Re resistive heat or ICE heat.
I took delivery of my PHEV, with resistive heat option, in January. I live near Amsterdam. I don’t imagine that the weather here is so different to Glasgow.
It’s not easy to figure out what is working when. Mitsubishi have done an excellent job in making the change between the different modes as undetectable as could be possible. If it wasn’t for the dashboard display you wouldn’t know if the PHEV was in Electric, Serial or Parallel mode; and as for when it is in resistive heat or ICE heat modes? Well there isn’t a display to tell me so anything I say has to be a complete guess.
In January I notice that the instant I started the car the ICE would start up. This was clearly to provide heating since the battery was fully charged. I have to guess that in January the temperature was too low for resistive heat to be enough. At the moment – May – it doesn’t do that although the temperature has been 10 degrees C in the mornings. Do I notice difference in range between the winter and now? Maybe. I have the feeling that I can go further on the batteries now in May than I could in January, but it’s not a lot of difference and I may just be imagining it. I may just be being more of a pain to the drivers following me because I have figured out the best way to use the regenerative braking now.
What is not clear from any of the marketing materials is that when the ICE runs - whether it be to provide heat or when one is pottering along on the motorway and it switches to parallel mode - is that it is not wasting that ICE operation, but using it to charge the battery. So if you have cruise control on you can watch the display change from parallel mode to pure electric mode and when you are in parallel mode it is also charging the battery. If I didn’t have the display showing me the change I would never know that it is was switching back and forth. In The Netherlands the maximum permitted speed on the motorway is 130kph so at 70mph ( 113kph) you will definitely not notice it.
If you think about it, when the PHEV is in parallel mode the ICE has to turn at whatever speed is governed by the forward motion of the car, so clearly Mitsubishi has decided that whenever the ICE is running it had better earn its keep and so it also charges the battery at the same time. It makes sense. The same applies when you start up on a cold morning. The ICE is running to provide cabin heat so it may as well generate some electricity at the same time.
BUT there is one clear advantage to the resistive heat and that is when you can leave the car plugged in overnight; I can’t. In the top spec versions you can set the cabin heater to come on some time before you set off for work. This heating is coming from your mains, so it is not running down the available charge in the batteries, and so you don’t have to use the ICE to provide that initial heating. Unlike the internal combustion engine, electric motors don’t have to warm up to work at their optimum efficiency so you can set off the instant you get into the car.
If you are like me when you are at the decision making point you try and weigh each detail to maximize the benefit. But once you start driving the PHEV and the novelty has worn off you’ll realise that this is a vehicle designed by engineers – ie not accountants or marketing bods - who wanted to maximize the benefit no matter what the options you have chosen. ( There isn’t an accountant on this planet who would have dared take the risk necessary to introduce such a radical concept as this Outlander PHEV.)
Using electricity to heat the passenger compartment while on the move is always going to reduce the range, that’s why when electric cars are introduced the manufacturers always choose somewhere like Spain, Portugal or Tunisia for the journalists to make the first test drive, never Glasgow! So it’s really swings and roundabouts as to whether there is any real benefit in having electric heating as well as ICE heating.
In my opinion from my experience in the last four months If you have a 7 mile commute to work then the Outlander PHEV is perfect for you. Yes you’ll use some petrol in the winter for heating, but then Mitsubishi recommends that you should run the ICE from time to time since the fuel can go off sitting in the tank for too long unused.
I have only filled up twice since I got the car in January and the tank is half full at the moment. I charge it when I get home faithfully. I have just installed a regular 16AMP ( for you that would be 13Amp) socket on the outside near the front door and I use the normal charging box that Mitsubishi supply to top the battery up every time I come home. Nothing fancy. The only time the ICE runs now, in May, is if I floor the pedal for some reason. Otherwise it is 100% electric.
Petrol. I don’t know what the Mitsubishi dealer filled the car with for delivery but when I filled up with Shell V Power at the first fill up the car was a totally different car. I’m a great believer in using quality fuel.
Anyway, the bottom line is that I doubt if anybody could answer your question since it would require two people to drive the exact same route together, one in a PHEV with resistive heating and one without resistive heating, and through 12 months of the year. It’s unlikely that anybody’s going to do that.
If you can leave the car plugged in overnight AND you are disciplined enough to set the heating to come on half an hour before you set off in the morning, then you might want to reconsider the decision to choose the version without resistive heating. But if like me you can’t leave it plugged in overnight or you simple would find it impossible to set the heating to come on half an hour before you set off then just enjoy the comfort of having a real heater in the car, even though it is electric, and think of the money you have saved by not going for the higher spec version.
There are many great things about the car…. Here’s a couple that I haven’t seen any journalist mention 1) passengers love it because there is absolutely no jerkiness ( there isn’t a gearbox, robotic or automatic) 2) it’s great at climbing curbs!
PS. Here’s what a friend of mine emailed to me on Sunday 25th of May, a few days after taking delivery of his PHEV. “What a GREAT car!
During our first long drive (beyond the electric capacity) I switched to the display that tells what is driving the car, expecting to see the petrol engine kick in, in case I would have doubts about whether I heard it starting or some other noise, only to find it was already running and driving the car! On the motorway we simply don’t hear the engine. Do you know how it starts? I’ve not heard a regular starter motor once.”
As you can see the operation of the heating system isn’t the only mystery.
