What Have You Done To Your PHEV Today?

[gwatpe]

The petrol gauge does not have an equal number of steps above and below half way. As the tank empties there are more steps, so you don't notice the fuel level dropping in jumps, as much.

 

[greendwarf]

Actually I've been a bit disappointed over the last couple of days: in the lower temperatures the ICE has come on quite a lot just for ordinary running:

Hmmm, interesting. This morning it was cold and I was stunned to hear ICE running when I drove off. Full EV charge, no heater, no elec seat heater nor heated windscreen. Just radio and lights. I'll keep an ear open see if it happens again. Don't know when ICE turned off finished 96%EV but journey always 100% EV. I know you had heater on, but recall you also have the 4 with electric heater too. Curious.

I'm no engineer but I've been driving for almost 50 years - so I would expect that the ICE would have to be "warmed up" in cold weather so as to able to "instantly" start & supply power, when needed. :?:

 

[maby]

There is a danger of getting a bit paranoid about this, guys. Mitsubishi designers never received a brief that said "never burn any petrol until the battery is flat"... They will have been told to create a comfortable, performant car with low running costs - if their modelling indicated that it was useful to turn on the petrol engine sometimes even with a near full battery, they will have felt free to do so. You guys are imposing an almost arbitrary rule that it should be possible to drive the car for 10,000 miles without ever having the engine start. If it is that important to you, then you should have bought a Tesla - that will definitely not burn any petrol!

 

[jdsx]

There is a danger of getting a bit paranoid about this, guys. Mitsubishi designers never received a brief that said "never burn any petrol until the battery is flat"... They will have been told to create a comfortable, performant car with low running costs - if their modelling indicated that it was useful to turn on the petrol engine sometimes even with a near full battery, they will have felt free to do so. You guys are imposing an almost arbitrary rule that it should be possible to drive the car for 10,000 miles without ever having the engine start. If it is that important to you, then you should have bought a Tesla - that will definitely not burn any petrol!

Sure maby, I only said I was 'a bit disappointed'! I had read similar things in the Dutch forum before I got the car, so I wasn't completely unaware. I guess I was expecting the engine to start up when it was cold in order to run the heater for a while, but at 5-7 degrees (outside) I wasn't expecting it to be running most of the time (on a half-hour journey). Below freezing is a different matter, of course! I would have bought a Tesla if I could afford one :lol:

 

[maby]

... I would have bought a Tesla if I could afford one :lol:

... and the next time you needed to do a long journey, you would be spending hours planning a route that would offer a charging station every couple of hundred miles! :twisted:

 

[Stu]

... I would have bought a Tesla if I could afford one :lol:

... and the next time you needed to do a long journey, you would be spending hours planning a route that would offer a charging station every couple of hundred miles! :twisted:

....and all the Nissan Leaf drivers will hate you for blocking their rapid chargers.

 

[aitchjaybee]

There is a danger of getting a bit paranoid about this, guys. Mitsubishi designers never received a brief that said "never burn any petrol until the battery is flat"... They will have been told to create a comfortable, performant car with low running costs - if their modelling indicated that it was useful to turn on the petrol engine sometimes even with a near full battery, they will have felt free to do so. You guys are imposing an almost arbitrary rule that it should be possible to drive the car for 10,000 miles without ever having the engine start. If it is that important to you, then you should have bought a Tesla - that will definitely not burn any petrol!

Very misleading maby, quite an unfair post of yours.

You are very opinionated about what other people should do and think, taking a couple of discussion comments and inflating them beyond belief. "10,000 miles without using petrol" wasn't anywhere near what we were discussing. If the engine starts in ususual situations, where it hasn't under same situation and conditions in the past, I would like to understand why and that's a fair comment to make.

 

[maby]

There is a danger of getting a bit paranoid about this, guys. Mitsubishi designers never received a brief that said "never burn any petrol until the battery is flat"... They will have been told to create a comfortable, performant car with low running costs - if their modelling indicated that it was useful to turn on the petrol engine sometimes even with a near full battery, they will have felt free to do so. You guys are imposing an almost arbitrary rule that it should be possible to drive the car for 10,000 miles without ever having the engine start. If it is that important to you, then you should have bought a Tesla - that will definitely not burn any petrol!

Very misleading maby, quite an unfair post of yours.

You are very opinionated about what other people should do and think, taking a couple of discussion comments and inflating them beyond belief. "10,000 miles without using petrol" wasn't anywhere near what we were discussing. If the engine starts in ususual situations, where it hasn't under same situation and conditions in the past, I would like to understand why and that's a fair comment to make.

Hey, humour challenged! I was being somewhat facetious, but I stand by my point - the design criteria will have been to produce a fuel efficient car, not to produce a car that doesn't burn petrol. If I had implemented the software (and I used to do similar), I would be making use of fuzzy logic techniques - the car will not have hard and fast rules, it will be programmed with objectives and will be processing a wide range of metrics through some fuzzy algorithms to decide how best to do the things you are asking of it through the controls. A minor variation in one of those metrics could lead it to choose a significantly different solution. Reduced temperature reduces battery performance. Others have already suggested that it may include an objective of pre-heating the engine if it thinks there is a chance that it is going to need it in a hurry. Such a pre-heat will take a lot longer in cold weather than in warm weather - that engine starts and stops very quietly - how sure are you that it hasn't run the engine for 30 seconds on previous warmer days but is now having to run it for several minutes to get the same effect?

How about battery conditioning? Our Prius would decide every week or so to run its battery almost completely flat and then charge it back up to full. A Prius only takes a few minutes to fully recharge its small battery - an Outlander could take far longer.

My post was meant to be facetious, not insulting, but I do maintain that it is not realistic to question the behaviour of such a complex system at such a fine level of detail. You will find that your fuel economy is going to be a lot worse in the cold weather than in warm weather - it may well drop off again in hot weather as the hybrid systems have to protect themselves from overheating. I guess all computer systems are ultimately deterministic, but one of this complexity and with so many inputs is going to be almost impossible to predict with certainty. And lets not rule out the possibility that the programmers have not got it absolutely right either! The software will have enough feedback to produce the expected results on the road, but may not always choose the most fuel efficient way of doing it.

 

[gwatpe]

The SAVE and CHARGE buttons do allow drivers to tailor the way the PHEV works to be so much more than a pure EV. Hybrid tech will continue to satisfy my driving needs, as recharging options really only work in smaller countries with high population density and economies of scale recharging options, all of which are in short supply in regional Australia.

 

[maby]

OK - follow-up...
I took my wife to the station this morning - leaving the house just after 6am. It was dark and the thermometer showed 8 degrees outside. I keep the climate control turned on and set to 20 degrees. The car turned the headlights on automatically and ran the windscreen wipers for a while to get the dew off. The battery was fully charged - had been on charge the previous evening. It's a GX4h, so it has electric heating. The engine started as soon as I moved off and ran for about a minute, possibly two. Then it turned off and the rest of the journey was done on battery.

I'm sure the deciding factor was the heating - I think the control system decided to burn some petrol to get the temperature up quickly and to preheat the engine so that it could be sure of firing it up quickly if required. As an aside, I was surprised how noisy a cold Outlander engine is - and it still has less than 350 miles on the clock, so it is certainly not worn out!

 

[phevmike]

I think my Rolec charge unit has packed up. The fuse keeps tripping so I can't charge my car. Neither the installer or Rolec are open till Monday

 

[david1972]

Sorry to hear that mike.....let us know once you know what's up please.

Today I've found this as an alternative to the poor excuse of a rear bumper protector that mitsi offer us...



At under £12, I think I'm going to give it a go. Looks quite tasty, the carbon fibre effect. Had the dogs in the back for the first time today and they kindly put a couple of light but long scratches on the bumper. Will be using my magical meguairs ultimate compound to remove them tomorrow

 

[Amsy]

I had the same issue this morning - car fully charged , evo mode, heating and radio off, but it still started using the ICE for a short while - I don't think its an unreasonable question to put out there - especially it if helps us to understand our phev a little more.

On a different note, my car EV range showed 37 miles after a full night charge - nothing has significant changed in my driving pattern - but I've noticed it getting better with each day...maybe it's my own learning curve (regen etc) but curious to know what the highest EV range people have see!?!

What have I done today ? Spent more money on cleaning products (this time at Halfords) - all set for tomorrow's 6 hour clean & polish mission!

 

[gwatpe]

I have spent more time adding km to someone else's PHEV. A replacement for my own, still no solution from Mitsubishi Japan re what is wrong, is being negotiated.

Not that it has any meaning, I have a photo of the battery range of my PHEV as calculated by the car at 88km. Can still only get about 40-45km of driving range by the odometer. It really depends on how the car was driven before the last recharge.

 

[smashy]

It's not what I've done, but what I'm going to do..... and that is clean the Phev this morning with all those lovely autoglym products I got when I got the paint care with the car... it'll keep me going for hours if I use everything !!! 3 days in and I'm very impressed with the car, more so than yesterday.... just need my tight fisted lot at work to install the electrical point at work like they said !!!

 

[greendwarf]

Sorry to hear that mike.....let us know once you know what's up please.

Today I've found this as an alternative to the poor excuse of a rear bumper protector that mitsi offer us...



At under £12, I think I'm going to give it a go. Looks quite tasty, the carbon fibre effect. Had the dogs in the back for the first time today and they kindly put a couple of light but long scratches on the bumper. Will be using my magical meguairs ultimate compound to remove them tomorrow

You're right, David, more practical & cheaper that the "flip-out" flap that I paid £14.95 for - link please?

 

[aitchjaybee]

David, +1 please. Boot liner is good BTW. I found this but it's for ASX not outlander? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Carbon-Style-Bumper-Protector-Mitsubishi/dp/B00CBIPIG0
Best
H
Edit - found it on fleabay...hadn't realised it was adhesive stuck down. Can't do that with my lease car.

 

[david1972]

David, +1 please. Boot liner is good BTW. I found this but it's for ASX not outlander? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Carbon-Style-Bumper-Protector-Mitsubishi/dp/B00CBIPIG0
Best
H
Edit - found it on fleabay...hadn't realised it was adhesive stuck down. Can't do that with my lease car.

Mine is lease too, but I'm going to ring them to check they are happy with me 'adding value' to their car....can't see why not to be honest.

I'll get the link up after I've had lunch....just spent the morning giving the big beauty it's first wash my god it's big haha

 

[david1972]

Linky:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/271619622829?_trksid=p2060778.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

[Red47]

Used a rapid charger for the first time yesterday at Grantham Services while we had a cup of tea. The charge didn't last long on the A1 but the petrol saved probably paid for the tea!

Today, I tried to use a public charge point at a pay & display car park but it was out-of-service. It looked liked vandalism as the socket covers had been snapped off.

I'm only getting 16 miles out of the battery during my daily commute on country roads so I'm going to try B5 re-gen setting tomorrow.