Heavy freeway driving

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Tom Bruno

New member
Joined
Mar 28, 2024
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2
Location
Monterey,California
I have a 2022 Mitsubishi Outback hybrid phev that I soon be using on FREEWAY. With 4 passengers and luggage. The roads will mostly me fairly flat, with some normal uphill areas
My question is which mode would be the best to use
 
I have a 2022 Mitsubishi Outback hybrid phev that I soon be using on FREEWAY. With 4 passengers and luggage. The roads will mostly me fairly flat, with some normal uphill areas
My question is which mode would be the best to use
Does nobody out there know how to help me
This is not mentioned in the manual I even called the closest dealership 70 miles away and they had no advise
 
With four passengers and luggage, you could put the car into Charge mode before you hit the bottom of each hill, but it's probably overkill.

Keep your speed at or below 100 kph / 60 mph for best fuel economy. You fuel economy will plummet if you drive at higher speeds.
 
I do a lot of highway driving. I also know I have about 7km of non-highway driving before I either get to the highway or leave it to get home. So I start out in EV mode because it is more efficient at lower speeds and stop/start traffic until I get to the highway. Then I switch the button to Normal running mode and the dial to ECO. Even though ECO only affects the accelerator sensitivity, I find it saves gas when using the cruise control. Normal mode will generally first run the car off the battery without using the engine. When the remaining EV range drops to about 7-8km, I switch to Save mode which then starts up the engine for the rest of the trip. In this mode the car first starts charging the battery for a while, then switches to EV mode to run it back down, then starts to charge again, keeping the battery range around the 7km mark. When I get off the highway I switch to EV running mode and if all is going according to plan, I hit 0km charge left just as I pull in the driveway. Others like to use Charge mode to charge the battery much higher, then run in EV mode for longer or many other schemes, but I find that to be too much bother.
 
I've found the "Normal" mode gave me the best results so far, although my assumption is that all the modes will return *mostly* the same economy based on this graph:

Outlander Battery SOC Control.png

Based on that, once whatever mode you're in reaches the steady state, it will run in parallel mode engine on for awhile, then go EV mode/engine off, then engine on/parallel, over and over again - this should return about the same economy in the same conditions/speeds no matter what. There will be a spot on the state of charge where the battery has a lower ESR/internal resistance at a certain state of charge, but there's not likely to be a massive impact there - so the battery will accept charge and give up charge with the least amount of thermal or chemical losses, normally this is at low to mid states of charge for most Li-ion batteries, so the normal mode which is around 30% SoC is probably near an optimal location for this charge/discharge activity to occur.

I will probably try Save or Save+Eco for my next trip data points I want to collect for my fuelly logbook.
 
I have a 2022 Mitsubishi Outback hybrid phev that I soon be using on FREEWAY. With 4 passengers and luggage. The roads will mostly me fairly flat, with some normal uphill areas
My question is which mode would be the best to use
NORMAL MODE. Either way, this is not the ideal car for fast long distances. The best cars for this which will save you loads of money would be a diesel for those driving conditions. Some of the more modern diesels, can give you 80 mpg. Few can beat a diesel for that kind of driving.
 
NORMAL MODE. Either way, this is not the ideal car for fast long distances. The best cars for this which will save you loads of money would be a diesel for those driving conditions. Some of the more modern diesels, can give you 80 mpg. Few can beat a diesel for that kind of driving.
Tom is from California, there are not really any fuel efficient diesel vehicles in the United States. Based on the large price premium for diesel fuel here, you'd need a car in the same class that could get >45 MPG highway to have the same up front fuel costs, plus you'd need to save roughly 25-50% more than that to cover the added maintenance expenses over here. I've owned 5 diesel vehicles in the US and they are no longer an economical option here. The last two I owned (still own one) have needed EGR cooler replacements roughly every 30-45,000 miles at an out of pocket expense of over $3,000 each occurrence, on top of the much larger and more expensive oil changes, significantly more frequent and expensive fuel filter changes, fuel additive requirements to attempt to make up for our poor quality fuel standards here that destroy high pressure fuel pumps on common rail diesels, etc. All in, you'd probably need to find a diesel midsize SUV that gets 60+ MPG to compete with the Outlander running costs and total cost of ownership in the US, and we've never had anything that was even close sadly. Another quirk is our recent tax credits for used PHEV's that made purchasing my copy of the Outlander less expensive up front than literally *any* other car in the segment, bar none!

I believe the Outlander is outclassed only by the RAV4 Prime in the segment for real world highway economy, and even then only very marginally, and the Prime has lower market availability and a more expensive up front cost, worse AWD system, etc. Doubtful it's worth replacing the Outlander here for freeway driving as it seems to be nearly the most economical to drive in the segment for that purpose. My last trip returned >35 MPG over a 500 mile journey which seems both very economical, and class leading, especially once in town use is accounted for quite honestly.
 
So I start out in EV mode because it is more efficient at lower speeds and stop/start traffic until I get to the highway. Then I switch the button to Normal running mode and the dial to ECO. Even though ECO only affects the accelerator sensitivity, I find it saves gas when using the cruise control.
BTW, in stop and go city traffic ECO will have even greater impact, cause of frequent acceleration.
 
The fuel efficiency on the highway do not depend on mode chosen, Normal, Save or Charge but if the engine is in Series or Parallel mode.
Normal, Save and Charge are modes for managing battery state of charge. The consumption when the engine is in Parallel is irrelevant to the selected mode.
I like Charge mostly cause can actively manage battery charge level and plan accordingly to the route. It keeps the engine in Parallel mode constantly and the engine is not coming on and off every few minutes.
 
I've found the "Normal" mode gave me the best results so far, although my assumption is that all the modes will return *mostly* the same economy based on this graph:

View attachment 1234

Based on that, once whatever mode you're in reaches the steady state, it will run in parallel mode engine on for awhile, then go EV mode/engine off, then engine on/parallel, over and over again - this should return about the same economy in the same conditions/speeds no matter what. There will be a spot on the state of charge where the battery has a lower ESR/internal resistance at a certain state of charge, but there's not likely to be a massive impact there - so the battery will accept charge and give up charge with the least amount of thermal or chemical losses, normally this is at low to mid states of charge for most Li-ion batteries, so the normal mode which is around 30% SoC is probably near an optimal location for this charge/discharge activity to occur.

I will probably try Save or Save+Eco for my next trip data points I want to collect for my fuelly logbook.
You are absolutely right. Good on you. Well noticed. You see if you drove recklessly, on normal mode, and you are a power thirst driver [eg likes to accelerate, brake suddenly, overtake, tailgate, then in Normal, the car will choose what is the best economically..normally a combination of both. Afteral, it is a hybrid, and that is what hybrids are supposed to do. You will also record your EV driving as less than 80%. It is rare that it records below 60%. If you press the EV button, then it forces the car to use EV, which means that your range of 32 miles will go to the dogs, and it will probably do only 10 miles [or even less] on EV mode, and the battery will not last 32 miles. It will last maybe 10 miles, maybe less depending on how maniacally you drive. After that, it will use petrol as there is no more battery to use. On normal mode, it is possible to attain 97% to 100% [by the car] but by gum you gotta drive very slow, no acceleration, no tailgating, no overtaking and no braking [if poss.]. EG you can get this if you were saying following a Farm Tractor, without overtaking it. But it will pee all the boy racers, hot headed, testosteron clad persons but your likelihood of getting an accident is next to zilch.
 
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