MiPHEV's Highway Trip Economy, Trailering, and Fuel Logbook Data

[drwho]

After reading all valuable experiences, I have been totally confused of how to use this car. Should I leave the mode normal or eco, or I set mode manually according to the forthcoming road condition?

Since there is no such explanation in user manusl, each individual researches the best way to set mode for their journey.

But, I also found most of the people should clarify whether their own experiences are for fuel economy or for proper use of power under not wasting gas.

Outlander is heavier (4,650lbs)SUV than other similar SUV(Highlander 4,400lbs, Rav4 3,800lbs, Prius 3,370lbs.....). This means that Outlander spends more gas money to drive than other SUV's disregarding how much advanced tech Hybrid is applied to Outlander PHEV. So once you choose the Mistubishi Outlander, no reason to compare the fuel efficiency with other cars. It will cost more money for gas to run.

Then, there are other ways to compare this car in following ways.

1. How can I save money on my personal journey. Is there any way to do so?
2. How to maximize the power effieiency while driving, which will be considered as "Ecomomic Driving"?

At the first glance, 1 and 2 looks very close target. But it is not. User Manual and Specs from Mitsubishi never clearify 2 different objects.

Hybrid is ablosutly designed for first(1) object. I already explained about how to save gas in Hybrid. But it does not provide strong power enough for regular customers. However, after experiencing Hybrid is good for gas saving, people needs second(2) object, too. That idea leads to Mitsubishi to produce PHEV in SUV. However, PHEV is not as much as efficient as Hybrid Only car because it is havier than Hybrid Only car(bigger battery and additional motors with mechnical parts). To minimize the minus effect of PHEV, they added some technical changes, such as, "Selecting a Mode". So, manufacturers gaslighting customer that there are more rooms to save gas and use the power effectively. As the result, individuals started to searching which is the best mode. This phenomina looks natural but simply we are looking for less worse choice, somehow.

Normal mode is what the Mitsubishi engineers believe the best balance power and gas mileage. At the sametime, they knew that customer will not satisfy with such sloppy choice only, because this car cannot prove that best in fuel efficiency nor has enough power for SUV. So, they added Charge/Save mode for power purpose, not for fuel efficiency. As same way, they added normal and Eco for fuel efficiency, not for power.

In the manual, charge mode is for high power and emergency use purpose. This means more gas consuming. Never expect that charge mode will save gas even though we use it in proper ways. It never happens "Save Gas". Only consume more than "Normal" mode. It is Opposite use of ECO. Save more energy to battery for special purpose but using more gas than normal. Amount of saved energy by charge mode never recovers the the distance which the extra gas could cover.

Save mode is same as charge mode. But the difference is less consuming gas than charge mode, by running more Hybrid depending mechanism. When you need more power than Hybrid, it will work as charge mode to cover energy.

I tried to explain PHEV is less fuel economy disgarding the Options of selecting modes. If you want to save gas, use ECO or Normal. If you want power, use charge or save. There is no in between. Even though you did not select, Hybrid is selecting by itself for best balance. Image the old type of weight balance. Once the right dish is heavy, it leans to right. VICE VERSA. Just rethink that If manually select the mode, it will be more efficient in gas and power. The difference between normal and manual selecting is trivial to our decent efforts. I imagine that we are puppet controlled by wires of the Mitaubishi marketing.

The most advantage of PHEV is that we can enjoy the EV similar experience for short journey. If you commute one way less than 30-40 miles, and you can charge in parking area while you working, you never need to think about selecting mode, since it has non-comparable fuel efficiency than Hybrid Only car in such a journey. This the main reason to select PHEV.

The RAV4 Prime weighs 4300lbs not 3800lbs.

 

[Haenzel]

My main reason was that I was looking for a new car to start off my retirement. Having owned amongst others, Hyundai (Mostly) VW, Ford, Mazda, Mitsubishi (Galant Ralliart, EVO).
I just happen to pass a new Mitsubishi dealership that had 2 PHEV on the floor. I went to look look and came out with my beautiful RED PHEV. Got a very good trade-in.
Running costs has never really worried me especially having traded my Ralliart that I just loved but was it a gas guzzler, very heavy with wide tyres. I enjoyed all my cars. I now enjoy my PHEV even though I hear some guys getting more mileage than me and other less. I plug it is at home each day. Get an oil and filter change every 8/9000 km ( as I did with my ICE cars just a little sooner).
Just drive your PHEV and enjoy it without being overly concerned about the cost. Remember all PHEV, EV included cost more that ICE cars. My idea was not to save cost but also to try and be environmentaly conscience,

If you really want to be be environmental conscience change your oil less frequently, especially if you run EV most of the time... Modern synthetic oil can do much more km's...

 

[Ben Baker]

If you really want to be be environmental conscience change your oil less frequently, especially if you run EV most of the time... Modern synthetic oil can do much more km's...

Feel free to try to convince Mitsubishi of that...

 

[Woon Chung]

Shocking waste of typing time over nothing that really matters or makes any difference--drive it, enjoy it, if you cannot afford the fuel buy a smaller vehicle

I am one of the guy who like to waste my time by writing this and that, which has no value.

Value is coming out of the one who read my writing and feels valuable. If not, it is not valuable. So the value comes out of the reader.

In order to write, I have to search a certain articles not to make any mistakes, even thou it is not perfact.. This enrich my brain with another knowledge. Certainly it is not for just driving a car. It is my saticfaction of getting closer to the high level of anything knowledge.

Human becomes the existance of controling the electrons. Unfortunately, we are not the controller of Electrons. The scientist does. But even though I am not a scientist, thus, I cannot control the electrons, I would like to learn about how the scientist control the electrons. Electro-magnetic wave is the basic of our smartphone. No need to learn Electro-Magnetic Wave for using phones, but I am curious about how it works.

Same to the Outlander PHEV. I would like to understand the theory of Hybrid Engine, why the car makers produce EV, HEV and PHEV. What point is good and what point is bad. Are we on the plate of Car Manufacturer table and turn to be the money source for their greed? How to be smart on spending several $K for transporting equipment? Can I see the real cars after tear up the packing material? What is covered behind ther commercials? All these are not useful for driving, but as a human being, I am full of curiocity try to be filled with other writings in this column.

Not only for the knowledge, I try to read writer's feeling or thier personal situation. I live in Florida and I can feel some kind of notelgia on cold weather surrounding through the people who live in Canada. So every article is valuable to me in any rate. I believe driving a car and writing an article about car is quite different.

Cheers,

 

[Haenzel]

Feel free to try to convince Mitsubishi of that...

Well, Mitsubishi Oil Change Interval over here (Netherlands) is 20000km and not every 8000 or 9000 km...Still they could also look at actual ICE hours but they like to make money by servicing stuff that doesn't require servicing...I don't want to give up my 8 year Mitsubishi warranty otherwise I would have skipped yearly service and extend it to every two years...

 

[Ben Baker]

Well, Mitsubishi Oil Change Interval over here (Netherlands) is 20000km and not every 8000 or 9000 km...Still they could also look at actual ICE hours but they like to make money by servicing stuff that doesn't require servicing...I don't want to give up my 8 year Mitsubishi warranty otherwise I would have skipped yearly service and extend it to every two years...

In the US it's 12000km, in Canada 8000km. What about a Canadian that does most of their driving (distance-wise) in the US though? It seems a waste to change the oil after 8000 electric/gas kilometers when 80% of that is electric, what do you think an ICE driver would say if you told them to change their oil every 1000 miles! There is an upside, the oil and filter are REALLY easy to change, if you do it yourself (and crawling up a wheel ramp is so easy in electric mode).

 

[Haenzel]

In the US it's 12000km, in Canada 8000km. What about a Canadian that does most of their driving (distance-wise) in the US though? It seems a waste to change the oil after 8000 electric/gas kilometers when 80% of that is electric, what do you think an ICE driver would say if you told them to change their oil every 1000 miles! There is an upside, the oil and filter are REALLY easy to change, if you do it yourself (and crawling up a wheel ramp is so easy in electric mode).

True..

 

[Woon Chung]

In the US it's 12000km, in Canada 8000km. What about a Canadian that does most of their driving (distance-wise) in the US though? It seems a waste to change the oil after 8000 electric/gas kilometers when 80% of that is electric, what do you think an ICE driver would say if you told them to change their oil every 1000 miles! There is an upside, the oil and filter are REALLY easy to change, if you do it yourself (and crawling up a wheel ramp is so easy in electric mode).

User manual (especially maintenance schedule) main purpose is not for us to learn about car. It is legal shield when car is broken during factory warranty period. Under this point of view, oil change term is not based on effective engine maintaining. I guess that Canadians are more active in claim than US. (Joking) Or, people in charge of French User Manual translate guy is more strict than English translator in Japan. (Joke)

True frank engineer recommend us to replace engine oil by checking the viscosity and color of engine oil. But if we follow the true frank engineer's advice and change oil after 20k or 30k since EV running is 80% and then we will lose warranty if there happens engine trouble. We'll be sitting on a fence. Long time ago, I bought simple Viscosity checking tool, but actually I didn't use this for oil change. Used for curiosity fulfilling. But I think it will be good for old used ICE car, since it goes bad before a certain miles.

When actual warranty issue happens in engine trouble, how could we prove that I changed engine oil by myself as per maintenance schedule so that the engine is taken care of properly, if manufacturer claims that engine trouble is in my responsible since there is no official engine oil change. It has been my worry for 30 years.

 

[Woon Chung]

Feel free to try to convince Mitsubishi of that...

Just another gossip regarding synthetic engine oil. When petrol company first (1970's) showed up synthetic oil in the market as revolutionary invention, people say "No Need to Replace Engine Oil". They say Guarantee over 100k not losing viscosity on interviews or gossip magazine. So, viscosity is no more concern but debris of burn oil and gasoline in cylinder becomes major concern. But suddenly it changed 25k miles or 1 year as official advertisement. In these days, there is no mileage described in detail, but main copy as nature friendly. Did the quality of synthetic oil degrade as time goes by?

So, lots of concerned guys said that oil change business will be dead at time. But it did not happened so far. Who knows which is right. It started from ICE only era.

 

[Woon Chung]

Well, Mitsubishi Oil Change Interval over here (Netherlands) is 20000km and not every 8000 or 9000 km...Still they could also look at actual ICE hours but they like to make money by servicing stuff that doesn't require servicing...I don't want to give up my 8 year Mitsubishi warranty otherwise I would have skipped yearly service and extend it to every two years...

Do you mean that if I skip engine oil change, I will lose all factory warranty? I have only 1 time of warranty parts replacement in my car history. It is Toyota rear 4 wheel gear box. Noise from there. They replaced part under warranty at the end of Powertrain warranty. I replace engine oil by myself and I bought used car with no service history. They never asked me engine oil maintenance. Is it because of Toyota or I was lucky at that time? I wonder.

Come to think of it, Toyota and other Service Center try to get more warranty job to make money. If they say out of warranty, customer will leave there and fix it at local garage with cheaper price without any problem. They seldom have job non warranty case. So, they do their best to get confirm from the Toyota or manufacturer by providing any possible reasons to qualify. So, this will not be the same in every service centers.

Things Have been changed?

 

[Haenzel]

Do you mean that if I skip engine oil change, I will lose all factory warranty? I have only 1 time of warranty parts replacement in my car history. It is Toyota rear 4 wheel gear box. Noise from there. They replaced part under warranty at the end of Powertrain warranty. I replace engine oil by myself and I bought used car with no service history. They never asked me engine oil maintenance. Is it because of Toyota or I was lucky at that time? I wonder.

Come to think of it, Toyota and other Service Center try to get more warranty job to make money. If they say out of warranty, customer will leave there and fix it at local garage with cheaper price without any problem. They seldom have job non warranty case. So, they do their best to get confirm from the Toyota or manufacturer by providing any possible reasons to qualify. So, this will not be the same in every service centers.

Things Have been changed?

I have to let Mitsubishi service my car on a yearly basis in order to keep the 8 years warranty.

 

[MiPHEV]

We can of course dispel weight as a significant factor of modern day vehicle energy efficiency, that's elementary and easily observed as the power train selected and aerodynamic factors dominate the real world results for any particular segment or vehicle class across the entire spectrum of road vehicles. None of the other tangents seem related to the thread topic so I'll leave those to others as well. On a more positive note, I finally have enough collected trailer data for a decent baseline, just about 1,800 miles (2,900km) worth of highway data so far.

These trips are for a utility trailer loaded with roll off tool boxes. I didn't scale the trailer for a completely accurate weight, but weight is by far the least important criteria for economy so it doesn't really matter if it's 1,000 lbs. or 3,500 lbs, the only place this comes into play is in hilly or mountainous conditions, and only for peak sustained power delivery rate, which only impacts average climbing/driving speed, not the economy - as the economy significantly averages out taken into account the sum of the ascents and descents. My best estimate on these trial runs is that the mass is somewhere on the order of 2,200 lbs (1,000 kg). CdA is the primary factor, and this load/trailer is not aerodynamically efficient, so the Cd is not ideal, but the area, A, is not significantly larger than the frontal area of the car itself, and usually the primary factor of economy within the control of the operator/trailer selection:


As always, weather conditions and travel speed dominates the achieved results. Below 60 mph (95 kph) I used Normal mode, as there was no chance of depleting the battery beyond the normal "empty" region, and the C rates were low enough to be in the same range as non-trailering vehicle operation, while giving slightly better economy. On the highway, Charge mode was used as is recommended, this allows you buffer the battery against higher C rate discharge and build up a small battery buffer for hill climbs or heavy acceleration. I used the battery gauge to determine the max sustainable travel speed in any given condition. For my trailer, this was as high as 75+ mph (120 kph) on level highway with calm conditions, to as low as 65 mph (105 kph) when faced with a 18 mph (29 kph) head wind. Average travel speeds were 70-72 mph (112-116 kph) for these trips. Average fuel economy has been 22.1 MPGus (26.54 MPGuk, 10.64 L/100km)

Cost per mile was a great result, at $0.142/mile ($0.088/km). To transport this quantity of tools and equipment I have the choice of three vehicles, a gasoline full size truck, a diesel Transit van, and this car and trailer. Technically I also have an EV I can use with this trailer too, but it would increase the travel time by 50%+ and so I don't really consider it a practical option. Costs when compared to the truck and van are good, the van costs $0.228/mile and the truck costs $0.248/mile with this loadout, on average.

I track the trailering results for this vehicle in a separate logbook to keep the results segregated which is more useful for comparison purposes, which can be found here:


Beyond the economy stuff, I prepared the car and trailer for safe high speed highway towing in the usual fashion. There are various manufacturer recommended limits for this car that are set for political reasons, depending on where the car is sold. I used the engineering limits of the factory hitch (3,500 lbs./350lbs tongue weight), and the lesser of the tire and axle limits when calculating load capacity, again in the standard fashion. I use a sway control and weight distributing hitch for all high speed travel, and use the following calculator to determine load capacity and estimate the involved forces, which might be useful to some folks: https://www.ajdesigner.com/apptrailertow/weightdistributionhitch.php

Nothing unusual about the hitch setup or trailer, although perhaps not many have used or seen them on the Mitsubishi, so I've included that for some extra detail. 10" drum trailer brakes were added to the trailer as well as a brake-away safety battery and a 7 pin harness to accommodate the new circuits. The hitch is an Andersen as seen here, which uses elastomeric rather than steel springs. The anti-sway is accomplished via a friction cone inside that chrome hitch ball housing:


The electric proportional brake controller was added to the car, as well as the 7 way RV trailer connector receptacle, gain and manual braking is controlled from the dash:


I suppose I should mention driving, determining the maximum travel speed is easily accomplished. I always tried to enter the highway with 1/3 of the battery gauge full, more or less. Set the cruise for the travel speed, and simply watched the display. If it was continuously discharging, slow down, if it was charging or filling up the battery over time, I could speed up. This is also how I was able to tell if the wind conditions had changed, battery would begin to discharge absent any other changes in the road conditions or speed, and I had to slow down to compensate. When that happens, I use the mic button on the Android Auto and just ask google for the current wind speed for a quick sanity check, so I know it's not a brake dragging or some other mechanical fault.