MITSUBISHI’S POPULAR PLUG-IN BUCKS EV INGENUITY
PHEV technology has capacity to reduce emissions 75 per cent, writes David Booth.
I’ve got to admit that cheating Big Oil can be fun. Not that you’d immediately recognize me as a (temporary) enviroweenie, the car I’ve been driving for the past four weeks being a pretty ordinary-looking Mitsubishi Outlander. And I have driven it a lot.
What was different was that up until yesterday my Outlander’s gas tank was still registering absolutely full. Oh, I had used a little fossil fuel in my travails — 1.5 L/100 km average over about 300 kilometres, according to the Eco Information readout — but not enough to dim a single one of the gas gauge’s 12 bars.
So, you’re thinking a little explanation is in order, right? Hundreds of kilometres of driving — city driving, no less — in an SUV and a claim of using no gas? What I failed to mention is that this particular Outlander is Mitsubishi’s PHEV version, a plug-in hybrid, which means that for the first 35 km driven, the compact SUV operates on battery power alone, its little 2.0-L four-banger along as backup just in case those 12 kilowatt-hours of lithium-ion run out of electrons.
I also cheated a little, I have to admit. On a couple of occasions when I had to venture beyond city limits — i.e., beyond those 35 km — I took another car. I did this, a) because I wanted to see what kind of long-term fuel economy I could achieve in the Outlander’s natural city environment and b) because, well, I had been having so much fun questing for maximum electrification that I hadn’t put any time in the new Bullitt Mustang that Ford had dropped off.
I was also afraid of finding out how far the PHEV’s fuel economy would plummet once it was running on gasoline only. I am a big fan of plug-in hybrids, but their weak point has always been the engine’s fuel economy once the battery is depleted. With all the extra drag — the batteries and electric motors add 350 kilograms to the Outlander’s curb weight — PHEVs tend to have worse highway fuel economy than their purely internal combustion engine (ICE)-driven counterparts.
Perhaps it’s because the Outlander’s battery and internalcombustion engine work better together. The Volt’s gas engine works only as a generator to replenish the battery, while the Mitsubishi’s 2.0-L engine can drive the front wheels directly. Whatever the case, the Outlander, maintained at the steady 120 km/ h I use for all my extraurban fuel-economy testing, returned a stalwart 8.0 L/100 km. Yes, that’s the same as the Volt, but the Chevy is a compact sedan while the Outlander is a mid-size faux-by-faux.
Part of the reason for the Mitsu’s efficiency is that not only can it operate as a full electric vehicle with all its motivating energy supplied by the battery, when the gas engine does kick in it can operate as either a series or a parallel hybrid.
For those not seeing the difference or its significance, a series PHEV is one in which the gas engine is used only to generate electricity to recharge the battery; it does not drive the wheels. The Chevy Volt is a prime example. A parallel hybrid will use both electric and gasoline motors to drive the wheels, often both at the same time. This is typical of many non-plugin hybrids, Honda’s first-gen Insight a common example. One of the benefits of having the parallel option available is that an ICE is at its most efficient at steady highway speeds.
Like all electric motors, the Mitsubishi’s two 80-hp motors are very efficient in stop-and-go traffic. At higher speeds, however, a gas engine is (relatively) more frugal. Indeed, that’s the benefit of a plug-in hybrid: it matches the most efficient powertrain to the type of driving. Which begs the seemingly (at least to me) obvious question: Why, exactly, are we rushing headlong into EVs when PHEVs such as the Outlander can cut as much as 75 per cent of our tailpipe emissions? I averaged about 1.5 L/100 km driving around town. Overall, my mileage was 3.1 L/100 km, split about 70/30 urban/highway, which is typical of North American driving habits. Certainly, from the pragmatic view of cost-effective emissions reduction, a PHEV would seem to make a lot more sense than a battery-powered alternative. Maybe that’s why the Outlander PHEV has become Mitsubishi Canada’s best-selling model in the past two months. We Canadians are nothing if not sensible.