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Riding high – Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV 4h long term review 2

The latest update on our long term Mitsubishi Outlander
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20 March 2019

The Outlander has been with us for three months now and is proving a comfortable car to drive – great cabin space, automatic, high riding SUV-style position good visibility and very helpful parking cameras – a must for avoiding high curbs.

Town driving is comfortable and with good visibility and being automatic and a high riding position, you feel relaxed and cocooned from the outside by low cabin noise levels.

If making a short journey in a congested area, the electric charge will last about 20 miles – so useful for short jaunts, although if driving in 40 mph areas my advice is to switch to petrol.

However, 70mph on the motorway is extremely relaxing – purrs along.

As for fuel economy, we are getting 31mpg on the combined cycle and on a mixture of electric and “normal” setting petrol – so recharging battery on braking – 55 mph can be achieved without too much difficulty. On the motorway and running on engine then we are getting a return of 35mpg.

If you set to charge the fuel consumption does suffer – so best to charge at home and use

Overall we are enjoying the space – roomy boot and rear seat distance is excellent, the split drop down seats allow for an enormous cargo area.

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We are enjoying the space the Outlander offers

Current mileage is 2815 and our long-termer features the new 2.4-litre petrol engine, up from 2.0-litres on the previous model.

This latest engine in the 2019 Outlander PHEV provides greater economy thanks to sophisticated switching between Otto and Atkinson cycle modes.

The new engine certainly makes the Outlander extremely quiet and smooth to drive. In fact it’s impressively relaxed because of that.

And that’s definitely the way we like to drive the Mitsubishi. Go beyond unhurried and relaxed and the Outlander gets a bit flustered. Accelerate and the engine looks for higher revs and becomes all rather fussy.

But keep the Mitsubishi flowing along and it all remains highly refined. This is helped by the improved chassis stiffness introduced on MY 2019 Outlander along with suspension tweaks – it all means the Outlander PHEV makes a good fist of ignoring potholes and bumps in the road and maintaining an air of good natured composure.

As mentioned, in full EV mode, the daily commute is around 20 miles. There is a switch on the central tunnel marked EV which ensures you stay fully zero emission to do this.

If the engine and battery have been updated, then the charging port has not. This remains a more elderly Type 1 socket. Not that it really matters.

We’ve been able to easily charge the Outlander’s battery using the home three-pin circuitry (no blowing of fuses and so on).

However, the Outlander also has regenerative braking; instead of ‘wasting’ energy generated when you stand on the brakes, the energy is used to top up the battery instead. It’s effective too, allowing you to use ‘hybrid’ mode on longer journeys effectively.

If we have one issue there do seem to be a lot of different buttons you can push which can seem a little overwhelming if you’re into just driving rather than engaging with the tech.

img 20181221 131316Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV 2.4 4h auto 4WD

  • P11D value – £39,445
  • Power – 135bhp
  • Torque – 211Nm
  • Transmission – four-wheel drive automatic
  • Engine – 2.4 litre MIVEC Atkinson cycle petrol engine with 13.8kWh capacity lithium ion battery
  • Top speed – 106mph
  • 0-62mph – 10.5s
  • CO2 emissions – 46g/km
  • Official mpg – 52.1mpg (no battery engine only) / 159.5mpg (Weighted Combined MPG including battery EV running)
  • Test mpg – 57.5mpg
  • Company car tax band 2017/18 – 13%

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