Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Forum

Not sure this has been suggested elsewhere.

Imagine you are at some red traffic lights, they go green. Conventionally you apply the accelerator, the electric motors ramp up torque and after a second or so the engine will start to help shove the car down the road....all a bit slow.

Here's a trick to make it all happen a bit faster, note this only works at less than 80% charge.

Imagine you are at the same red traffic lights, now put the car into charge mode - so the engine is running and generating at standstill = no engine start delay. Just before the lights go green apply the footbrake with your left foot and fully depress the accelerator with your right foot, so both traction motors are fully pre torqued. When the lights go green slide your left foot off the foot brake = max possible torque available @ zero speed.

I'm not suggesting anyone try this but if you accidentally do, don't do it often and only hold on the footbrake for seconds, as its not a good idea to overheat the traction motor windings.

Thank you. It is a well-known trick (if you are into green light races, that is-an inadvisable habit-), and pressing charge before overtaking is particularly useful.

I'm not sure there is any benefit on pressing charge while the car is stationary at a traffic light

This PHEV is designed to don't use more the 60kw of power up to ~30km/h

As soon as the accelerator pedal is fully pressed, the ICE will be alive, and by the time the car reach 30km/h .. the ICE should be ready to provide the extra 90HP to the electric motors

Pressing charge does help for wake up the engine in a more smooth way ... but I'm not 100% sure it will help much on accelerate faster , definitely not until 30km/h

For overtake ... press in advance charge does help ... assuming the ICE will wake up fast .. since sometime it takes quite some time before the ICE is fully awake in winter temperatures

I sometimes use the charge trick to facilitate quicker and safer overtaking, but I won't be trying this pre-loading of the motors as it is my own private vehicle and I want to look after it. Having said that has anyone done this and recorded the actual 0-60 time? Like I have already stated I won't be doing this to my car, and I wouldn't advise anyone else to either, but just interested for the possible bragging rights down the pub

This was discussed already before .. with advanced graph from Anko:

viewtopic.php?p=23697#p23697 ->

Why should I do this??

I'm not buying a PHEV and then go for drag race

If I know that I might need rapid acceleration, such as merging into traffic, and the ICE is off, I will press Charge a few seconds beforehand to get the engine running before I press the accelerator hard. If the ICE is cold, I will press Charge a lot earlier to warm it up a bit before asking for full power.

If you would have to press the brake pedal heavily enough to hold the car against full power on the motors, it will switch off the supply. In other words: it won't even work at a traffic light.

Thank you for providing the link, but I am already aware of this. When I said "I sometimes use the charge trick to facilitate quicker and safer overtaking" that "sometimes" is when travelling above 40mph with no ICE and only on battery, so as to fire up the ICE ready to accelerate when I want to and not sometime in the future when the engine has finally burst into life and the safe overtaking window has been and gone.

Somehow, I don't think this is what they had in mind when they named the button "CHARGE".