Sudden empty fuel gauge

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danlarah

Member
Joined
Jul 24, 2014
Messages
5
Curios if anyone else has experienced the issue I had yesterday.
I've had my GX3h for a month and I do a daily round trip commute of 100 miles.
On the way home I have no batter charge obviously so pure hybrid mode.
Coming home last night I started the journey with around 75 miles showing on the combined milage, so no problems foreseen on the 50 miles home.
At round 8 miles from home on the motorway the gauge showed about 30 miles available, which was OK.
Suddenly it changed to empty (three dashes), and then within about a mile a warning triangle and flashing refuel message!. :shock:
I still managed to get off the motorway and went to petrol station.
I managed to squeeze in 37 litres into the car. :eek:
Now as Mitsubishi state the tank is 45 litres, I had at least 8 litres which even if I was getting on 30mpg at that juncture, would mean at least 50 miles left to go.
When I filled up the gauge showed a total of 250 mile range!! which is rubbish as this has been showing around 400 miles without a battery charge.

Anyone seen a similar issue, or has mine developed a fault with the fuel gauge. :?:

Thanks in advance for responses
Danny
 
I purposely carried on driving after the initial re-fuel warning came on as it stated I had a combined 50 miles remaining.
I was cruising down the motorway mindful of where I could re-fuel in needed, when the display went to 3 dashes.
It states this in the manual, and comes on when you have less than 30 miles of fuel left.
However, I managed to re-fuel within a couple of miles and squeezed in just over 40 litres, so at least a gallon left, which would have got me home, but admittedly the warning signals, and the thought of being stuck on the side of the motorway were giving me palpitations.
 
I had a similar experience, and I think it is due to an overly cautious warning.
 
They design the warning extremely conservative so that nobody ends up with empty battery and fuel tank, nothing is wrong with that.
But I'll bet you any money, with even that much of conservatism, there still will be people running out of fuel and get stranded.
My ICE car with a 68 litre fuel tank would still have at least 7-8 litres of fuel when drive computer shows zero range and all kinds of red lights starts flashing.
 
I have no idea about the answer to your question, but I do want to ask about your consumption...

What is the general consumption of your drive? And what style is it? Hilly? Flat? 80km/h? 100km/h?
 
My daily commute is all motorway for 49 miles.
Going to office I have a full charge and the car shows around 60mpg at end of journey.
That journey is usually 30 mins of stop start rush hour traffic on motorway and last 30 mins is clear motorway cruising at 70mph
On journey back I have no charge in battery and journey is a lot of stop start with only some of it at 70mph
That usually shows 40mpg when back home.
I do that 3 days a week, work at home 2 days and then do the usual running around at weekends but always charging at home between trips.

However my real comparison is comparing doing the same weekly routine in my old Audi A6 2.5 diesel which cost me around £85 in diesel each week.
The same week of travelling in the PHEV resulted in £27 of petrol and around £12 of electricity from home.
So I am more than happy with a 50% saving on fuel
 
danlarah said:
However my real comparison is comparing doing the same weekly routine in my old Audi A6 2.5 diesel which cost me around £85 in diesel each week.
The same week of travelling in the PHEV resulted in £27 of petrol and around £12 of electricity from home.
So I am more than happy with a 50% saving on fuel

That's probably one of the best ways to do it actually, because it's horses for courses. Glad to hear my theories are looking like being proved, and if I can halve my fuel bill then I'll be even happier... Thanks for that!
 
danlarah said:
My daily commute is all motorway for 49 miles.
Going to office I have a full charge and the car shows around 60mpg at end of journey.
That journey is usually 30 mins of stop start rush hour traffic on motorway and last 30 mins is clear motorway cruising at 70mph
On journey back I have no charge in battery and journey is a lot of stop start with only some of it at 70mph
That usually shows 40mpg when back home.
I do that 3 days a week, work at home 2 days and then do the usual running around at weekends but always charging at home between trips.

However my real comparison is comparing doing the same weekly routine in my old Audi A6 2.5 diesel which cost me around £85 in diesel each week.
The same week of travelling in the PHEV resulted in £27 of petrol and around £12 of electricity from home.
So I am more than happy with a 50% saving on fuel

Thanks for that... I promise I'll stop asking these types of questions when I finally pick mine up this week, but then I suppose I'll be asking how I can improve it lol
 
I had a similar situation with the range suddenly blanking.

First trip in the car, with some highway and city driving and coming home at night. Had a few bars in the battery and about 2mm blue in the battery and petrol gauges. Range was indicating about 80km total. Had planned to fill up petrol on the way home. Stopped at friends to show off the new car [as you do]. Tried to get going and had to demist the windscreen. Car showed no range for battery or total, even after demister turned OFF. Put car in "CHARGE" mode and was able to get the ICE working and Generator allowed the battery and Electrics to provide drive. Refueled, and tank would only take 37L. Finally travelled the 100km back home in CHARGE and SAVE modes.

Don't let the battery go so low anymore and try and keep if over half full.
 
I had a similar experience with the sudden dashes and warnings about low fuel etc. I talked to the NZ distributor and they said it was deliberately conservative with the displays as per discussions above. They did say the displays returned to normal after a warning period of no display. From memory he said the display returns at 25k but need to check this, He also said the vehicle will stop in a safe mode at a certain minimum point with no damage and will restart with re-fueling. I have not tested this yet!
 
gwatpe said:
I had a similar situation with the range suddenly blanking.

First trip in the car, with some highway and city driving and coming home at night. Had a few bars in the battery and about 2mm blue in the battery and petrol gauges. Range was indicating about 80km total. Had planned to fill up petrol on the way home. Stopped at friends to show off the new car [as you do]. Tried to get going and had to demist the windscreen. Car showed no range for battery or total, even after demister turned OFF. Put car in "CHARGE" mode and was able to get the ICE working and Generator allowed the battery and Electrics to provide drive. Refueled, and tank would only take 37L. Finally travelled the 100km back home in CHARGE and SAVE modes.

Don't let the battery go so low anymore and try and keep if over half full.
The car will switch automatically between electrically and petrol when the fuel gets under 7 litres, whatever button you press.
There is no need to activate charge or save mode when the battery gauge shows empty. The car will run perfectly well on series hybrid mode, keeping a 7% reserve. Save won't make a difference and charge will cost you money.
 
Hi jaapv,

I respect your opinion as a moderator.

I was merely stating what had happened to me and that the car was not happy to go in normal mode. My car had obviously allowed the battery to run down to below the safe level. This may be related to other problems my PHEV has. Once the battery had some extra energy in it, the car then worked better. It is possible that if we only had to travel on the flat to get petrol, then operation would have been different again. Lots of variables with many different outcomes it seems. Remember that the car will not drive without battery. The ICE seemed to have to put some energy back into the battery to allow the series hybrid to work. CHARGE mode allowed some energy to be put in the battery to get the car driving again.

There are differences between the PHEV sold around the world. It is probable that my vehicle has computing faults in it, still to be fixed. I have had numerous unexplained loss of regen, power control selection, lights interacting with wipers, window control buttons, central locking, and so on.

The empty fuel gauges maybe just how the car works, but is still a bit off putting as it promotes range anxiety.
 
Not this kind of difference.
The battery runs down to 20 % after which the car goes in save mode to keep using it normally. The display will show range --,-- and one blue bar. So it will use the extra electrical power, etc for normal driving. and top up to 20% again.
Should you manage to run it down to 13%, which is not normally done, it will display a turtle symbol om the dashboard and go into emergency power mode, limiting performance and charging up to 20% again as quickly as possible. The charge and save buttons only take effect when driving in the 20% -99% battery charge range.

Only if the 12V battery is run down will it refuse to start. But the power management of the 12 V battery is not user-controllable, except for jump starting or external charging when flat.
It is recharged regularly from the high- voltage drive battery.

And yes, that 45 L. tank and panicky display are a bit off-putting. I will take a 5 L. spare fuel canister on longer journeys.

There has been a bug that allowed the 12V battery to run down, but it has been resolved months ago and no new car should display it. All others have been recalled for a firmware update.
It sounds like your car has corrupted firmware. I would ask the dealer to reinstall it ASAP.

(BTW. Moderators can be as foolish as anybody. We are here to remove spam, resolve fights, etc. it does not give us an enhanced expertise status :mrgreen: )
 
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