460 mile with plug-in hybrid-Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV

Now I have made a trip that this car is not really intended for. We made a trip to Kalix for Christmas celebrations. The trip was 460 miles and took 8.5 hours. We packed the car full of suitcases and gifts, the boot swallowed it all very well. Our children (4 and 7 years old) were placed in the the back seat in booster seats. The space in the back is a little worse than in our Subaru Legacy station wagon from 2010. It gets pretty crowded for an adult to sit in the middle between the booster seats.  In the front seats my wife and I sits very comfortable . I’m very happy with the choice to not have full leather seats, I have not yet felt the need to keep the heat on in the front seats. The Comfort Tech fabric seems to work. In our old Subaru with full leather seats I had the heat constantly on so as not to freeze.

My wife always has cold hands and she´s loving the steering wheel heater. In the tray between the front seats there is a USB outlet where we plug in a USB flash drive with music which can be controlled from the radio. When we get tired of the music we  hook up my smartphone with Spotify via Bluetooth and it works very well to control with the radio.

In the tray between the front seats, there is also a 12 volt outlet where we plug in charger for cell phones and DVD players. Unfortunately a fuse had gone in our house during the night so the car was not fully loaded at startup. Since the battery capacity is not enough to run on electric drive the whole journey I try to save it by pressing the Save button and start the electric power only at distances where the petrol engine would consume the most, such as slopes and city driving.

The car feels solid and stable and there are no problems overtaking on a slushy E4. The acceleration is actually really good, something I was a bit worried before I bought the car. Since the range of the electric drive is about 30 miles, this is not a stretch when the car is performing its best. I stop along the road at a gas station to fill it up with petrol, the consumption is around 8 lit/100 km (35 mpg) It had probably been a little better if the battery has been fully charged from the beginning. The car is fully loaded and it’s winter so the capacity of the battery is reduced, moreover, we are charging DVD players, mobile phones and listening to the radio and that also consumes electricity.

I’ve now been running 620 miles totally in this car and I notice that the studded winter tyres Pirelli Winter Carve Edge is not the tyres to recommend for this car. The noise from the wheels are too strong. The question is, however, if it is the brand of the tires that matter. I have had contact with a guy who also recently bought a Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid and he had Good Year studded tires on his car that he immediately switched for friction tyres due to the noise. So maybe friction tires is recommended for this car model. It´s a pity that the tires are going to ruin the whole experience.

The wait is over – My hybrid car is delivered!

For two weeks i´ve been waiting for the winter wheels that I ordered separately to arrive and last Friday they were delivered to me.
I contacted Emil at Thunbergs Car in Soderhamn to schedule a time to fit the winter wheels.
On Tuesday morning we met again to sign the final papers and to get some information and getting started tips. Everything was working fine until we tried to pair the Mitsubishi's Outlander PHEV smartphone app to the car´s wifi. The app is used to with wifi control loading timer, reprogram time charge to start or monitor the charging cycle with your phone. You can also activate the function that cools or heats the Interior. Suitable in the winter if you want a warm car before your journey. No matter how we tried we did not get the app to sync with the car's wifi. Thunbergs Car is going to contact Mitsubishi who hopefully will solve it.

Today I´m going on a trip to Gavle, around 90 km along the motorway. Unfortunately, it seems that I ordered the winter wheels from hell! Now that I have got a quiet car it is the tyres are making a lot of noise. I really hope that there is some running-in problems with the tires and that they get better with time. Too bad that the tires are ruining the overall experience. When I was about to buy the tires I was looking specifically for tires that wouldn't make that much noise. I ordered Pirelli Winter Carving Edge. There is a resonance noise that increases with speed. We'll see how it develops. The car is not quite fully charged when I leave for Gavle and after about 35 km the battery meter starts getting closer to the bottom. It is about 5 degrees (C) below zero out there so the petrol engine is warming the Interior every now and then. I start the stereo to dampen some of the wheel noice and after fiddeling with the sound setup of the stereo, I think the sound from stereo sounds really good even though I haven't got the Rockford Fosgate package in my model. The rest of the trip, I use the paddles behind the steering wheel to set the Brake Energy Regeneration System that recharges the battery. It works well to use as engine breaking and to recover energy when driving down-hill or to reduce speed before an exit or similar. I stop at a gravel pit to take some pictures of the car, then I quickly move on, I´m in a little bit of a hurry today. All in all, I drive 200 kilometers this day and I have no possibility to charge the car during the day.

The next day begins with a fully charged battery since I charged the car during the night. At first I do mostly highway driving, about 50 km, then a little city driving in 10 km. I'm going to photograph a house for sale in Stugsund outside Söderhamn. Then I drive back home again, it'll be about 100 km in total. I look at the average MPG meter and it reads 47 MPG. If this is good or bad I don´t know, it takes a little more time to evaluate it and maybe see how much petrol I have to refuel in a month. It's not in those longer distances that the car perfoms the best fuel economy and low consumption, it is the short commuter journeys under 50 km which is the optimal distance. 47mpg is roughly the same as my previous car Subaru Legacy Diesel used . However, it is a smaller car than the Mitsubishi Outlander.

UPDATE 14 January 2016

It is now completely confirmed that Mitsubishi Remote App is not compatible with Samsung S6 and S5 mini. It is certainly more phones that don't work but these are the two I tried with no success. Ever since I could pick up my Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV in december and then the seller failed to match the car with my phone, I have repeatedly tried to get it to work. I got some time at the workshop in order to check it, and yesterday I got the vehicle back with the answer that Mitsubishi has not yet done the phone compatible because it is too new (released in april 2015). Mitsubishi Sweden had no help or a good answer to give. Dealer Thunbergs car is obviously distraught that they were unable to solve it and that they have not been informed that some phones do not work. I have managed to match the car with my Ipad Air 1 and my old mobile phone Sony Xperia Z1 without problems.

Mitsubishi Remote App is, at least in Sweden, a very important part of the operation and ownership of the car. It is with the app and ONLY with it you can start for the heater in the car. It starts the heating system in your car and warming up the car so that you have a hot car to get to winter time. In the summer the AC started using the app. It is incredibly poorly by Mitsubishi that does not have a working solution for one of the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer. They should inform their dealers if the limitation it poses for the buyer if they have a Samsung or any other model that does not work.

  What´s new on the Outlander PHEV 2016?

Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid by the model year 2016 claims to have 100 updates. But what are they really? A lot of it are just garnish with chrome details and different materials used. Others are parts of the engine that has been updated. The former model has been quite anonymous and Mitsubishi has therefore updated the bodywork and called it “Dynamic Shield”. I like it since I wasn’t so fond of the previous model’s design. The front has been updated with a new grille with chrome and the rear looks wider than its predecessor and it has red glass on the rear lights instead of the previous white.  The Interior has been updated with more comfortable chairs, new leather interior of higher quality, goggles pocket in the roof, enhanced graphics on the display, Auto-Dimming Rearview Mirror, LED interior lighting , the heated steering wheel is new and 360-degree rear view camera as well. In order to increase the comfort Mitsubishi has updated the suspension and body rigidity, tires and rims are new. The car has better insulation at different places and better sound-proofed windows has been installed.The window defroster has been improved.