Advice please, for my GX4hs PHEV, from the Cardinal..

Hope you could assist me.

Purchased our Pearly white - one previous owner - Gx4hs Auto 6 weeks ago and Luv it, and am a (young) 70 yr old EV Virgin in Northamptonshire GB.
My wife and I have got to grips with most of the technical stuff and buttons etc, but am still a bit confused with one or two other things despite reading the manual. As this was purchased via a non-Mitsu dealer, I am a little embarrassed to go into a main dealership to ask questions.

We understand the CHARGE button will switch to petrol and charge the battery at the same time, and use it if and when necessary, but don't quite understand the point of the SAVE button. Does this just save the battery, use petrol and not charge-up the battery?
Are we misunderstanding its purpose?

The other question is about the ECO button. We thought this was something to do with ECOnomical driving, but the manual seems to refer to being economical with the Air Conditioning, or are we wrong about this?

Forgive our ignorance - it's an age thing, so any answers in 'laymen's simplistic terms' would be best!
Apologies if this has previously been mentioned on one of the many thousands of previous posts, but haven't had time to read them all.

Thanks in advance for some assistance.
Cardinal..

The Charge button, as you say, will charge the battery. This is usually needed if you are towing or facing lots of steep hills as the car needs to draw power from both engine and battery in those situations so you want to keep a decent amount of charge in the battery. It is not very economical to charge via the engine, so otherwise let the car do its own thing.

The Save button allows you to choose to save the remaining battery for a later part of your journey where you can make better use of it - for example if you have a motorway or dual carriageway section as part of your journey and city driving later, you will get better EV range by saving the battery charge until you get to the slower speeds of the city. It doesn't just switch to engine under save, but will oscillate around the state of charge when you pressed save, using the engine as needed to maintain this. There are a few caveats to this - for example some will say that you may want to use the battery down to 50% charge before pressing Save as it is a bit more economical to charge the battery then, but a lot will depend on your journey.

The Eco button dampens down the throttle response and reduces power to air conditioning and heating. As far as I'm aware it doesn't do anything else.

Others will no doubt add to my comments!

The above is spot-on.
However, even if you purchased the car from a non-Mitsubishe seller, you should have it maintained by a licensed Mitsubishi service. Part of the maintenance is to the digital part of the car which can only be done by factory-trained personell with access to Mitsubishi's computer network.

jaapv said:

The above is spot-on.
However, even if you purchased the car from a non-Mitsubishe seller, you should have it maintained by a licensed Mitsubishi service. Part of the maintenance is to the digital part of the car which can only be done by factory-trained personell with access to Mitsubishi's computer network.

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I think the OP would have some difficulty getting a non-Mitsubishi garage to touch it! My experience from both Prius and PHEV ownership is that none of the independents are willing to open the bonnet - H&S considerations with high voltages floating around. I'm afraid that owning a hybrid locks you into the dealership.

Save and Charge buttons have been discussed a lot here .. and is something that everybody can argue, and there is not a precise cook book about when and how to use them.

You should also add in the equation the B0, B5 usage .. so the paddles behind the steering wheel , this also impact how the car behave and how efficient can be driven.

In general ... I would say that at high speed (above 90km/h) the EV efficiency compared to ICE is not as big as when the car travel slower ... so in case the trip is longer then the EV battery range, via Charge and Save it is possible to decide (somehow) when to use ICE and when to run in EV mode .. that means to try to use ICE when the car run at the highest speed in the journey

The car, does not know who long is the trip and in which type of road/speed will be driven, so the automatic mode in the PHEV that use the battery till it is fully discharged, maybe it is not all the time ideal

For make things more complicated ... it is a good practice to arrive at destination (which has the EV charging plug) with the battery fully discharged (unless the trip is short and all done in EV mode) .. since in general each km done with the car power by fuel cost 4 times more then a km with the car power by the battery charged by the network.

maby said:

jaapv said:

The above is spot-on.
However, even if you purchased the car from a non-Mitsubishe seller, you should have it maintained by a licensed Mitsubishi service. Part of the maintenance is to the digital part of the car which can only be done by factory-trained personell with access to Mitsubishi's computer network.

Click to expand...

I think the OP would have some difficulty getting a non-Mitsubishi garage to touch it! My experience from both Prius and PHEV ownership is that none of the independents are willing to open the bonnet - H&S considerations with high voltages floating around. I'm afraid that owning a hybrid locks you into the dealership.

Click to expand...

Actually that's an advantage for me, our lease company keeps trying to send my colleagues to cheaper garages for service in their 'ordinary' cars. The contract entitles driver to use proper franchised dealer, its just the lease company trying to save money and make more profit.

They can't with mine, no one else will touch it.

BobEngineer said:

They can't with mine, no one else will touch it.

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Quite right, too - 200A at 300V is capable of ruining your entire day!

Thank you to all who replied; we will try out different versions of your suggestions as well as reading many of the previous posts on the subject; although we have got to be honest, we are still very confused.com regarding which is the best way to travel!!

I will get back to you ASAP requesting further advice of a couple of other issues.

Thanks again, and am pleased to have made your most worthwhile aquiantance.
........the Cardinal..

Cardinal said:

Hope you could assist me.
Forgive our ignorance - it's an age thing, so any answers in 'laymen's simplistic terms' would be best!

Click to expand...

Haha, its certainly not an age thing! I am in the 40s and had been involved in IT for 30 odd years, and this charge/save thing baffles me too! Coming from an Auris, it was a lot simpler!

I would have though the ECO button does something to increase your MPG as you not over revving your motor because the throttle is dampened down. Ie, if you floor it, you use up more petrol, whereas if you gently accelerate, you save petrol - same principle for the ECO button by dampening down the throttle.

I thought it would be best to switch onto charge when doing motorway trips - after all, you already using the petrol so might as well charge your battery at the same time! hmm, back to the mitsubishi book again!

tweedie said:

Cardinal said:

Hope you could assist me.
Forgive our ignorance - it's an age thing, so any answers in 'laymen's simplistic terms' would be best!

Click to expand...

Haha, its certainly not an age thing! I am in the 40s and had been involved in IT for 30 odd years, and this charge/save thing baffles me too! Coming from an Auris, it was a lot simpler!

I would have though the ECO button does something to increase your MPG as you not over revving your motor because the throttle is dampened down. Ie, if you floor it, you use up more petrol, whereas if you gently accelerate, you save petrol - same principle for the ECO button by dampening down the throttle.

I thought it would be best to switch onto charge when doing motorway trips - after all, you already using the petrol so might as well charge your battery at the same time! hmm, back to the mitsubishi book again!

Click to expand...

Yes, but charging the battery will require extra engine power (and therefore petrol) rather than just powering the wheels.

Using the charge button is significantly less efficient than charging from the mains, and is only really recommended in certain situations (e.g. where you require higher state of charge for towing or uphill sections, or where you anticipate a large amount of city driving at the end of your journey and want to have sufficient charge to be able to do that on EV)

geoffshep69 said:

tweedie said:

...
I thought it would be best to switch onto charge when doing motorway trips - after all, you already using the petrol so might as well charge your battery at the same time!

Click to expand...

Yes, but charging the battery will require extra engine power (and therefore petrol) rather than just powering the wheels.

Click to expand...

Once the engine is running on the motorway, Charge or no Charge mode does not make any difference. Nor does Save mode. The only thing Charge and Save control is when and how long the engine is running.

OK, so my reference to more ‘power’ is technically not correct, but my point was that pressing charge on the motorway will result in more petrol being used than if the charge button was not pressed.

The assumption from the previous poster seemed to be that as the engine is running anyway, you could effectively charge the battery ‘for free’, so I was attempting to point out that this is not correct.

I'm also in Northants and use dealership at Westaway Motors, Moulton Pk, Northampton, though I bought my 14 plate GX4H in Colchester. I'm sure they would be happy to help. Mine is in for annual service and first MOT next month. Agree with the responses given. I hardly ever use charge but often use save on motorway journeys, and always use eco button. I've logged fuel on fuelly.com from new and have overall average of 85. Wife and I, and dog, also love the car. Only gripe is poor satnav, but I am on a second set of tyres already.

geoffshep69 said:

OK, so my reference to more ‘power’ is technically not correct, but my point was that pressing charge on the motorway will result in more petrol being used than if the charge button was not pressed.

The assumption from the previous poster seemed to be that as the engine is running anyway, you could effectively charge the battery ‘for free’, so I was attempting to point out that this is not correct.

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Well, not for free. But more efficient.

Think about what the car does when you are driving on the motorway with a depleted battery: Rather than running the engine at a relatively low load level all the time, the car is programmed to let the engine run at a higher load level, but only part of the time. When the engine is running, fuel consumption is indeed higher because the battery is charged in the process, but the fuel is burned more efficiently, because the engine load is higher. You get more mechanical kWhs per liter of fuel spent. The payback is in the EV miles you gain, during which no fuel is spent.

It does NOT make sense to use Charge or Save mode to gain / hang on to EV miles that you end up taking home with you. In other words, make sure you do not use Save or Charge mode, unless you can foresee that the battery will be depleted before you make it to the next charging station.

anko said:

geoffshep69 said:

OK, so my reference to more ‘power’ is technically not correct, but my point was that pressing charge on the motorway will result in more petrol being used than if the charge button was not pressed.

The assumption from the previous poster seemed to be that as the engine is running anyway, you could effectively charge the battery ‘for free’, so I was attempting to point out that this is not correct.

Click to expand...

It does NOT make sense to use Charge or Save mode to gain / hang on to EV miles that you end up taking home with you. In other words, make sure you do not use Save or Charge mode, unless you can foresee that the battery will be depleted before you make it to the next charging station.

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I agree entirely, hence why I had originally pointed out that pressing the charge button as standard every time you drive on the motorway is not a particularly efficient strategy and should be avoided unless there is a specific reason / situation that warrants burning the extra petrol to provide additional state of charge.

The only time I ever use the charge button is if I want a quick getaway from the lights and want the engine on ready :shock:

When using save, any 'spare' engine power will automatically be used to charge the battery until some point it will use the electric until just under the point you hit save at which point it will start using the engine again, and so the oscillation continues. In charge, I guess that the car tries to ensure it is always putting something into the battery thus runs the engine higher than it otherwise would need to.

Cardinal said:

we are still very confused.com regarding which is the best way to travel!!

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If you so wish, you can have hours of harmless entertainment playing with all the many facilities and options that the car offers. But there's a limit to how much improvement in fuel consumption they can provide, and if you choose to restrict yourself to using just forward and reverse and not touching any other buttons or the 'flappy paddles', the car will perform perfectly well and possibly offer a more soothing driving experience.

Lance said:

When using save, any 'spare' engine power will automatically be used to charge the battery until some point it will use the electric until just under the point you hit save at which point it will start using the engine again, and so the oscillation continues. In charge, I guess that the car tries to ensure it is always putting something into the battery thus runs the engine higher than it otherwise would need to.

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There is no such thing as spare power. If there was, it had to go somewhere and the car would have accelerated if it hadn't been in Save mode.

On the motorway, there is engine on and engine off. With engine on the engine will work harder than needed for driving alone and will produce some surplus power which is fed into the battery. Selection of Save and Charge mode have no effect on this. They only control when the engine is on and/or off:

No Save or Charge mode: hysteresis cycle with an amplitude of about 1.5% revolving around 30-ish % SOC (higher speed) or 26-ish % SOC (lower speed).
Save mode: similar hysteresis cycle revolving around the SOC level at which you selected Save mode.
Charge mode: engine on until you hit a certain high SOC followed by a hysteresis cycle around that percentage (It seems that different cars charge to different levels. Never tried it myself, because this is quite inefficient, due to restrictions caused by a near full battery).

Exceptions to the above are for example:
- when the engine is running for reasons of heating
- when fuel level is extremely low
- when more power is needed for driving than the engine can provide
- when coasting while in parallel mode

ChrisMiller said:

Cardinal said:

we are still very confused.com regarding which is the best way to travel!!

Click to expand...

If you so wish, you can have hours of harmless entertainment playing with all the many facilities and options that the car offers. But there's a limit to how much improvement in fuel consumption they can provide, and if you choose to restrict yourself to using just forward and reverse and not touching any other buttons or the 'flappy paddles', the car will perform perfectly well and possibly offer a more soothing driving experience.

Click to expand...

Best way to travel depend by the type of road and length of it.

And by "Best" let say the most fuel & energy efficient (kwh are not for free , still a km in EV mode normally cost 1/4 of a km in petrol mode)

Up to 50km best way to drive is to keep all time in EV .. that can implies to reduce the max speed .. above 80km/h in EV mode the kwh per km goes quite high on the Outlander PHEV

Over 50km trip ... ICE will have to be used ... so ... calculate to have the km needed to be done in ICE, and select to be done while the driving speed is the highest one in the trip .. and use charge in these part of the trip for be sure to use ICE when EV mode is least efficient

Still .. it can be tricky for trip of around 70km .. with the first 30km of high speed motorway ... since press charge while the car has full battery or next to full does not make much sense

What is very important is to arrive at a charging destination with the battery as low as possible, for be sure to have use as much EV mode as possible

Anyhow .. as said before .. there is not a huge gain to be made with clicking around on the car : the biggest gain is to drive slower ...best driving efficiency for the PHEV is around 30km/h ... and over 70km/h the fuel economy start to sink, much faster then normal petrol car

PS: For me this PHEV is perfect for city usage and for daily commute staying all time in EV mode ... the ICE is there for grant the seldom long trips and for never have any range anxiety

I agree, but would like to add / nuance one thing:

I don't think it is just EV mode that is inefficient on higher speeds. Driving at higher speeds is inefficient when using the ICE too.

Try to use the ICE at speeds above 40 MPH, or in other words when you are going fast enough for Parallel Mode. At slow speeds, the ICE can still run relatively efficient as the load can be kept high by increasing the charge current. But the argument would be to deliver as much ICE energy to the road in a direct mechanical fashion, as much as possible, reducing the amount of energy that has to be converted twice.