Poor battery performance

[Chrisdy]

My car has now been into the garage twice due to decreasing battery range despite driving in Eco mode with no other electrical items on. Range on full charge was down to just 19 miles. This time the garage has had the car for 6 days. I have just been told that Mitsubishi don't think there is a problem, and that this mileage is normal!! The problem is that when I first got the car I was getting 25-26 miles, which I found acceptable, then it began dropping, so that even when doing the same journey, the range was sometimes down to 21 miles. After taking it into the garage the first time, the max range dropped to 19 miles.

I suspect there is either a problem with the charging system, or that the battery capacity is somehow reducing with use, because it's not just what is predicted, the actual mileage before the engine kicks in has reduced. However, Mitsubishi got the garage to run some tests, said they managed 23 miles on the feedback from the computer and then said that proved there wasn't a problem. So just be aware, Misubishi say 23 miles is normal......!!

I will be collecting the veh tomorrow and will be keeping detailed records of mileage achieved over the next few months. Interested if anyone else has seen significant drops in range over the same journeys.

 

[maby]

I've only had the car for a couple of weeks, but I have noticed the range decreasing on the same journey - this does not surprise me because the temperature is dropping and range will be significantly linked to temperature and rainfall - if it's also raining. Prior to the Outlander, I drove a Prius - fuel consumption was always a lot worse in winter than summer - probably by as much as 20%. Cold air is more viscous, and cold tyres greatly increase the rolling resistance. Trying to push a car through heavy rain also greatly increases drag. Add in shorter days that require you to have headlights on more of the time, increased need for heating and more use of windscreen wipers and demisters, and I'm afraid your energy consumption can rocket till next March/April!

 

[Ozukus]

I agree with Maby.

I also think too many people are over concerned about one off fuel consumption figures and should be looking at it over the life of the vehicle, or at least on an annual basis.

I'll have periods where it will use no fuel whatsoever with everything being pure EV, and others where I'll be down at 40ish MPG for a few weeks here and there, so the true view of MPG will be over an extended use not a one off period.

 

[maby]

I would add that the same effect also applies to conventional cars, but I think it is more noticeable with hybrids.

The attraction of a hybrid is that it is more energy efficient - that is, after all, why we buy them. It is operating at efficiency levels closer to 100% which means that less energy is being wasted, but I also believe that the fuel efficiency is more heavily impacted by changing conditions than it is for conventional cars. My gas-guzzling four and a half litre turbo charged diesel Landcruiser wastes vast amounts of energy when it is lightly loaded, but as conditions deteriorate or load increases I think overall efficiency actually improves. To put it another way, adding three passengers to your Outlander is going to increase your energy consumption by a larger percentage than adding the same three passengers to the Landcruiser will. The Outlander will still outperform the Landcruiser on fuel consumption, but not by as large a percentage as it does with just the driver in both cars.

 

[Hypermiler]

Agree with Maby. And us hybrid/ev drivers tend to be hypersensitive to changes in efficiency that we may not have noticed in our previous cars. I know my old Polo used to get high 50s mpg in summer (no a/c) but struggled to get to 50 in winter - I was always very conscious of its consumption due to its excellent trip computer and the fact we also have a Prius.

We are all likely to notice that some journeys of around 20+ miles we previously comfortably managed within ev range start to use ice as the weather gets colder. The car is great but it can't work miracles!

Having said that, today on a country lanes journey of around 12 miles at 13 degrees C in our non plug-in Prius (8 years old with 140,000 miles on the clock) I got 67.7 mpg. I took it because the phev was out of electrons so left it charging - glad I did with that economy! And no, it wasn't noticeably downhill all the way!

I reckon it is 8 degrees and below that the economy particularly drops off.
H

 

[jdsx]

I agree with maby & Hypermiler. We have to accept that in an inefficient ICE car, the engine is producing lots of surplus energy which can power lights, air con/heating etc., so you don't notice the difference between summer & winter much. However, in an EV, which is (relatively) much more efficient, the difference is much larger because the engine (or battery) is having to work harder to power the things we have become used to as a byproduct of the ICE. It's just basic physics, unfortunately. Still wouldn't want to go back to an ICE though

 

[gwatpe]

My main concern for battery performance is primarily the REGEN. Capacity will diminish over time, but REGEN is an instant power measurement.

The manual states that REGEN is effective except with a fully charged battery. I have driven several PHEV and my own PHEV when compared to others runs out of REGEN with a battery at 5bars down. That is even with brakes applied on a steep downhill with B5, REGEN is sometimes under 10kW. Mitsubishi is not forthcoming with data.

Other PHEV's driven only run out of REGEN with 1 or 2 bars down in the battery, with 30kw or so of REGEN still available at this level.

With a completely flat battery at least 60kW of REGEN has been seen in the same conditions, so the electronics seem to cope. No error codes in the computer.

Maybe the battery in my PHEV has a problem. Test conditions were 18-22C.

Lack of REGEN plays into mpg figs as mechanical brakes are used instead of storing power in the battery.

 

[maby]

I'm not convinced that regeneration is that significant - even if it runs at 60kW, it is typically only running for a few seconds at a time - unless you are rolling all the way down a mountain. This is a car that uses something like 8kWh to go 25 miles (or less) - a few seconds of regen while braking is not going to make an enormous difference, I think.

 

[gwatpe]

Every drive to the city my PHEV has to find a place to put 30kW REGEN for up to 2 minutes on one down hill stretch to hold the speed limit [approx 1kWh]. If I travel via the freeway, there is an 8km downhill section with 20kW REGEN to maintain the speed limit [approx 2kWh]. REGEN is a big part of my typical drive to the city. There are speed limitations and engine braking requirements on trucks and brake burnouts still occur, with fatalities even recently. REGEN is important on a vehicle that does not have normal engine braking as an option. I doubt that a typical city driver would get a lot of REGEN in traffic really. I have noticed a factor of 3 difference in kW's of REGEN between 2 PHEV's at the same battery level. My new PHEV is different in performance to another loaner I am now driving and it would appear that the battery of my PHEV has a problem. Mitsubishi is still assessing my PHEV. Last loaner is into Week 4 now. My PHEV has now spent more time back at the dealer than I had it.

I suspect that how the battery has been treated prior to owner delivery has a big impact on battery life and performance. The effect of the PHEV recall in Europe and the delayed release of the PHEV in Australia, possibly a result of reprogramming delays of cars awaiting shipment, may have resulted in some PHEV with batteries that had been in a poor state of charge for an extended period. The Lithium Ion battery chemistry needs are very specific and extended time at low states of charge is detrimental to the battery.

These batteries can have many thousands of full charge cycles with little change in performance, but some loss of capacity in optimum conditions. I have Lithium batteries in service on my house that are 5 years old and they perform like when first installed, and are cycled 30-50%daily.

Hopefully as production technical problems and shipping is sorted, all owners will receive cars with batteries that will perform as the manufacturer intended.

 

[Chrisdy]

Having now used the car for a week after getting it back from the garage, the range has gone back up to 26 miles. Clearly temperature and other external factors have had little impact, since in the South of England we have been having very mild weather so far. The journeys have been the same, so from a full charge you would expect similar ranges each time, but that wasn't happening. The garage insist they did nothing to the car, just ran some tests requested by Mitsubishi, using EV driving only then recharging.

I believe there may be a potential problem with the software that determines battery capacity or charging level reached. Clearly if the problem were a defective cell, then the range would not have returned to 'normal'. I use a 16A Polar charging point, whereas the garage use a standard 13A socket (they haven't yet installed any faster charging points!!). I am monitoring the ranges achieved to see if the same drop occurs after roughly the same period of use. Very odd behaviour, and the lack of consistency is slightly worrying, but we'll see how it goes over the next six months.

Would be interested to hear if anyone else is suffering from significantly reduced range (>=25%) while doing the same journey under broadly similar conditions (E.g. No aircon, same air temp) from fully charged, after a period of 2-3 months use.

 

[greendwarf]

Nobody mentions traffic conditions, surely if you live in an urban area then the same journey is likely to have more or less stop/starts (traffic lights etc.) on different days. As there must be a lot of energy wasted frequently stopping and starting again, the predicted and actual EV ranges will fluctuate wildly from day to day.

 

[gwatpe]

Don't have traffic lights where I live. They are in the city a plenty though. The PHEV is actually great when stopped at traffic lights. All goes quiet with only the gentle whirrrr of the A/C fans. City driving is only a small fraction of my typical drive.

Battery performance is a multitude of factors, of which battery capacity is one. I have found that the bias Mitsubishi has placed on calculated battery range by running the A/Con is excessive. possibly by even a factor of 3. I would think that just a reading of remaining kWh would be more value to a driver, rather than some ambiguous calculation that related to how the car was driven last, even yesterday or last week. The kWh/100km on the split EV screen are even more ambiguous when the car enters parallel hybrid mode.

 

[CJ1045]

It is very important to realise that the 'range' figure shown is based on how you have driven the car recently and NOT on a simple how far you can drive the car at a steady 30mph.

Thus if your last drive was all motorway at night with the aircon on full warm then the range shown when you next turn on the car will be small. However, if you drove at 5mph with no electrics on then the range shown will be large. The distance that range shows is dependant on these figures. However, the distance you actually achieve obviously solely depends on how you drive the subsequent journey.

Best way to see what range you can achieve on a 'standard' journey is to reset the trip and then simply use it to measure the miles you acieve on just the battery.

CJ

 

[gwatpe]

I have just completed a days driving with the AirCon ON and cooling. The average power for the airCon was about 0.1kW. To my surprise, the range on battery did not change when the AirCon was turned OFF and ON, with the snowflake button. Previously the AirCon had been turned OFF and ON during a drive and it seems that how the Aircon is used in the last hour or so also impacts on the range, like the way petrol mileage and EV economy are adjusted.

Not sure if anyone else has notice this behavior in their PHEV.

 

[phevmike]

Probably got the best performance from the batteries yesterday. 28 mile round trip, the computer showed I only consumed 24 miles of range. I find keeping the car in B2 (and flicking the paddles quickly to B5 as soon as I'm going down a hill or bringing the car to rest) and in Eco Mode is very effective at preserving the displayed range.

I live at the bottom of the hill, even if I use the Save button nothing seems to happen, by the time I get to the junction at the top of the road the range has decreased by 3 miles for a 500yd journey, so that in mind I'm quite happy to get 28 miles out of 24 miles of range!

I turn LDW off and the pedestrian warning thing. FCM is always on and I keep the air on low, radio on normal, lights etc.

 

[Chrisdy]

Nobody mentions traffic conditions, surely if you live in an urban area then the same journey is likely to have more or less stop/starts (traffic lights etc.) on different days. As there must be a lot of energy wasted frequently stopping and starting again, the predicted and actual EV ranges will fluctuate wildly from day to day.

I live in the country so traffic, particularly for my local journeys, is not a problem. Many of the journeys were in the evening when there was very little traffic on the roads. I also found that the use of lights had only a small impact on range, compared to doing the journey when the evenings were still light.

The point is that doing the same journeys initially, when the car was new, the range both estimated and achieved was very consistent. Then it started dropping for no obvious reason. After the first time it went into the garage it dropped further, again both estimated and achievable. I always logged the actual mileage travelled before the engine kicked in to charge the battery.

Now that the garage has carried out some unspecified tests (they had the car for nearly a week) the range has returned and is actually exceeding the predicted range by 1-2 miles. It is this lack of consistency in what should be very similar driving conditions that is the concern. It may be down to charging regimes: i.e. it's possible that on the second occasion the garage always fully discharged the battery before recharging, whereas I tend to do a 16 mile commute, then recharge (incl power from my solar panels) before doing a 20 mile round trip some evenings. Clearly I can't do both journeys in EV mode without recharging during the day, plus it's beneficial to use the free power from the panels while the sun's shining. It's possible that recharging from less than the 'empty' indication may be causing the computer to miscalculate the charging rate/cutoff point and that this may be progressive. Now that the car is back to what is was achieving originally, I will note whether my charging regime causes it to reduce as it did before.

 

[alan]

Nobody mentions traffic conditions, surely if you live in an urban area then the same journey is likely to have more or less stop/starts (traffic lights etc.) on different days. As there must be a lot of energy wasted frequently stopping and starting again, the predicted and actual EV ranges will fluctuate wildly from day to day.

I live in the country so traffic, particularly for my local journeys, is not a problem. Many of the journeys were in the evening when there was very little traffic on the roads. I also found that the use of lights had only a small impact on range, compared to doing the journey when the evenings were still light.

The point is that doing the same journeys initially, when the car was new, the range both estimated and achieved was very consistent. Then it started dropping for no obvious reason. After the first time it went into the garage it dropped further, again both estimated and achievable. I always logged the actual mileage travelled before the engine kicked in to charge the battery.

Now that the garage has carried out some unspecified tests (they had the car for nearly a week) the range has returned and is actually exceeding the predicted range by 1-2 miles. It is this lack of consistency in what should be very similar driving conditions that is the concern. It may be down to charging regimes: i.e. it's possible that on the second occasion the garage always fully discharged the battery before recharging, whereas I tend to do a 16 mile commute, then recharge (incl power from my solar panels) before doing a 20 mile round trip some evenings. Clearly I can't do both journeys in EV mode without recharging during the day, plus it's beneficial to use the free power from the panels while the sun's shining. It's possible that recharging from less than the 'empty' indication may be causing the computer to miscalculate the charging rate/cutoff point and that this may be progressive. Now that the car is back to what is was achieving originally, I will note whether my charging regime causes it to reduce as it did before.

When I got mine the max I could get from a full charge was 24 miles this decreased over 6 weeks to 15 miles. I returned it to the dealer who had it for 2 days and said they could find nothing wrong. Since I got it back I get 26 to 30 miles.

Alan

 

[gwatpe]

Many forum members who own a PHEV are experiencing difficulty managing expectations from the battery.

Mitsubishi have the tech to put all owners minds at rest. They can actually measure the battery capacity and resistance at any state of charge of the battery. The battery in my PHEV has been measured this way. The numbers are in the car, but are not directly available to the driver. This is probably a reason for release delays to the USA.

Mitsubishi should provide this data to all PHEV owners at each service, as a record in the service manual of the car. We would then have some measure of the battery on record, should it be needed in the future. If the Battery is as good as Mitsubishi claim, then there is not any problem.

The battery in my PHEV, a new car, was measured, and at 86% SOC, measured 32Ah and 328.9V, with an internal resistance of 1.5mOhms. The battery spec is 40Ah fully charged. The battery in my PHEV has lost about 3Ah of full capacity, the battery should have measured 34.4Ah at the 86%SOC level. This may not seem a lot, but is approx 50% of the expected capacity loss over the life of the car. The 3Ah is about 10% of the usable capacity, that is available with a full recharge. This loss of capacity from new has affected the electric range as well as the REGEN efficiency, and poorer petrol economy. The operation of the ICE in series hybrid mode in power demanding driving conditions is also affected. The loss of economy is approx 1L/100km more petrol, or about 7mpg less distance. The sales promo data makes no mention of cars being supplied with reduced battery capacity working equally as well as those manufactured to the specifications. My new PHEV with these measured defects in the battery, is not considered to be faulty.

We are entitled to know the battery condition of our vehicles and the data is in the car, but not displayed. The service schedule would be an opportune time to request your dealer to supply this data. Any resistance to provide this data could be seen as a possible cover up of maybe a battery problem that Mitsubishi would not want drivers to know about.

If I was to be a new prospective buyer, I would be requesting some proof that the PHEV I was taking delivery of had a battery that actually met the design specifications. I would not be accepting any vehicle that did not at least match the design, as I am witness to increased fuel consumption, and reduced EV range, with probable reduced vehicle life, due to increased wear on ICE components and braking systems.

Not all PHEV may have a faulty battery, but if we knew the battery did not meet the specification when new, then we probably would not accept that vehicle, and we would wait for one that did. I see this no different to say paint quality, or seat damage, that we would expect to be what we have paid for.

Remember that you cannot see the battery is defective from the outside, and I noticed something not quite right with my car in the first week, but it was put aside, attributed to " I was not driving the car properly". It was not until recharging glitches were recorded and dealer battery testing was performed, and after which a wheel speed sensor failed, which affected vehicle stability controls, with multiple controls systems failure including EV and RBS, that the battery was actually measured and found to be defective, but still able to store and supply power, so is not apparently faulty.

I hope that any potential PHEV buyers at least are provided with information to allow an informed decision on the quality of the battery in the car they are purchasing, so they don't have to suffer with warranty problems early in the car life, with the loss of key vehicle sales points from day one.

 

[maby]

Since Mitsubishi seem to be planning on making the PHEV platform a major component of their marketing, I would suggest that you pass these comments on to the motoring press - perhaps the threat of bad publicity relating to their flagship product development will make them take your complaints seriously? Try talking to Top Gear here in the UK - Jeremy Clarkson hates anything that doesn't absolutely guzzle gas, so he will not miss an opportunity to dish the dirt on any hybrid!

 

[ian4x4]

USA seems to be worried about lack of battery monitoring see link below

http://www.autoblog.com/2014/05/22/mitsubishi-outlander-phev-longer-delays-report/

The relevant paragraph is

CA authorities want all plug-in hybrids to be fitted with a monitor for the lithium-ion batteries that will be on the lookout for degradation, the concern being that diminished batteries could change the vehicle's emissions. Getting the technology fitted and tested means something like a 16- to 22-month delay.