New PHEV owner questions

[HHembre]

I’m a newbie to PHEV ownership and we just got a 2018 Outlander with about 18,000 miles on it. It drives great and is in great condition. Our first few weeks of driving it has been in the cold snowy winter weather of Minnesota (US). When we researched and bought the car, we were lead to believe the battery would take us through our daily driving, using zero gas at all as we were told the electric capacity would be around 20 miles. My commute is 2 miles and most of my errands are within a few miles from home. We were disappointed to find that the car was, in fact going through gas at least as quickly as our non-hybrid car! What surprises me is that the battery is showing charge, but the car is using gas, even when we are driving less than 20 miles per day.

As I said, we are newbies, and have been overwhelmed and under-informed about the many modes, settings and buttons to choose from. After reading through this forum, I’m starting to understand more about it all, but would love someone to just give me a total beginner’s tutorial on this car, relevant to our climate and daily driving routine. It’s freezing cold all winter, and driving can be tough with snow and ice. Heat blasting, seat heaters on high, 4wd, etc. The summer is hot and humid so we’ll run the AC. I get that all those factors take more power. It’s relatively flat terrain, and my daily routine is stop and go driving at 20-30 mph most of the time.

What buttons should I push when I start the car each morning? How can we use the least gas possible? That’s totally why we bought this car!!! EV mode? Eco mode? Don’t press anything and let the car decide??? Thanks for any basic tips you have for using less gas!!!

 

[Lon12]

From what I remember about our 2018. Turn off the HVAC power before turning off the car. That way when you start the car in cold weather and put it in EV mode the engine should stay off. Selecting full defrost mode or flooring the accelerator will also start the engine.
A two mile commute should be very easy to do in EV only mode especially if you can keep the car garaged all night.
You are plugging it in at night?

 

[HHembre]

Yes, we’re plugging it in every night so it always starts out fully charged. Thanks for the tip! We’ll try turning off HVAC.

 

[ThudnBlundr]

You can turn off the heating immediately after turning the car on - you have second or two before the ICE fires up. But by far the better alternative is to preheat the car from the mains. That will also help with the ICE coming on and you don't need to turn off the heating. I only turn off the heater when I've not been able to preheat

 

[HHembre]

What do you mean by “preheat the car from the mains?” Like I said, I’m a total novice here! And thanks for your help!

 

[AndyInOz]

Hola HHembre,

Preheating is slightly complicated.

If you have your car plugged in to mains power, via the charger cable, it is efficient to 'pre-heat' the cabin by running the car's electric heater from a timer.

This can be set up via the systems on board (through the touch screen) or via the Mitsubishi app on your phone/tablet.

The car will do this without being plugged in, but it will use a significant amount of power from the drive battery if you do so.

You can only do this if you have a model with the electric heater and if you have the on board timer software.

 

[HHembre]

Wow! I had no idea you could do this, and am not sure if ours has these options—but I’ll check into it. Thank you for the clear explanation! Makes total sense.

 

[Rockwallrick]

I am a new PHEV owner as well. Didn’t plug it in last night but I should have plenty of range for a 30 mile round trip today. We are using the AC a lot more now but it doesn’t seem to impact the range that much!