calling on 2019 owners

[twosout]

My MY19 is now a year old. It started at 44.3Ah capacity and is now 38Ah.
The stated range used to be 26miles (heating on) but is now only 16miles (26 without heating).
I don't think these results will be peculiar to Mitsubishi. I expect all EVs to be similarly affected.
I didn't buy mine to save money. If I wanted that, I'd have bought a s/h hatchback.

 

[luispcorreia]

My MY19 is now a year old. It started at 44.3Ah capacity and is now 38Ah.
The stated range used to be 26miles (heating on) but is now only 16miles (26 without heating).
I don't think these results will be peculiar to Mitsubishi. I expect all EVs to be similarly affected.
I didn't buy mine to save money. If I wanted that, I'd have bought a s/h hatchback.

Why did you buy it then?

I guess you wouldn't mind exchanging your battery with someone else's older battery then.. maybe users can PM you!

 

[twosout]

We all buy for different reasons. I know someone who chose based on colour!
I bought mine to experience what EVs can do.

 

[luispcorreia]

We all buy for different reasons. I know someone who chose based on colour!
I bought mine to experience what EVs can do.

Let’s trade batteries then!

 

[Woodman411]

Mitsubishi, by their total denial of this issue, have lost the plot. And they are also doing considerable harm to the undoubted global benefit there would be for more buy-in for people to be using electric vehicles.

First of all, I sympathize with your disappointment. I completely understand expectations of a slow and gradual decline in battery capacity and range. That being said, a big part of the problem is just that: expectation. Unrealistic ones. Because there's two big factors explaining why Mitsubishi BMU is doing what it does: 1) the battery is air cooled versus liquid cooled, and 2) the battery is very small versus a BEV. Those two factors together mean that real significant battery degradation can happen easily (think of a cell phone or computer - it gets hot simply running a game. The Outlander electrics have to move a 4,000 lb object). So if you were Mitsubishi, what would you do to mitigate that? Short of adding liquid cooling and increasing battery size, both of which would increase costs considerably in the current model, the only choice would be to protect the battery as much as possible by increasing it's upper buffer, since the lower buffer already exists. That's exactly what the BMU is doing, albeit at the cost of electric range. But consider the alternative: Nissan's approach.

The Nissan Leaf and outlander phev have one thing in common: no liquid cooling. Unlike Mitsubishi though, Nissan does not aggressively protect its battery, and reports of severe battery degradation are common. Real degradation, not BMU lowered soh, to the point people can barely drive it. And that's with a much larger capacity to play with. Now shrink the Leaf battery more than 3 times, greatly increasing discharge rates. If Mitsubishi did the same thing as Nissan, there is no doubt there would be much more mid to long term horror stories of completely dead phev batteries. We don't see that with the outlander phev, even though its been out now for 8 years.

Should Mitsubishi have told you the range would decrease noticeably to protect its air cooled and tiny battery pack? I guess that is the question. Not sure how they would do that without being a marketing disaster. But at least understanding the phev's limitation hopefully goes a long way in understating why the BMU is doing what it does. I think what we are all looking for is liquid cooling + larger battery capacity + reasonable price. We are getting there slowly and surely, but not in this 1st-gen Mitsu technology. The first suv phev that will have this will be the 2020 Ford Kuga/Escape coming in a few months. It will be interesting to see if Toyota and Mitsubishi add liquid cooling to the RAV4 Prime and next-gen Outlander...

 

[twosout]

Thanks for that, very informative.

 

[SimonR73]

Yes, I agree,

The most salient part of the message is "Should Mitsubishi have told you the range would decrease noticeably to protect its air cooled and tiny battery pack? I guess that is the question."

Mitsubishi state in their marketing literature that the EV cruising range is 54 km. No ifs or buts. 54 km. When its gone down to 42 km after a few months and just a few 1000 km they look at you all innocently and say "What do you expect? Batteries deteriorate."

Worse still, there appears to be a culture of political correctness abroad. Any form of criticism of electric cars is something that's just not done in polite society.

My approach now is to explain the situation with my Outlander PHEV to people and use that as evidence that Mitsubishi is a duplicitous company than can't be trusted.

 

[Woodman411]

Yes, I agree,

The most salient part of the message is "Should Mitsubishi have told you the range would decrease noticeably to protect its air cooled and tiny battery pack? I guess that is the question."

Mitsubishi state in their marketing literature that the EV cruising range is 54 km. No ifs or buts. 54 km. When its gone down to 42 km after a few months and just a few 1000 km they look at you all innocently and say "What do you expect? Batteries deteriorate."

Worse still, there appears to be a culture of political correctness abroad. Any form of criticism of electric cars is something that's just not done in polite society.

My approach now is to explain the situation with my Outlander PHEV to people and use that as evidence that Mitsubishi is a duplicitous company than can't be trusted.

That is much different than the USA. Here, they advertise only 22 miles of electric range, or 35 km, although the USA is still on the 12 kwh battery (versus the rest-of-the-world's 13.8): https://www.mitsubishicars.com/outlander-phev/2020#meet-the-phev (it's possible they are anticipating the BMU-lowered range)

 

[KWh]

Although I can follow why a smaller battery would decline faster, I wonder why HEV batteries (such as in the Prius) don't seem to have this problem. Is this because there are even larger buffers to start with, so detoriation and loss of range is minimized?

Should that be the case, it seems to me that Mitsubishi starts off with 54km range for marketing purposes in Europe, to switch to protection mode as soon as possible after sale. In the US (where the claim culture is a bit more "evolved" than in Europe, Mitsubishi apparantly doesn't take any risks and promises a more realistic range.

My range started with the promised 54km's when driving with an egg under the pedal (outside temp of 18 degrees celsius), 2,5 month later with 10k km's driven it does 40 km's with the same egg under the pedal and the heater off at 13 degrees and wind in my back. I've noticed with 5 degrees (bringing the egg again :mrgreen: ) it does about 34 km's. Without the egg my driving has the largest impact on the range.

I think it's mostly the temperature influencing the range. I still charge between 10.5 and 11.5 kWh between depleted and full. We'll see next spring.

 

[greendwarf]

How do we know the HEV battery doesn't suffer? I've always understood that that it cycles in and out over short periods - similar to the PHEV when in Save. Would a user realise any marginal reduction in capacity?

 

[Woodman411]

Although I can follow why a smaller battery would decline faster, I wonder why HEV batteries (such as in the Prius) don't seem to have this problem. Is this because there are even larger buffers to start with, so detoriation and loss of range is minimized?

Should that be the case, it seems to me that Mitsubishi starts off with 54km range for marketing purposes in Europe, to switch to protection mode as soon as possible after sale. In the US (where the claim culture is a bit more "evolved" than in Europe, Mitsubishi apparantly doesn't take any risks and promises a more realistic range.

My range started with the promised 54km's when driving with an egg under the pedal (outside temp of 18 degrees celsius), 2,5 month later with 10k km's driven it does 40 km's with the same egg under the pedal and the heater off at 13 degrees and wind in my back. I've noticed with 5 degrees (bringing the egg again :mrgreen: ) it does about 34 km's. Without the egg my driving has the largest impact on the range.

I think it's mostly the temperature influencing the range. I still charge between 10.5 and 11.5 kWh between depleted and full. We'll see next spring.

One source shows HEV's with 256,000 km/160,000 miles do have significant battery degradation, but little effect in overall fuel efficiency, indicating that HEV's don't use much of the battery capacity to begin with: https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/hybrid_electric_vehicles_and_the_battery

I do believe Mitsubishi is doing the same with its aggressive BMU lowering, and to its credit, after 8 years on the market, it is still rare to hear of battery failures or extreme low electric range.

 

[twosout]

One thing that the PHEV teaches you, if you monitor the guessometer, is the impact that heating or air/con has on range. I'm not going to forego comfort for economy so it's something I simply live with. I suppose I ought to try and determine the accuracy of the forecast range (probably easier in Spring when there's no heating demand and the ICE stays dormant).
I regularly put in around 10 kWh ('empty' to 'full') so the capacity in terms of that measure has not changed noticeably.

 

[ThudnBlundr]

Until recently, Toyota HEVs had a radically different battery chemistry, plus they had huge buffers top and bottom.

 

[KWh]

One source shows HEV's with 256,000 km/160,000 miles do have significant battery degradation, but little effect in overall fuel efficiency, indicating that HEV's don't use much of the battery capacity to begin with: https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/hybrid_electric_vehicles_and_the_battery

I do believe Mitsubishi is doing the same with its aggressive BMU lowering, and to its credit, after 8 years on the market, it is still rare to hear of battery failures or extreme low electric range.

Very interesting article that fully answers my initial question with the following;
"Unlike the parallel HEV that relies on the battery for only brief moments, the PHEV battery is in charge depletion mode, meaning that the battery must work harder than on an HEV. This adds to battery stress and reduces longevity. While a capacity drop to 39 percent will affect the performance of the Toyota Prius HEV only marginally, such a loss would reduce the electric driving range of a PHEV from 50km to 20km (30 to 12 miles)"

Fun fact: The article quotes Wolfgang Hatz, who states that VW only makes hybrids because of political pressure. He supports diesel as the most energy-efficient motor, especially on highways. I presume this was before he was arrested for his role in the diesel emissions scandal :lol: