Outlander – All about car

Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV stretches UK electric vehicle market lead The popular SUV leads both the outright sales chart and Q1 2019 figures Mitsubishi’s Outlander PHEV remains the best-selling electric vehicle in the UK, and tops the 2019 figures too despite being pushed hard by BMW’s 530e. According to the latest figures from the Department for Transport (DfT), Q1 2019 saw 1,602 Outlander PHEVs registered, compared to 1,550 BMW 530e registrations in the first three months of the year. In third place was BMW’s i3 – the combined figure for pure-electric, REX, i3, & i3s – with almost 1,000 units sold in Q1 2019. Three pure-electric models in the shape of the Jaguar I-Pace, Nissan Leaf, and Renault Zoe took positions 4-6 in the table, followed by PHEVs from the Mini Countryman Cooper S E, Range Rover Sport P400e, and Range Rover P400e rounding out the top 10. Looking at total sales, the 40,590 Outlander PHEVs on the road continues the SUVs long-running reign as the best-selling plug-in model in the UK. It’s a run that has stretched back four years to Q1 2015, the first set of figures from the DfT showing the Mitsubishi had overtaken the previous incumbent – Nissan’s Leaf. The Leaf continues in second spot overall, and the best-selling pure-electric model in the list, with 25,491 registrations by the end of March 2019. The DfT’s figures are always published a quarter behind where we are currently, so remain the latest set of figures open to evaluation. BMW’s 330e remains in third spot with more than 13,700 units, ahead of the i3 on almost 13,000 registrations, and the Mercedes Benz C 350e with more than 10,000 on the road. Fast movers in the sales table include the BMW 530e, which having only started seeing sales registered in Q1 2017, is now positioned in 7th spot outright just two years later on almost 9,750 units. Mini’s Countryman Cooper S E has also climbed quickly, in 11th place in the table with more than 3,800 units, despite no figures for it from the DfT until Q2 2017. Jaguar’s I-Pace has sold almost 1,700 units by the end of Q1 2019, despite only seeing three models registered in Q1 2018 – its first appearance on the table. JLR stablemate, the Range Rover P400e has identical sales figures, having only been on sale from Q4 2017. The identically powered Range Rover Sport is less than 20 units behind its larger Land Rover sibling, having gone on sale at the same time, with the two PHEVs split only by the VW e-Golf, which is one unit behind the I-Pace and Range Rover P400e on 1,679. It has been on sale since Q3 2014 though. The range-extended LEVC TX black cab continues to perform strongly in a short space of time, with almost 1,550 registered since Q4 2017, and unsurprisingly, Hyundai’s Kona Electric has almost 450 registrations, having only seen its first units appear in Q3 2018’s figures. Looking forward, Audi’s e-tron pure-electric SUV sold 63 units in Q1 2019, despite not having been on sale for the whole three months, so it will be interesting to see how well that does in the next quarter’s figures. The Kia e-Niro will likely have a few units on its figures too, and the Kona Electric & I-Pace are expected to continue their rapid growth. At a manufacturer level, BMW leads the way, with almost 46,000 units, a combined total from a large number of vehicles – the 225xe, 330e, 530e, 740e, i3, i8, and X5 40e. By contrast, Mitsubishi is in second place with more than 40,500 units, predominantly thanks to the Outlander PHEV and a couple of hundred i-MiEVs. Third is Nissan, just shy of 29,000 units thanks mainly to the Leaf, though with almost 3,500 e-NV200’s supporting that figure. VW is in fourth with a mixture of models – e-Golf, e-up!, Golf GTE, and Passat GTE – followed by Tesla’s all-electric line-up of Model S and Model X – plus a few Roadsters for good measure. It’s worth remembering that Tesla’s Model 3 has only just arrived in the UK, and therefore won’t appear in any significant number until Q3 2019’s figures. Looking at manufacturing groups, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance is dominant in the UK market in terms of electric cars, with more than 79,500 units built up primarily from the Outlander PHEV, Leaf, and Renault Zoe. The BMW Group is second on a little under 50,000 units, with Mini’s Countryman Cooper S E added to those sales from BMW, and the VW Group is third on over 20,000 units, adding in Audi and Porsche figures to VW’s sales. In total, there are just over 200,000 electric vehicles on the DfT’s Q1 2019 figures, of which 68% are PHEVs and 32% pure-EVs. Almost 120 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are included in the total.
Origin: Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV stretches UK electric vehicle market lead

2019 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEVChris Balcerak / Driving OVERVIEW A truly frugal SUV PROSFuel economy, fuel economy, and fuel economy CONSDated infotainment system, poor Bluetooth call quality VALUE FOR MONEYExcellent WHAT TO CHANGE?I could always use more battery range, and an updated infotainment system wouldnt go remiss HOW TO SPEC IT?As is Mitsubishi would seem to be an unlikely choice for plug-in poster child of the year, what with Tesla grabbing headlines, Nissan having long deemed the Leaf its corporate future, and even Volvo — newcomer to environmentally-conscious set — fitting the word “electrified” into seemingly every public relations missive it releases. All have long-standing reputations for technological innovation, and RD budgets that Mitsubishi engineers can only dream about. And yet Mitsubishi’s Outlander PHEV is not only the most popular plug-in hybrid SUV in Canada, but also the most popular plug-in hybrid of any kind in the land. Nor is this some sort of localized anomaly, we Canadians adopting an otherwise shunned ugly duckling that the rest of the world ignores. The Outlander PHEV is also the most popular plug-in hybrid in Europe, selling more than 100,000 units since its introduction in 2013, and in Britain — which we’ll have to start delineating as a result of Brexit — it’s been the best selling plug-in, hybrid, or electric of any kind for the last three years running. Mitsubishi has moved over 200,000 Outlander PHEVs in the last five years, making it the most popular plug-in hybrid in the world. Why has the Outlander PHEV become the third best-selling — 432 units last month — Mitsubishi in the land? It resides, after all, in a segment — plug-in hybrids — that hasn’t, unlike EVs and conventional hybrids, captured the imagination of North American consumers. Chevrolet, for instance, has abandoned the Volt. Toyota, king of the hybrid segment, struggles to move the plug-in version of its otherwise popular Prius. Plug-in hybrids from other manufacturers are more easily counted on fingers than computers. Why is Mitsubishi — whose only other foray into the electrified world, the i-MiEV, was (at the very kindest) a bit player in the EV segment — sitting atop the plug-in world? Well, the most obvious answer is it’s a plug-in SUV, the trendiest body style du jour. It’s also, at least by plug-in standards, the cheapest SUV in the land; its $43,498 slots less than the Chevrolet Bolt and Hyundai Kona Electric, both of which are econoboxes with, depending on your intended use, range issues. More importantly, the Outlander is a trendy, (relatively) inexpensive plug-in SUV that delivers. To wit: I’ve now driven the Outlander twice, for a total of two months, in winter and summer. For all the kilometres I’ve driven — probably 5,000 so far — Mitsubishi’s PHEV has exceeded expectations. For instance, in my first foray during the dog days of last summer, I spent most of my time prowling downtown Toronto, the Outlander’s 35 kilometres of electric-only range enough that the PHEV’s little 2.0-litre inline-four had only consumed one bar — about four litres — of gasoline in the first week of commuting. That required a little dedication — regularly seeking out charging stations being the most troublesome — but the reward was a dashboard blinking 1.5 L/100 kilometres as my overall fuel economy. If that doesn’t grab your attention, then consider this: I had barely used one-tenth of the 43 litres of fossil fuel the Outlander carries on board. If I had restricted my commute to the gym with occasional forays to the office — where we at Driving have charging stations! — I could’ve gone almost 2,500 kilometres between gas station visits. Eventually, I did have to venture beyond the Mitsu’s 35-kilometre EV range, and here again, the electrified Outlander surprised me. Cruising down the highway, cruise control set at a steady 130 km/h — i.e. very little regenerative braking to replenish the battery — the PHEV still managed an entirely creditable 7.2 L/100 kilometres, largely the result one presumes of the efficiency of its Atkinson-cycle engine. Relying almost exclusively on electricity in town, and then delivering better-than-average fuel economy when venturing beyond EV mode, is very much the PHEV promise delivered. The fact that it’s all accomplished with the utility of an SUV is just what popularizes the message. More recently, I put a 2019 Outlander PHEV through its paces during this past spring (that turned back to winter, on some days). A tad chilly it was, and as everyone who’s ever driven anything battery-powered knows, lithium-ion and sub-zero temperatures are not the best of friends. Battery range is reduced, heating cabin and occupants depleting free electrons faster than Elon Musk can delete an (unverified) tweet. In fact, so much energy does heating the cabin require that Mitsubishi, like many hybrid manufacturers, has determined that firing up the gasoline
Origin: SUV Review: 2019 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV