Outlander PHEV - 65% battery health after 4 years

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › Outlander PHEV - 65% battery health after 4 years - reasonable?

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#2734130 25-Jun-2021 10:23

The dealership have escalated it to Mitsubishi NZ as they feel the levels were lower than expected. I will be pushing both for a resolution.

Depending on the outcome of this - my next car may very well be a diesel, particularly if the range drops to 50% within 5 years.

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#2734135 25-Jun-2021 10:28

Sounds like quite a lot of cycles. Do you have an actual charge cycle count from the battery diagnostics?

I wouldn't expect 80% pure EV use to be typical for a hybrid like this.

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#2734137 25-Jun-2021 10:38

I’ll check when I get home - I’ve got the raw dump from the battery management system. It’s been a daily commuter so the lion share has been done within EV range.
I also have a Prius V that’s rolled over to 100k km - it’s milage is pretty much the same as when we brought it (although quite a different system/technology).

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#2734149 25-Jun-2021 10:53

Dairyxox:
Sounds like quite a lot of cycles. Do you have an actual charge cycle count from the battery diagnostics?

I wouldn't expect 80% pure EV use to be typical for a hybrid like this.

Because with small battery of the hybrid it will charge and discharge all the time

This is one of the reasons I've stayed away from hybrids but not the only reason

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#2734221 25-Jun-2021 11:37

Batman:
Dairyxox:

Sounds like quite a lot of cycles. Do you have an actual charge cycle count from the battery diagnostics?

I wouldn't expect 80% pure EV use to be typical for a hybrid like this.

Because with small battery of the hybrid it will charge and discharge all the time

This is one of the reasons I've stayed away from hybrids but not the only reason

I think there is a very large range of "typical" for a hybrid, and 80% EV use is well within that range.

Someone could drive an Outlander PHEV as a non-plugin HEV without ever bothering to plug it in, and use around 5.5 to 6 L/100km of petrol in city driving, which is still quite a lot better than a non-hybrid Outlander would achieve. At the other extreme, never making long trips and always charging, the petrol used would be under 0.5 L/100km but the battery would degrade faster. (Avoiding any petrol at all is impractical: the car turns on the engine as needed to enforce a minimum of 15 litres added to the tank every 90 days, primarily to avoid fuel going stale.) I'm somewhere in between these two scenarios, currently at 1.2 L/100km over 3.5 years of use.

I agree the small battery is a major negative for hybrids. I knew of that when buying one, but I knew what my typical use between full charges would be, kept my expectations realistic (e.g. staying over 25-30 km range and under 1.5 L/100km as long as possible, hopefully several years), and so far it has met them.

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#2734285 25-Jun-2021 13:32

I would say it is unreasonable, and would fail the test of "Acceptable quality" under the consumer guarantees act.

I would be trying my luck through relevant court / tribunal if Mitsubishi don't come to the party with a remedy.

You paid a substantial amount for the vehicle (Prior to the late 2018 price cuts these car weren't cheap - $67,990 for the VRX), This was a massive premium over the base petrol out lander (Cira $32k), and it is reasonable to expect it to last for a decent amount of time.

This is a two part issues:

How long is it reasonable for the traction battery in your PHEV to last. I don't think anybody will be arguing that 4 years / 80,000km is acceptable life. Key points here:

A 8 year, 160,000km is common warranty period for both PHEV and EV batteries. Example Ioniq Plug in hybrid: https://www.hyundai.co.nz/electric-cars/ioniq-phev/specifications
From wayback machine, we can see that Mitsubishi offered the same warranty in 2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20170413021856/https://www.mmnz.co.nz/assets/NewFolder-3/MMNZ-PHEV-JCE17-V2-Book.pdf
Currently Mitsubishi NZ state: "Please note; the battery is not a service item which is expected to need replacement during the vehicle's life and replacement is not included in your PHEV's maintenance schedule." https://www.mmnz.co.nz/warranty/plug-in-hybrid-warranty/
Having a component that is not expected to need replacement in the vehicles life, degraded to such a point where there is substantial range loss in just 4 years isn't consistent with the battery lasting the 15+ year expected life of the vehicle. (noting that Mitsubishi offer 10 year power train warranties.

Is 65% an acceptable level of deterioration? Mitsubishi may argue the yes it is fine, and your vehicle still operates as when your purchased, abet with reduced electric range. I disagree for the following reasons:

70% is the most common warrenty threshold in the EV space. - Used by the nissan leaf.
At 65% health, your EV range will be quite substantially reduced from what was advertised to you are a new car. - Fair argument that if the car isn't delivering on what you would expect as a reasonable consumer.
Decay trend (if linear) don't suggest the battery will come close to lasting the life of the vehicle.
There are reports of 2.0 Outlander PHEV's with degraded batteries that don't have enough capacity to buffer the difference between engine output and motor output on demanding roads like Napier to taupo.

Hopefully Mitsubishi come to the party and put a new traction pack in your car... Poorly engineered traction packs that degrade quickly reflect poorly on their brand, and EV's as a whole

Batman:

Because with small battery of the hybrid it will charge and discharge all the time

This is one of the reasons I've stayed away from hybrids but not the only reason

This is something that can be engineered around. Other hybrids, both plug in and non plug in have battery life roughly similar to the whole vehicle life.

I have a Lexus hybrid in the driveway. 15 years old, past 200,000km and still going fine on what I assume is the original pack. An example of a PHEV with good traction battery life is the GM / Holden / Chevy volt:

https://insideevs.com/news/334835/this-chevy-volt-has-400000-miles-on-odometer-with-no-noticeable-battery-degradation/

The main advantage PHEV's have with regards to battery health is that there is no real need to stress the battery. Consumers only expect around 50km of range, so it is relatively easy to oversize the battery, and only used the less harmfull middle of the pack (say 30% to 70%).

And of course, unlike a full EV, there is not need to run the battery pack very low if the driver only just makes it home - Just run the engine. If the battery pack is in a harmful temperature range, again run the engine to take work off the battery... All this done at engineering rather than consumer level.

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#2734486 25-Jun-2021 14:42

When I called apple about my battery they laughed at me :(

They sais does the iPhone work? Yes. End of story.

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#2734621 25-Jun-2021 17:12

Batman:
Dairyxox:

Sounds like quite a lot of cycles. Do you have an actual charge cycle count from the battery diagnostics?

I wouldn't expect 80% pure EV use to be typical for a hybrid like this.

Because with small battery of the hybrid it will charge and discharge all the time

This is one of the reasons I've stayed away from hybrids but not the only reason

Apparently the batteries in hybrids aren't that difficult to replace. Seen several youtube videos with people doing it to save money.

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#2734672 25-Jun-2021 19:58

Batman: When I called apple about my battery they laughed at me :(

They sais does the iPhone work? Yes. End of story.

Firstly apple doesn't have a great reputation for following NZ consumer law. They were formally warned by the commerce commission back in 2008, as we get stuff like this popping up now and then:

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=76&topicid=283919

Secondly phones and car's aren't directly comparable. Cars are much more expensive, and expected to last at least three times as long. In the case of plug in hybrid cars, the main reason people pay tens of thousands of dollars more for them over the equivalent non plug in is because they have the ability to do xx km using the petrol engine minimally.

And of course the option of throwing a cheap power bank into your bag isn't viable for a car.

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#2734820 25-Jun-2021 22:35

Batman: Because with small battery of the hybrid it will charge and discharge all the time

This is one of the reasons I've stayed away from hybrids but not the only reason

This is a PHEV not exactly a hybrid HEV. In practice hybrids are extremely reliable well developed tech and battery life is just not an issue. The other thing is battery tech is improving all the time. I'd prefer to stick to the topic and not see any more of these side tracks.

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#2734821 25-Jun-2021 22:39

cokemaster: The dealership have escalated it to Mitsubishi NZ as they feel the levels were lower than expected. I will be pushing both for a resolution.

Sounds like there's some potential for a very good trade-in deal to be offered on the latest if your luck holds all the way.

cokemaster

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#2734825 25-Jun-2021 23:54

They've offered $30K trade-in towards the purchase of a new Outlander PHEV as part of a promo a few months ago. I was tempted but ultimately declined.

$30K was bang on what the valuation said for an Outlander PHEV of that mileage and age, so possibly wasn't a bad trade in offer but at the same time wasn't something to get out of bed over.

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tdgeek

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#2734858 26-Jun-2021 08:46

gzt: In practice hybrids are extremely reliable well developed tech and battery life is just not an issue.

I thought batteries decline with cycles. If you cycle a PHEV battery once per day for the 50km range, that's a lot compared to a full EV cycling it once every 250+km. So yes, the batteries are no different to a full EV battery but the use case is. If I bought a PHEV so I can almost always avoid FF use, save money, my range appears that it will drop off quite a lot

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#2734868 26-Jun-2021 09:37

gzt:
Batman: Because with small battery of the hybrid it will charge and discharge all the time

This is one of the reasons I've stayed away from hybrids but not the only reason

This is a PHEV not exactly a hybrid HEV. In practice hybrids are extremely reliable well developed tech and battery life is just not an issue. The other thing is battery tech is improving all the time. I'd prefer to stick to the topic and not see any more of these side tracks.

I don't think you understand how batteries work. If you buy a car with batteries get one with the longest battery warranty you can

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#2735273 27-Jun-2021 10:36

This thread now makes me a bit wary of buying a Mitsubishi Exclipse PHEV. My thought was, since it would be used for at most 30-40km each day (city driving), the amount of petrol used would be minimal and we could just just it each night (or second night). I would hope that I would not drop down to 65% battery in such a relatively short time. But saying that a 2021 model with the latest battery technology might do better than the older Outlander.

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