Hi everyone, like many others I have been watching for a while and felt the urge to present myself and brag about my 40th birthday present: A 2018 GT Outlander PHEV
It's "give me a ticket" red, couldn't choose the color because I took the dealer's demo car, for a good price.
The upgrade is from an old 2005 Pontiac Montana SV6 Extended, it was on its last miles and became unreliable. The final stroke was last fall when I saw the front "spoiler" under the motor that was hanging halfway down - I drove it like that for a week or two, hoping it would simply fall off. But my garagist told me some bad news: that piece of plastic was held by a steel bracket, and that steel bracket held my radiator in place. Soooo..... Lose the steel bracket, lose the radiator! The estimated cost to fix it was over what the minivan was worth, so it was time to shop around.
I knew I wanted an electric/hybrid car, that was my main want on my list. Then I filtered out some possibilities, like the vehicule needed to be spacious (my 14 yo son is 6'2" and 250 pounds, so a normal car could have been a problem for him, my wife's Corolla is already showing). I also tossed out some way too expensive vehicles like the Tesla X, then came down to two finalists: The Mitsubishi PHEV or the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid.
The Mitsubishi PHEV came out a winner for us (despite the smaller grant for the Quebec gov, 4k$ vs 8k$) because, despite not having 7 seats like my old minivan (my teenagers don't follow us all at the same time anymore anyways), the PHEV offered more control on the electricity management, 4x4 wheels and towing capacity. The 1500 amps 110v outlets inside were the cherries on the cake.
Also, the main American automotive brands lost my trust since Pontiac shut down. I always feld that van was made to "look good and luxurious", but at the cheapest construction costs.
For now the learning curve is still steep, I still feel like I'm driving a spaceship! We took the towing hitch from the dealer, as it's my first towing-capable vehicle. We took that option vs the Pacifica thinking on long runs we could all fit in the PHEV and throw our luggage in a trailer - the trunk is now the dog's official seat, we bought a trunk sheet/cover on Amazon for that.
Right now, until we have a 240v charger installed, I charge with the supplied charger. Took me a few tries before figuring how to put it in 12A ;-) Living in Quebec (Montreal's south-shore) province and winters, I'm not too fond of leaving it on the ground at freezing temperatures and in the rain, so I try to at least place the module under the back of the PHEV, until I figure some way to protect it, maybe enclose it in a rubber bin or something. I'm also learning from the public charging points, right now I only used my university's in-parking level 2 charger, in about 2 hours the battery got filled to about 50% so I could get out of town on EV only, witch was my primary goal with this vehicle.
One of the gripes for now is the internal wifi range for the android app... it's so poor I have to be out of my house and in direct view of my PHEV to be able to talk to it. I saw some people use some wifi bridge or range extenders, I might try that.
All in all, I am very happy with my new toy, I feel like when I had my first car: always trying to find a reason to use the PHEV, be it to go get a pint of milk or just go check around town ;-)
