Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Electric Cars

Bringing the post back to the first page. Interesting it was on page three after only 6 weeks.

Last weekend we put a $1000 refundable deposit on the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, I feel the front looks pretty ugly, but it has good reviews and seems very practical and is comfortable. Not a lot of money to put down and refundable if we see something better before we get it in about 18 months to 2 years.

It will be interesting to see how it goes being charged from home and mainly being driven as just an EV. It will also be interesting to take the Outlander to Sydney from Canberra and see what it actually gets on a highway, the dealers say about 5L/100km running on the petrol engine in its one gear with the electric motor just kicking in every now and then up hills.

The good points;
• It will charge up in 12 hours on a standard power point with no hard wired charging unit,
• It will do 83km without petrol so for her general shopping it will use no petrol,
• It has a 10 year warranty
• The fixed price servicing for 10 years is $299 for most years, $399 for a couple and $799 for 5 and 10, All up about $4,000 for 10 years of fixed price service is a lot cheaper than the Skoda’s are.
• With the right charging setup it will charge in 4 hours and can run our house for up to 9 days in a power failure,
• It has a standard 240V power point in the back, so I could take it somewhere with some of my electric tools like my drop saw and use it.
• It is very comfy to drive.
• I really like the 3D camera view showing you exactly what is around the car including behind a trailer if I was reversing one in tricky spots.
• It has excellent reviews.

The bad points;
• The waiting list went from 9 months to 2 years last week,
• The cost is $70,000 and with floor mats, tow bar etc. we got it close to $80,000,
• It feels rather big.
• Really I found it rather boring to drive.

So expensive and boring but extremely practical and driven mainly on battery it will be cheap to run plus very cheap to service. My wife was not happy when I said it is not that exciting to drive at all, she said cars are supposed to be practical, why do you want everything to be fun. I also feel the dealers 9 days running the house is an exaggeration, we use about 15kwh most days so I think just over a day, however I would hope in a power failure we would only use essential items.

My son has a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid and it is quite interesting to think about the differences between the RAV4 Hybrid and Outlander PHEV. Toyota sells Plug in Hybrids everywhere else but here The Hybrid RAV4 is selling extremely well and has a two year waiting list, talking to the sales people the issue is making a car a plug in adds a lot to the cost. Toyota Australia feels based on the cost of it they would have to rebadge it as a Lexus because the public would not accept a Toyota that expensive.

If I was to describe the RAV4 I would say a petrol FWD car with a small battery and electric motors on the back making it a AWD when needed, basically a petrol car with an extra 50KG of motors and battery to use in full EV mode under 30kph in stop start traffic give it and when extra power is needed saying petrol with the electric motors taking some load.

Where the Outlander I would say is an electric AWD car with a petrol engine to charge the batteries as required. However the petrol motor is linked to the front wheels and used to drive them at highway speeds using a single speed gearbox which is geared like top gear in a standard petrol car.

So completely different to me, both good but different.

My sons RAV4 Hybrid seems to be getting around 4.7L/100 and cost about $2,500 more than the non-Hybrid version. So seems worth the extra money as he will save that money easily in a couple of years and I do like how it comes up our driveway in EV mode making no noise, I hear it cut out as he slows down to enter our street.

The Outlander is about $16K more than the non-Hybrid version, so harder to justify as it would take 10 years to use that much petrol in the Octavia. People say PHEV’s are too expensive, a 13KWH Tesla power wall is $16,000 and the Outlander has a 20KWH battery plus motors etc. that a power wall doesn’t have, so it is cheap for the additional components in it. But I do agree based on it taking 10 years to pay off and most people not keeping cars that long I understand what most people are buying standard petrol cars still.

I do wonder how well the RAV4 would sell if it was a PHEV and about $13,000 more than the standard Hybrid setup. I feel Toyota might be right and it will not sell anywhere near as well.