There have been a rash of press reports about Mitsubishi planning to base the next generation of the EVO on the Outlander PHEV technology, meaning a PHEV with serial/parallel hybrid electric/ICE propulsion.
http://www.caradvice.com.au/243129/...-be-a-370kw-plug-in-hybrid-gt-r-rival-report/
http://www.carsguide.com.au/news-an...shi_evo_aims_to_rival_nissan_gt_r?origin=hpc1
When you look at the YouTube link that I originally posted above showing that the Outlander PHEV is capable of making the 0 – 100km/hr acceleration in less than 8 seconds this seems to be very credible product plan. If one takes account of the fact that there is no gearbox and so no possibility that you find yourself in the wrong gear to undertake a particular manoeuvre the potential for the Mitsubishi approach to propulsion is striking. Some manufacturers are adding more and more gears to the gearbox as their method of achieving lower fuel consumption. This approach must add weight and complexity to the vehicle that must ultimately reach a point of diminishing returns.
On the other hand in the Mitsubishi PHEV the potential for reducing the size, and so the power density, of the electric motor, the generator, the battery and the inverters as production and experience builds up is substantial . This is because most of these improvements in a Mitsubishi PHEV do not depend on increasing the number of moving parts, as happens with the more-and-more-gears approach to optimising the propulsion of a vehicle that still depends on the ICE as its primary form of propulsion. In a Mitsubishi PHEV the potential to reduce the size of the propulsion elements comes from reducing the internal resistances within the electric motor, electric generator, inverter and the battery and optimising their cooling.
It would not surprise me to see that the next generation of Mitsubishi PHEV technology would have the inverters integrated into the motors and the generator more tightly integrated into the ICE structure in order to reduce size and increase efficiency. Now that Mitsubishi have made the revolutionary jump to parallel/serial PHEV technology they will be focussed on making evolutionary improvements to this technology. It will be difficult for the manufactures who have chosen to stick with the conventional ICE propulsion architecture to catch Mitsubishi in what in my opinion is the inevitable final PHEV architecture.
Those people in this forum who believe that other manufacturers will announce a serial/parallel hybrid vehicle in the short term in my view underestimate the engineering work necessary to bring a totally new propulsion method into production. The German manufacturers all seem to be favouring taking their existing designs and integrating an electric motor/generator into an existing ICE structure that includes gearboxes. In other words they are taking an evolutionary path to going hybrid, whereas the Mitsubishi path, with its elimination of a gearbox and focus on the main drive propulsion being the electric motors, instead of the ICE, is revolutionary.
It take years of engineering work to bring a revolutionary technology to market. It also takes courage. If another manufacturer introduces a parallel/serial PHEV vehicle in the near future then you can be sure that they will have been working on developing it for several years. You don’t make this kind of change overnight.
As so often is the case in industry, if Mitsubishi is not a dominant force in PHEV technology in ten years from now it won’t be because other manufactures have been smarter, it will be because Mitsubishi dropped the ball somewhere along the line. I hope they don’t. They have, in my view, made the right architectural choice; they now need to stick with it and put all their effort into optimising this architecture.
