Burning smell, loss if battery, return car?

[Mo1820]

Appealing to experienced owners for help pse. Drove out of (non Mitsubishi) dealer with car fully charged on Monday (45k miles on clock). 2016 GX 4hs (Sept. reg)
Almost as soon as left garage the blue battery icon dropped to half way! By the time we got home (only 8 miles) the blue bar was almost gone and a smell of burning in the cabin? (Particularly concerned with baby in back).
Mitsubishi said the burning smell was common as wax(?) can burn when EV changes to engine mode, but we’d only gone 8 miles so should engine have kicked in that early?
Only had sat nav on and switched heating on for only ten mins to ‘test’ it at c.18 degrees.
The next morning blue bar was only up half way, if that.
Called Mitsub Dealer who said to calibrate/normalise the battery by giving it a full charge every night for 5 nights and drive each day, then on the 5th day it would show the average range we can expect? Does anyone know if this is true?
I’ve done two charges - 1st full charge said 16 miles range. Then wasn’t able to drive that day and after 34hrs dormant the range dropped to 7miles. I then drove around for six miles until it said 1 mile left. After the 2nd full charge it said 19 miles range and after being dormant overnight it‘d dropped to 15 miles (read this morning.)
Does this battery sound unreliable? Should it hold a higher charge for longer than just one night when dormant?
We are only occasional users in Zone 2 London so don’t want a PHEV that has to be charged every night but do need it for Ulez etc.
As today is fifth day of ‘7 day return promise for full refund’ thinking we should take car back today (temp insurance expires today) if the battery is unreliable.
Also car doesn’t have a full service history - although I asked Mitsubishi head office before we purchased and they said a lacking service history wouldn’t invalidate the 5 year warranty but that it was assessed on a case by case basis?
Any advice gratefully accepted!

 

[AndyInOz]

If the battery is losing that much charge overnight, I'd guess that the heater is running.

Check all the settings in the MMCS (the touch screen) and look for timer settings. It's possible that someone has left it configured to heat up every night or every morning etc.

The burning smell is usually sprayed-on crap burning off the exhaust system.
(Dealers spray varnish on engines and exhaust systems and expect to be paid extra for this 'service')

Temperature and the accessories in use also significantly change the range you can expect.

 

[jaapv]

Should the problem actually be the battery - although your problem is a first on this forum- there is an eight-year guaranty on it. I. hope that you got Mitsubishi's assurance in writing.
The advice of your dealer sounds rather clueless, they could easily have offered a battery smoothing.
Andy's advice. is. spot-on, but personally I would demand that the. seller rectify these. problems, as. the car is clearly not fit for use as it is now.
It is very hard to put a. number to the. "proper" range to be expected as it depends on driving conditions. and driving style.

 

[greendwarf]

I also live in Zone 2 and my 2014 Gx3h has done 50k but after an all-night I always still have a "full" battery even if realisable range is only about 20 miles. So unless there is a problem with the battery something is draining the charge,

How do you charge overnight, duration & times, and also what time are you looking at car in morning?

 

[Daixiwen]

From your description I would say that the battery has a balance problem. At least one of the cells must be lower than the others. Having the heater on at night could explain also the drop in capacity on the morning, but not loosing half the battery state of charge by simply driving from the dealership. Driving and charging the car several times can help rebalance the cells, but if the cells are way out of balance it will take a long time. If I were you I'd return the car while you still can, something is fishy with the battery. Or they should at least diagnose the battery, do a cell smoothing and give you a new trial period.

 

[Mo1820]

Thank you All for these very helpful responses! I’ll check the mmcs for the heater timer - never had such an advanced car before so all new to us - our last car was a 21 yr old Ford Ka to give you an idea! But not happy that the battery goes down so quickly while driving or while car is at a stand still.
On Saturday the range said 19 miles Just after a charge finished at midnight, 00.23. (Temp said 10deg). By Sat 10.55 am it had dropped to 15 miles roughly 10.5 hrs later. (Temp said 14 deg). We didn’t drive anywhere.
By 14.34 Sunday (Yesterday) approx 27.5 hrs later and no driving, the reading had dropped to 8 miles, temp said 12 deg - as it hasn’t been very cold in London.
I’m assuming the temp shown on the dash is the outside ambient temp rather than inside the cabin?
We then put 15 litres of petrol in to try and mitigate the potentially stagnant dirty petrol that might have been idling in the tank during car dealership storage and drove a few miles. (8 deg temp). We didn’t use the sat nav or heater just headlights and wipers.
The battery ran out and engine picked up but no burning smell this time?
Your replies are very helpful as I obviously don’t know what ‘the norm’ is and how rapidly the battery is meant to decline, whether in use or not.
Tried to attach pics of dash but files are too large.
We have until next Monday to return car. Btw do you know if they can charge you for a minor scratch (don’t know if it was there before we bought car) if they never gave you a record of the scratches but just showed you some on a video before you bought it? I don’t think they recorded all the ones we’ve spotted since buying it!

 

[michael8554]

I agree with Daixiwen.

The fully charged range on the Guessometer seems too low, and the rapid discharge is not usual.

Could you tell that the heater was on when you turned it on ?

 

[Fjpod]

Some things to remember:
1. If you drive your car the way you would with a normal ICE car, you will run through the battery very quickly. You may need to adapt to slower starts and stops.
2. If your car was fully loaded, the battery will drain more quickly.
3. If you use the heat, your battery will drain more quickly. Sometimes it pays to simply get the ICE to start to generate engine heat if it is very cold.
4. In cold weather, the battery will not hold as much of a charge as when the weather is warmer. The indicator may say fully charged, but the actual stored charge is less.

 

[greendwarf]

You say charging on Saturday finished at 00.23. Was the car then unplugged? I leave mine in and "on" all night until I use the next day. If there is a heating cycle programmed in for early morning, by 10.55 Sunday then the car will have cooled down enough for you not to notice.

A number of people have been caught out by unknown heating cycles over the past few years with second-hand cars - so check this out first.

 

[ThudnBlundr]

Even if the car is plugged in, our's will not start charging again if a preheat starts. It seems that the charging process 'goes to sleep' once it thinks it has reached 100%, even if it drops later. So do check for unexpected preheating in the system, as that would drop your range and battery percentage

 

[AndyInOz]

I'm one of the people that was caught by a previous owner's (or dealers fiddling) heating schedule.

However once fixed it is no longer a problem.

From my usage, the battery holds its charge very well when the car is just sitting unused, even after several days, the battery level hasn't decreased much, so if you manage to eliminate things like timers, there is definitely something to investigate going on.

My strangest experience with this stuff was driving to work on a cold morning... when I arrived, I had 10 km range showing on the guessometer, at the end of the day when I got in to the car, it was showing 18 km range!

My first thought was that someone had sneakily charged my car (as if!) but then realised that it was much warmer at 4pm than it was at 5am...

Happy Phevving!

 

[littlescrote]

Definitely looks like a heating/demist/cooling timer. Even if you do not see it in the display, it can be there in the background and visible on the App. Probably your best bet is to follow the procedure to reset the WiFi module as you'll probably want to do that anyway to register your phone and unregister previous ones, and in doing so you will erase all timers.

https://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/en/products/outlander_phev/app/remote/registrationinitialization.html

 

[Mo1820]

Thank you everyone! So recently I realised that even though I thought the heater/air con was off it was in fact on. (I hadn't pressed the 'off' button!) When I did press the off button the range shot up from 18 to 22 miles! I also read lots more of the owners' manual and found out how to find the timer on the MMCS. Lo and behold when I looked at the timer for the heater someone had set it to come on at 7am every morning! I guess that means it would have been draining the battery overnight? Indeed after I turned all the timers off the range read the same the next day and didn't drop miles - yeay! Not sure how the timer was working when the car was turned off though?
Sadly we felt we had to return the car to the dealers because it didn't have a full service history and I was concerned about that - I'm going to post this as a separate topic where I'd also value your helpful knowledge. Thank you again for your great insight!

 

[AndyInOz]

Yeahp, you were caught in exactly the same way as me.

That's actually the function of the timers, you can set the car to pre-heat or pre-cool at any time of day you like.

So that you return to a warm or cool car as you see fit.

In my case the car was set to Heat up at 7 pm every night, and again at 6am each morning, so I was getting a double whammy.

I only worked this out by fluke, I went out to put something in the car in the evening, and it was incredibly hot inside.

That put me on the path to finding the problem.

Like you, I had thought there was something wrong with the battery.

I wrote it all up here, I wonder if I can find it again...

 

[AndyInOz]

And... Here it is in all its glory:

https://www.myoutlanderphev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1819

 

[Mo1820]

Many thank Andy in Oz and everyone that helped! I'm going to post a query re. extended warranties - if anyone is able to help I'd be very grateful.