Mitsubishi PHEV

This year, though, the marketing spend is £20m, and Mitsubishi's ads will be back on the small screen. Suddenly, it has something to shout about: the Outlander PHEV plug-in hybrid SUV. There were two generations of Outlander prior to this one, neither of which received anything more exotic than internal combustion engines. The PHEV’s origins can instead be traced to the iMiEV, the five-door electric hatchback based on Mitsubishi’s ‘i’ kei car. Given how badly most ‘plug-in’ vehicles have been missing their sales targets of late, you might think that introducing another sounds like a gamble. Mitsubishi, like every car maker who has introduced a battery car of the current crop, would reply that its plug-in is different – the one to break through. But Mitsubishi argues with more compelling reasoning than we’re used to. The Outlander PHEV comes with a price relative to the diesel-engined mid-sized 4x4 standard and, says Mitsubishi, without a compromise elsewhere, while returning a claimed 148mpg. As it can expect no assistance from the petrol engine, the rear motor has been made more torque, developing 144lb ft, compared with the 101lb ft of the front motor. Both are fed by the 12kWh battery which is mounted between the axles and charged by the petrol engine (via a generator) in the Series Hybrid setting. The Outlander's front and rear trans axle transmissions each include single-speed reduction gearing for EV mode, although the front one is an all-new GKN Multi-Mode transmission with a hydraulic clutch engaging and disengaging whenever power is required directly from the engine. While the rear motor produces slightly more torque, the one at the front is assisted at times of need by a 119bhp 2.0-litre, four-cylinder petrol engine. Mitsubishi says the Outlander PHEV can cover 32.5 miles as an EV before tapping into its 45-litre fuel tank for an ‘extended’ range of around 500 miles.