Tow rating of New Zealand Vehicles

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user 1237

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After much research I purchased the VRX model last week, and pick it up next Wednesday.
One thing I noticed is that the vehicles purchased in NZ only have a tow rating of 750kg. When all other countries tow rating is 1500kg. The salesman said that is because Mitsubishi are wary of kiwis overloading their trailers.
Anyone have any thoughts on whether that is true or not?
 
Should be fine if all the specs are the same. Sounds like like this stupit 15A plug that they put on the charger for the Australian version. I bought my PHEV in the second half of 2014 but it still had the 15A plug. Must have just missed out.
 
Towed at least a ton yesterday with zero problems. Car performed perfectly including a standing start up a steep hill. The torque from those electric motors is amazing.
 
anko said:
Over here it is 1500 kg for a trailer with brakes but 750 for one without brakes. Perhaps something similar over there?

Same in Aus.
 
Unfortunately my brand new 2016 phev got stuck at the top of our driveway with about 1100kgs of wood and trailer on the back. Batteries were full and i used the charge button all the way up but after about 200m it just died. It refused to pull anymore. I had to unload most of the wood before it would move again. They lowered the rating for NZ because of the terrain. They tested the car with a laden trailer from Wellington to Taupo I think and the car died just before Taupo. Refused to budge as the charger could not keep up with the drain on the batteries. If you've got a long journey with a big trailer and lots of hills are involved then don't risk it.
 
I know it is said that you should use Charge on hills - otherwise you run out of battery too quickly. In this situation is there a conflict with telling the car to replace battery losses at the expense of providing motive power? Perhaps you should be aiming to use both to drive the wheels on short steep inclines and let the battery run down :?:
 
There's no way to force it to do anything though. I even had it in 4WD lock mode, Normal mode, all full power. In fairness to Mitsubishi NZ they warned me it would be a problem.
 
I'm not sure there were actually any complaints in NZ either. It's just after all the testing they decided to limit it to 750kg.
 
nzphev said:
Unfortunately my brand new 2016 phev got stuck at the top of our driveway with about 1100kgs of wood and trailer on the back. Batteries were full and i used the charge button all the way up but after about 200m it just died. It refused to pull anymore. I had to unload most of the wood before it would move again. They lowered the rating for NZ because of the terrain. They tested the car with a laden trailer from Wellington to Taupo I think and the car died just before Taupo. Refused to budge as the charger could not keep up with the drain on the batteries. If you've got a long journey with a big trailer and lots of hills are involved then don't risk it.

I find it weird. Either it will pull the trailer or it will lack the power. To have it start out and then run a fully charged battery down in 200 m is quite impossible, whatever button you push.
Did you activate some kind of security override? What warnings did the dashboard display?
 
No warnings, nothing else pressed. it got to a really steep bit and decided that was it. We tried all sorts of things to get it to go but it refused to budge. We even let it cool right down but still no luck. When you push the throttle the motors determine the total weight and drag. It decided that it couldn't do it so didn't even try. Also at that speed the petrol engine does not engage the drive. This is why the tow limit is only 750kg and also why they warned me in advance that the car will struggle with heavy loads on steep hills.
 
And as I said, once I cleared most of the wood off and tried again it worked fine. Guess those electric motors have some sort of protection mechanism in them to stop them burning out.
 
Interesting - it is the first time I have heard of such an override.
But then nobody had tried to drive it up a 45 degree slope pulling a railway engine yet. :lol:

Sounds like a wise move by the designers. Still I wonder about the difference between NZ and other mountainous countries.
 
nzphev said:
There's no way to force it to do anything though. I even had it in 4WD lock mode, Normal mode, all full power. In fairness to Mitsubishi NZ they warned me it would be a problem.

My point was that you had the car in Charge all the time according to your OP. So as fast as you were depleting the battery the car was trying to replace the charge instead of putting all its effort into motive power. ;)
 
nzphev said:
Unfortunately my brand new 2016 phev got stuck at the top of our driveway with about 1100kgs of wood and trailer on the back. Batteries were full and i used the charge button all the way up but after about 200m it just died. It refused to pull anymore. I had to unload most of the wood before it would move again. They lowered the rating for NZ because of the terrain. They tested the car with a laden trailer from Wellington to Taupo I think and the car died just before Taupo. Refused to budge as the charger could not keep up with the drain on the batteries. If you've got a long journey with a big trailer and lots of hills are involved then don't risk it.
You started with full battery and the car only managed to do 200 meters? Is your driveway perhaps and elevator shaft?

I think when you depart with a full battery, the charge button will not do anything the first 200 meters, as the battery would still be too full. In my opinion all of this can not be related to battery SOC or recharging the battery or anything like that. Or pressing the charge button. Could it be that the E-motors were overheated?

I have done several consecutive hill starts on a 17% slope in a rather short time frame while towing a 1500 kg caravan and the car had no issues with it (although it may not have been very fast).

How steep is your driveway?
What is the pavement like? If any.
How fast were you driving?
How long did you need for these first 200 meters?

Could it have been an ESP / Traction control type issue? On rough terrain, it is sometimes better to switch off all the electronic gismo's.
 
Yes, but that is only an issue when the wheels start spinning.
On the Dutch forum there was a guy moving a 4000Kg trailer. Admittedly on a flat road.
 
jaapv said:
Yes, but that is only an issue when the wheels start spinning.
That is why I said "on rough terrain" ;) .
jaapv said:
On the Dutch forum there was a guy moving a 4000Kg trailer. Admittedly on a flat road.
You mean the guy wth the mini digger? I think he actually pulled it up a dike body, which was very steep.
 
It's a rough driveway with loose gravel and quite slippery. The final point where it choked is a very steep bit but only about 8m long. Actually the entire driveway is closer to 400m. The batteries were full when I started out BUT I had driven on the road for 5kms quite slowly. It did really well up until that last grunt. The was no wheel spinning though, it just wouldn't budge. I should take a picture of the incline to show you.
 
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