How much petrol can be refilled after driving to empty

[gwatpe]

The PHEV has been released in Australia, and we don't have petrol stations on every second corner here. I have been frustrated with the range on petrol allowed by my PHEV.

I decided to try a second time to quantify how much petrol the PHEV I have will let me use in the engine. With the help of a passenger, I have run the petrol out until the ICE would no longer run. The battery luckily still had a little range. Eventually the total range display went to "- - - ". I drove another 10km on the battery to a petrol station, and still had some 16km battery left.

I was able to refill and recorded what the car did as the tank was slowly filled to the brim. The average fuel consumption was 6.4L/100km as recorded by the PHEV computer.

Here are some photos.

This is the average petrol consumption for a 250km country drive at 100-110km/h

This is the range display on the MMCS.

The first is the PHEV dash display.

This is the graph of the recorded data.

The maximum petrol refilled was 39 litres.

The petrol tank is supposed to supply 45 litres, but the car I have is programmed to only let the driver use so far 39 litres.

The calculated range is only partly linear, and flattens off when the tank is close to full.

The fuel Gauge is not linear indicating either, even though the range calculation does appear to be linear close to when the tank is indicating empty[still has 7 litres of petrol in it]

Not allowing the full capacity of the petrol tank to be used is a poor excuse to get a linear calculated range.

In Australia with sometimes long travel distance between petrol stations, it is imperative that the fuel delivery system be able to supply all the petrol in the tank to the engine. The petrol tank is not like a battery, that needs a reserve to prevent damage to the petrol tank if it gets emptied.

This is now the 3rd time I have tried to achieve a true petrol range of my PHEV. The vehicle has an advertised fuel capacity of 45 litres [litres of petrol the engine can supposedly use]. and at 6.4L/100km, my PHEV has around 100km less range than those supplied to Europe it seems.

I would like to know if any other drivers in Australia have similar experience with maximum refill litres. I would like to know what Other PHEV owners around the globe have maximum refilled the petrol tank. Those driving EV are excused.

 

[greendwarf]

The PHEV has been released in Australia, and we don't have petrol stations on every second corner here. I have been frustrated with the range on petrol allowed by my PHEV.

The petrol tank is not like a battery, that needs a reserve to prevent damage to the petrol tank if it gets emptied.

Having toured in Australia myself I recognise your concerns but I'm not sure about the second point. When I was young we were warned not to drive until empty because of the risk of sucking sludge at the bottom of the tank into the carburettor clogging the jets. No doubt modern cars and fuel don't have the same problem, but the PHEV is designed to spend a long time on EV without re-fill and I have read elsewhere in this forum that the car will fire up the ICE every 6 months to burn off petrol to avoid being left with degraded fuel. So there may be a general design requirement to avoid draining the tank of very old petrol.

However, as stated, the battery is never allowed to be run flat, the ICE will automatically fire up to keep a minimum charge - perhaps then it needs a petrol reserve on the assumption that most users would deplete the battery first. What would be interesting is to repeat the experiment but this time continue on until the battery stops providing EV to see if the ICE then uses this "reserve" - carrying a can of petrol, of course, in case it doesn't

 

[maby]

Others, including European owners, have reported the same thing. I think it is a design feature (or fault, depending on your point of view)! From the engineering point of view, I can see the merit in not allowing it to run the tank dry, but they probably should be more explicit in the documents about it.

 

[aitchjaybee]

...

I decided to try a second time to quantify how much petrol the PHEV I have will let me use in the engine. With the help of a passenger, I have run the petrol out until the ICE would no longer run. The battery luckily still had a little range. Eventually the total range display went to "- - - ". I drove another 10km on the battery to a petrol station, and still had some 16km battery left.
...

This is the range display on the MMCS.

I'm not confident of my reply here so please bear that in mind, but on a different PHEV forum the chat says the petrol/total range goes to "---" as soon as it goes down to 50Km / 30 miles. There's no countdown from that to zero, it stays at "---"
The tell tale for me is the total range on my PHEV always includes the EV range too, so if you still had 16Km EV range, there is no way your total range could be zero - it has to be 16Km plus whatever petrol range you had (which if was zero would still be total range 16Km). (so if you have an empty battery and total range of 300Km, when you charge up, the total range goes up to 350Km or whatever).

The question I'd ask / test I'd propose, its when you run the fuel tank down, do you get to "---" with about 50Km of range remaining or did you see a countdown toward zero.

I think you'll find the 7 litres remaining are not unusable, its the dreadful display going to "---" instead of giving you a countdown to zero.

Hope that helps. And I repeat, my info is 2nd or 3rd hand so feel free to ignore.

 

[greendwarf]

...

I decided to try a second time to quantify how much petrol the PHEV I have will let me use in the engine. With the help of a passenger, I have run the petrol out until the ICE would no longer run. The battery luckily still had a little range. Eventually the total range display went to "- - - ". I drove another 10km on the battery to a petrol station, and still had some 16km battery left.
...

This is the range display on the MMCS.

I'm not confident of my reply here so please bear that in mind, but on a different PHEV forum the chat says the petrol/total range goes to "---" as soon as it goes down to 50Km / 30 miles. There's no countdown from that to zero, it stays at "---"
The tell tale for me is the total range on my PHEV always includes the EV range too, so if you still had 16Km EV range, there is no way your total range could be zero - it has to be 16Km plus whatever petrol range you had (which if was zero would still be total range 16Km). (so if you have an empty battery and total range of 300Km, when you charge up, the total range goes up to 350Km or whatever).

The question I'd ask / test I'd propose, its when you run the fuel tank down, do you get to "---" with about 50Km of range remaining or did you see a countdown toward zero.

I think you'll find the 7 litres remaining are not unusable, its the dreadful display going to "---" instead of giving you a countdown to zero.

Hope that helps. And I repeat, my info is 2nd or 3rd hand so feel free to ignore.

But he says he ran the ICE until it apparently ran out of petrol - so I assume it stopped of its own volition rather than he "panicked" when the range went to "---" and reverted to EV.

 

[jaapv]

The capacity of the fuel tank is 45 Liters, approx 10 gallons.When approaching empty rhe car will start switching between ICE and electricity in an attempt to maximise range. At the very end it will go into turtle mode and finally stop when the battery charge is 13% with a completely empty tank.

 

[user 422]

I usually reset the B trip if I get to the fuel warning ( 50/49 mile range 0 EV )
So I know how close to end of tank I get - went to +35 miles after --.- range showed and filled up with 40.25 ltr. The ice was still running fine

 

[Hypermiler]

As I have posted before, my car went from 30mile petrol range to zero in one go with no countdown (the only time I have run it that low). I don't understand the 16km ev range and zero total range displayed in the photos above - surely that shouldn't happen?!

I would say it is essential to carry a petrol can in out of town Australia - this car is particularly difficult to rely on in terms of petrol range and info provided by the displays. And once you run out of ev range entirely, it gets relatively thirsty with trying to charge the battery.

Agreed, the tank is rather small for driving in areas that are so sparsely populated with gas stations... (I remember many years ago nearly running out of petrol in Western Australia where I hadn't appreciated that you have to fill up at every opportunity regardless of price!)

Cheers
H

 

[gwatpe]

Thanks all for your replies so far.

There was no panic during the drive.
I had a jerry can with spout and other recovery gear.

I have another pic of graphed avg L/100km times litres added in blue and the car calculated range for added fuel in yellow.

The graphs are similar, but ....

the car does use the average L/100km in the internal range estimate. Based on this, the car has no range based on some reserve fuel capacity. Simply the car is programmed in a way so any remaining fuel cannot be used.

To clarify some questions.

The PHEV was run in SAVE mode for a distance of 290km for the test. The battery capacity remained at 15-16bars during the drive until the Fuel empty and REFUEL displays came ON. When the orange warning triangle came ON and stayed ON, the PHEV dropped out of SAVE mode and CHARGE and SAVE modes were no longer available. In the last 40km of the test drive the ICE was tried to be run, with attempts of vehicle rapid accelerations. The ICE would run for decreasing amounts of time starting initially for 5-10 seconds dropping to 1-2 seconds and then not coming on.

The " - - - " total range display was noticed when the orange warning triangle persisted. The range did count down as the gauge had 1 and 2 thin bars remaining from about 80km through 60km down through 55km and then when total range was close to Battery range at 50km, the total range blanked. The bars on the gauge are different thickness depending on the capacity of fuel in the tank. There appear to be more transitions towards the empty portion of the display gauge.

All the evidence points to the car having a fuel tank capacity of around 39 litres only. The range calculated by the car confirms this and the tank registered a full tank by the gauge at 33 L added. Another 6L was added to fill the tank to the brim, with only 35km added to the range for the 6L instead of about 100km.

The tank capacity looks like another problem to be solved. The holiday plans will have to be put on hold some more until this is resolved.

It appears that Australian landed import PHEV are different to European with missing features as well as different software and even hardware.

PS Hi greendwarf, I will not be repeating the exercise by testing with a flat battery first. The PHEV has previously gone to no battery as well as no total range suddenly on a previous drive. Tow trucks in outback Australia are not a solution to a poor fuel system design.

 

[jaapv]

But you did not drive it to a standstill. Only then can you say how much you can fill. Mitsubishi claims 45 Liters, on the Dutch forum the maximum filled ( with the car still running) was 44.99 liters with the car still running.

( http://www.outlanderphevforum.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2460&p=26305&hilit=Tankinhoud#p26305 ), which means you still had plenty of reserve.
When running this low the car will switch between ICE and EV regardless of buttons pushed and will finish the electricity before it uses the last petrol.
The indications you are using are unreliable, as they are predictive and do not represent the real state of the car. The range meter is not a batterij level meter.
You had 6 Liters of petrol left.
It is extremely unlikely that there are different petrol tanks for different markets.

Anyway, over here some users fitted a second petrol tank (38 liters) to extend the range. I am sure there are firms in Australia able to supply one too. I would not advise to do so, though, as it comes in the space on the left hand side at the rear, in the crumple zone next to the exhaust.

Two jerrycans jerrycans are cheap, safe and simple. In primitive ares where I travel regularly owners of 4x4s of all kinds have dedicated roof racks made that can fit up to four of them.

 

[greendwarf]

Thanks all for your replies so far.

There was no panic during the drive.
I had a jerry can with spout and other recovery gear.

PS Hi greendwarf, I will not be repeating the exercise by testing with a flat battery first. The PHEV has previously gone to no battery as well as no total range suddenly on a previous drive. Tow trucks in outback Australia are not a solution to a poor fuel system design.

As I assumed - the reference to "panic" was that other posts seemed to think you had switched to EV as soon as you saw the "---".

But I think jaapv has it - you probably could have driven on and used the rest of the fuel with the car switching between ICE and EV. The car seems to be designed to protect the battery (after all it's the most expensive bit) so you can't actually run it flat.

However, you seem to have "range anxiety" so unless you prove to yourself that what jaapv says is correct you'll never be happy with the car. So you still need to do the experiment of driving on petrol until appears to run out and then on EV until it finally stops before putting in the measured amount from a can to get you to a filling station. None of this needs to be done in the outback and if you start with a low tank and battery level then it needn't take too long. You could even do it driving round the block at the filling station.

 

[jaapv]

Save and charge buttons do not function as soon as there is approx. 6 liters of fuel left in the tank.

 

[user 258]

Save and charge buttons do not function as soon as there is approx. 6 liters of fuel left in the tank.

Nice fact. I don't remember reading that anywhere, and I read a lot. Do you have a URL or reference along with any others for unknowns like this?
Kind regards
Mark

 

[user 422]

Save and charge buttons do not function as soon as there is approx. 6 liters of fuel left in the tank.

Nice fact. I don't remember reading that anywhere, and I read a lot. Do you have a URL or reference along with any others for unknowns like this?
Kind regards
Mark

Page 7-23 (Note) although it does not mention at what fuel level this happens...

 

[jaapv]

The fact from the manual ( see above) and the number from user experience on the Dutch forum.

 

[gwatpe]

I thank forum members for their contributions so far.

Some points that I still have issue with.
Referring to the manual.

During my test drive, the fuel icon started to flash with about 115km of total range displayed. There was 55km of battery range.

The manual states that this occurs with 7 litres of fuel remaining.

I continued driving.

The icon then started flashing faster and the REFUEL warning message appeared. The total range was still indicating 65km at this point, with about 45km battery range.

I continued driving. Still in SAVE mode.
traveled another 20 or so km, and the total range displayed " - - - ", with 40 ? km battery range. PHEV no longer would run ICE and SAVE mode not available. Reached the service station with 16km battery range remaining.

From the time the fuel warning indicator came on with 7 litres remaining, the car was driven approx 80km of road distance. This would have required approx 5 litres of the 7 litres of remaining fuel, so 2 Litres still in the tank that could not be used without possibly first completely draining the battery as well.

The fact remains that the PHEV could still only be refueled with 39 litres of petrol. There is still petrol unaccounted for.

I have refuelled on many other occasions as soon as the fuel icon started to flash, and on these the PHEV would only take approx 31-32 litres. I needed to confirm how the car fuel system works, as my calcs had the PHEV having 32 + 7 = 39 litre available fuel.

My efforts to confirm this has the available fuel at 39L and not 45L.

It is still possible that the fuel sensor is faulty. This will just be another fault with my PHEV to be fixed.

 

[jaapv]

The gauge is indeed a bit panicky and not very precise. The AA had to drain my tank completely once, as I had been stupid enough to fill up with 80% Bioethanol fuel; the guy at the till noticed the mistake.
I managed to squeeze 46 Liters in the tank afterwards.

The tank and battery (at standard empty) is only completely empty after you get the turtle symbol and lose power Then you have about 7 Km left on emergency electrical power.

From the Australian specification sheet:

 

[user 258]

Hi,
This has been a really interesting post and I can fully appreciate the worry someone might have with the car's behaviour. if the ICE stopped running when the fuel level was low, with warnings, unless you knew otherwise you would have to conclude there was no petrol left.

Now to make sure I understand the behaviour, and to maybe benefit others, this is how I understand the system works:
1) At a certain low fuel level, probably between 5 and 7 litres left, the car reverts to pure EV mode (if any charge remaining) and disables the charge and save buttons.
2) Once the normal EV range is fully used the ICE will start and run as it would normally with a depleted battery.
3) Once all the petrol is fully used up it will revert back to EV mode, possibly with reduced performance until the battery hits 13%. At that point it may still allow some EV distance or it may refuse to move at all to preserve battery condition.

To add, a normally depleted battery still has 20% charge remaining which it will allow you to use if really needed such as towing/high speed mountain driving, but if the battery drops to 13% you get a turtle (or similar) warning and severly limited power output until the ICE charges the battery back to 20%.

Is that an accurate description of how the car works?

Kind regards,
Mark

 

[jaapv]

One addition: The turtle appears below 20% and will put the car in reduced power mode. It will allow the battery to run down to 13% but never below that. At 13% and no ICE it will stop. In turtle mode the car will attempt to charge the battery up to 20% asap. On 20% it will go into an automatic save mode, with the display switching between --.-- and 1, as it always will with an "depleted" aka 20% battery. .

 

[maby]

One addition: The turtle appears below 20% and will put the car in reduced power mode. It will allow the battery to run down to 13% but never below that. At 13% and no ICE it will stop. In turtle mode the car will attempt to charge the battery up to 20% asap. On 20% it will go into an automatic save mode, with the display switching between --.-- and 1, as it always will with an "depleted" aka 20% battery. .

Do we know if it is sufficiently clever that if it has hit the 13% bump stop and you add a couple of gallons of petrol it will recognise this fact and dip into the remaining charge to start the ICE and begin to get the battery topped up again?