situation.

Main thing is, enjoy your PHEV, its a great car and I havn't met an Aussie PHEV owner who doesn't like theirs.
There is a bit of PHEV info on the Aussie AEVA forums.

 

[Threefurryfaces]

Thanks. It'll be a steep learning curve I think!

 

[zzcoopej]

Thanks. It'll be a steep learning curve of think!

Actually, if you hop in and simply drive without using any buttons, the PHEV does an exceptionally good job of making its own decisions. The only thing you can help out with is to tell the PHEV about the road ahead (ie the rest of your trip).

 

[rabbit]

Has anyone installed a 15amp circuit for off peak charging? How much did it cost??

 

[HHL]

Has anyone installed a 15amp circuit for off peak charging? How much did it cost??

How long is a piece of string?

Seriously, it depends entirely on your particular situation, i.e. how far from the switchboard.
A 15A power point is the only one on a circuit, so it has to be wired back to the board. As for the off-peak, that depends on your supplier. Here in Sydney you can have off-peak rates on every power point in the house if you're on a Time of Use tariff, in my case from 10pm until 7am.
The 15A charging cable supplied actually only needs a 10 amp supply, so if you know what loading to expect on a particular circuit, a 15 to 10A adaptor is fine as long as you don't boil a kettle on the same circuit when charging.

 

[zzcoopej]

Has anyone installed a 15amp circuit for off peak charging? How much did it cost??

Its not for my PHEV, however for my iMiEV after charging it for a year the plug in timer I was using died. So just before Christmas 2015 I decided to hardwire into the off-peak meter (which is about 10% cheaper than TOU off-peak). The cost was $180 for the electrician mate including 2 breakers (one for the EV, and he replaced a double breaker as I had no other spots) + $139 for a 4metre menenkes to J1772 cord on ebay so total $319. The menenkes cable was long enough from the switchboard to the car so no further wiring required. It won't charge my PHEV as it doesn't have the J1772 control signals.

For the PHEV, if you know a sparky you might be lucky, however technically you will probably find that "charging equipment" has to be "hardwired" (ie no powerpoint) to be allowed onto dedicated off-peak meters, that's NSW Ausgrid rules anyway. I didn't want a powerpoint as its one more point of failure which is why I cut off the menenkes and wired it straight into the meterbox for my iMiEV solution.

 

[DUGSA63]

Bought a demo Aspire PHEV, last August. Very happy, amazing technology. Summoning the fortitude to put on a tow bar for the camper trailer.
I will explore this forum a bit before asking questions.
The EV revolution is here at last, what a privilege to be in at the beginning!

 

[AndyInOz]

DUGSA63

You don't give your location, but Peddars in Adelaide (Keswick) installed a Hayman-Reece removable tow bar for me, and did an excellent job.

They took a full set of pictures for the entire procedure, so that they could share the info with other Peddars locations.

Andy

 

[1gr8ka]

Just done 1600 in my new Aspire. Got out for 39k with toe bar kit, mats. Brand new.
I've been experimenting a bit with different driving modes to obtain max efficiency.
No problems getting at least 50 ks around town, usually 55 though.
I do a130 km trip from Doreen to Torquay on a regular basis. It is better if i drive through Geelong. So from Torquay to the Highway on the other side off Geelong is 30k and i have a 15k stretch from Bundoora to Doreen in traffic.
The rest is 100k highway.
I have been using the 35k EV through Geelong, and a few ks up the Highway, and saving the rest for the final 15k through traffic.
Results have been varied with worst at 4.8l per 100km and best and more usually 3.8, 3.9.
Today i used up the entire 54km through Geelong and past Little River.
I then used charge and for every km i drove i got about 1.2 km back to battery.
So with the 80,,km left i charged for 35 or so ks and came home on EV .
Fuel use was 3.3 l/100km. EV time was 76%.
Admittedly had a good tail wind.
This was a good result.
Interested to hear how others have gone, what methods work.

 

[rabbit]

Just put a deposit down today