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gwatpe

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 31, 2014
Messages
1,102
Location
South Australia
Any forum member achieved the petrol economy with the %EV driving shown on MMC advertising.

EVdriving.png


I know the testing is specific, but I have would have expected the %EV to be a much higher value to achieve 1.9L/100km.
 
gwatpe said:
Any forum member achieved the petrol economy with the %EV driving shown on MMC advertising.

EVdriving.png


I know the testing is specific, but I have would have expected the %EV to be a much higher value to achieve 1.9L/100km.
I would too. Should be 68% + (how much EV driving there is going on in hybrid mode). But when you manually reset trip MPG, %EV is not reset. So, you could make a long trip predominantly on petrol while charging the battery, reset the trip MPG, drive 30 km on EV and then hit charge until you see these numbers.
 
Quite true. For official MMC advertising, this is clearly misleading as taken on face value, this implies that with 30%EV driving that it was possible to achieve 1.9L/100km. I wonder how many PHEV owners had been influenced on a purchase by this such advertising.
 
Of course it's misleading - it's advertising :lol: Did you think the purpose of advertising was to tell the whole truth about a product or service?

The first question you should always ask: Why is this lying bastard lying to me?
 
ChrisMiller said:
Of course it's misleading - it's advertising :lol: Did you think the purpose of advertising was to tell the whole truth about a product or service?

The first question you should always ask: Why is this lying bastard lying to me?
Got it in one! Yes their claims DID influence me in buying decision. I did not think it would be true, but conversely (being a trusting soul) I did not think in everyday driving it would be so appallingly inaccurate!
 
Carnut said:
ChrisMiller said:
Of course it's misleading - it's advertising :lol: Did you think the purpose of advertising was to tell the whole truth about a product or service?

The first question you should always ask: Why is this lying bastard lying to me?
Got it in one! Yes their claims DID influence me in buying decision. I did not think it would be true, but conversely (being a trusting soul) I did not think in everyday driving it would be so appallingly inaccurate!

It is a problem with hybrids - manufacturers are constrained to only publish the results of the official tests and those tests were designed before hybrids were even thought of - unfortunately for the buyer, these official tests are ridiculously generous to hybrids. When the new tests are defined, I would expect that the PHEV will lose all its privileged status - in realistic usage it is no more environmentally friendly than modern petrol vehicles.
 
gwatpe said:
Quite true. For official MMC advertising, this is clearly misleading as taken on face value, this implies that with 30%EV driving that it was possible to achieve 1.9L/100km. I wonder how many PHEV owners had been influenced on a purchase by this such advertising.
This is an interpretation. But did you ask them what they really meant? Or are you making your decisions based on assumptions?

When the very first info for the PHEV came out, mid 2012, it promised 1.9 l/100 km and a range of 800 km. Via normal reasoning that would translate in a fuel tank of approx. 16 liters. For me, a car with a full tank of 16 liters would be an absolute no-go, so I made an effort to find out the true story. After spending a few minutes with my good friend Google I learned how there plug-in hybrid fuel economy is derived from the hybrid fuel economy and how that would translate in a fuel tank of at least 40 liters.

What am I trying to say here? In any form of communication there are two parties involved. So are there in any form of mis-communication.
 
maby said:
Carnut said:
ChrisMiller said:
Of course it's misleading - it's advertising :lol: Did you think the purpose of advertising was to tell the whole truth about a product or service?

The first question you should always ask: Why is this lying bastard lying to me?
Got it in one! Yes their claims DID influence me in buying decision. I did not think it would be true, but conversely (being a trusting soul) I did not think in everyday driving it would be so appallingly inaccurate!

It is a problem with hybrids - manufacturers are constrained to only publish the results of the official tests and those tests were designed before hybrids were even thought of - unfortunately for the buyer, these official tests are ridiculously generous to hybrids. When the new tests are defined, I would expect that the PHEV will lose all its privileged status - in realistic usage it is no more environmentally friendly than modern petrol vehicles.

I hadn't realised I am living a fairy tale :lol:
 
maby said:
It is a problem with hybrids - manufacturers are constrained to only publish the results of the official tests and those tests were designed before hybrids were even thought of - unfortunately for the buyer, these official tests are ridiculously generous to hybrids. When the new tests are defined, I would expect that the PHEV will lose all its privileged status - in realistic usage it is no more environmentally friendly than modern petrol vehicles.

But, but, but, then I'd be misled. I've driven 4000km with my car so far, and only put in about 70L of petrol.

4000 / 70 = 53.3 kilometers per litre

100/53.3 =1.87L per 100km: I'm beating the advertiser's spec.

That said, the average day, I'm only driving about 30km, and on the days that I drive closer to about 60, I have charging at both ends and enough time for a 60-70% charge.

Almost all the 70L in petrol was used for inter-city driving (Sydney - Newcastle and Sydney - Canberra), and at that point I was getting around 7.5-8.8L/100km.
 
The issue for hybrids is going to be that, while it may be the case that the majority of people buying them may well fall into the category that do benefit from them, will the testing authorities apply a different test schedule to them compared with pure petrol cars? Mitsubishi do not publish CO2 emissions figures for the PHEV running as a petrol car, but we can make some educated guesses based on other cars. We know that once you run the battery flat a realistic fuel consumption is in the region of 40mpg. Look at other petrol cars returning 40mpg, and we can estimate that the PHEV will be emitting something in excess of 130g CO2/km. The current test schedule covers a sufficiently short distance that the test results come out at this figure of around 150mpg and 44g/km. If the test was extended to 100km and done on a track under realistic conditions rather than a rolling road, 60% or more of the distance would be running on petrol giving an overall figure in the region of 80g/km and 70mpg. These are still good for the size and style of car, but would not support the current favourable tax treatment - it would rate very similar to mid size petrol cars.
 
Some people use the car outside of its comfort zone. Is that a reason to change the test in such way that it is tested outside its comfort zone? Many of these people would have walked away from the car if it hadn't been for the tax benefits. Maybe the problem is not the car, but the fact that the tax plans only looks at ownership of the car and not at how the car is used.
 
ChrisMiller said:
Sunder said:
100/53.3 =1.87L per 100km: I'm beating the advertiser's spec.
But you're not showing 30% EV usage ...

You got me there.

Then again, almost every car ad I see says something like "Specifications may vary" and "Not all features shown available in Australia".

If that one sole mock up of the range and EV mix is what people relied upon to buy the car, I do feel sorry for them. They must feel ripped off in life all the time.
 
anko said:
Some people use the car outside of its comfort zone. Is that a reason to change the test in such way that it is tested outside its comfort zone? Many of these people would have walked away from the car if it hadn't been for the tax benefits. Maybe the problem is not the car, but the fact that the tax plans only looks at ownership of the car and not at how the car is used.

You misunderstand me - my point is that following the VW revelations there is pressure to make the official tests more realistic by extending the duration and simulating real-world usage rather than the current very artificial test cycle. Also, currently, the same test cycle is applied to all cars - both conventional petrol/diesel and hybrid - this favours hybrid cars because they can do most of the test on battery and do not demonstrate their performance on petrol. If the authorities design a more extensive test cycle and continue to apply the same tests to all cars, then hybrids will suffer worse than petrol cars in the results - at least assuming that the manufacturers of the petrol cars have not been playing VW tricks to cheat the test.
 
According to the Dutch Automobile Club (ANWB) the average length of a car trip is about 19 km and cars are parked for about 23 hours per day. Ideal for a car like ours. The plug in hybrid fuel consumption is calculated over an imaginary trip of 75 km. This calculation results in 44 gr CO2 / km, where on a trip of 19 km it would be easy to achieve 0. So, I don't see how such a test favours plug-ins.
 
anko said:
According to the Dutch Automobile Club (ANWB) the average length of a car trip is about 19 km and cars are parked for about 23 hours per day. Ideal for a car like ours. The plug in hybrid fuel consumption is calculated over an imaginary trip of 75 km. This calculation results in 44 gr CO2 / km, where on a trip of 19 km it would be easy to achieve 0. So, I don't see how such a test favours plug-ins.

75 km is on the "knee" of the curve - certainly 19km would be even more favourable, but if the test was doubled to 150km, the figures would be much worse as the balance shifts from EV to petrol. For conventional vehicles, the length of the test is relatively immaterial - once it's warmed up, it will produce the same figures over 500km as it does over 50km. The VW cheating was discovered as a result of independent testing done over significant distances on public roads - if the new "official" tests build upon that and do not make a distinction between hybrids and conventional cars, they could be much more hostile to hybrids.
 
Why double the length of the "test" if it is already about 3 times longer than the average car trip? I don't understand why you insist on creating a test that makes the car look bad.
 
anko said:
Why double the length of the "test" if it is already about 3 times longer than the average car trip? I don't understand why you insist on creating a test that makes the car look bad.

I'm not insisting on creating anything - just remarking on what some believe is likely to come out of the VW cockup.
 
anko said:
The plug in hybrid fuel consumption is calculated over an imaginary trip of 75 km.
According to Wikipedia (so by no means infallible), the European fuel economy test is only 11 km long. The only reason I can see why the PHEV wouldn't give a 'zero' figure is that it includes a brief spell at 120 kph.
 
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