Mpg calculation

[Beechtree]

Be patient please for what may be a stupid question from a new owner......today I did a 45 mile drive starting with a full charge and an indicated 23 mile EV range. I zeroed the trip meter and when I got home again the stats reported that 65% of the journey was on EV and my fuel economy was 69.5mpg. I guess that the EV ratio includes when the ICE is charging the batteries and also assumes that the overnight charge is free? Still impressive though!

 

[twosout]

Hybrid car consumption figures seem to be all “smoke ‘n mirrors”. As far as I’m concerned the only true figure you can use is the combined cost of the energy used for each mile completed (about 12.5p/mile in my case).
Your figures suggest that you travelled 6miles on electricity produced by burning petrol, which is much more expensive than taking it off the grid but slightly more efficient than taking the power directly from the ICE because it should be running at peak specific fuel consumption.
I guess you used about 3litres (1/3gallon) for the journey if 70mpg is to be assumed for a 45mile trip but that ignores the “full tank” of electricity also consumed. Depending on what you pay for electricity and petrol, it looks like that journey cost about 11p/mile overall.

 

[elm70]

Be patient please for what may be a stupid question from a new owner......today I did a 45 mile drive starting with a full charge and an indicated 23 mile EV range. I zeroed the trip meter and when I got home again the stats reported that 65% of the journey was on EV and my fuel economy was 69.5mpg. I guess that the EV ratio includes when the ICE is charging the batteries and also assumes that the overnight charge is free? Still impressive though!

Not really impressive numbers

Converted in metrics system ...

72km done with ~9kwh of electricity and almost 3L of fuel is not a super economy

4L/100km for 72km .. which on paper the first 52km should have be done without a drop of fuel .. is not so great.

I'm used to my BMW 320d, which could do 5L/100km

I was told a Prius can do similar with Petrol .. without having to spend extra money in electricity

But .. it is true .. the Outlander is a "huge" SUV .. even if they did try to make it aerodynamic .. it is still a huge brick which need lot of energy for cut the air when moving on the streets

As long as I use in EV mode, I'm very happy with the economy of my Outlander
If I need to make a long trip .. often I opt for a different car ...

Anyhow .. there is nothing better in the market .. for a real AWD PHEV

 

[richr]

Even with no battery left it's still better on motorways than my previous car. I get around 42mpg in the PHEV, but only used to get about 30mpg in my Subaru (I suppose that big 3.0 flat six engine did encourage more overtaking though). It's a big, heavy car so never going to be great, even with the engine working in a restricted efficient rpm range and using fairly low loss transmission (compared to traditional mechanical 4WD).

So for weeks where I'm only commuting to the railway station, I can do the whole week on about £2 of electricity, with virtually no petrol (just for demisting the windscreen before heading home - can't pre-heat in the station carpark). As the weather's warming up, even that little bit will stop soon.

I think that it's more reasonable to compare pence per mile (or cents per km), because a tank of petrol could last weeks or months if you only do short trips, or less than a day if you do lots of long ones so mpg or l/km can be fairly meaningless on a plug-in hybrid. But that makes it difficult to compare different models, hence the standardised tests to give an advertised figure for new cars - that may or may not be acheivable in real use.