sudden loss of all drive power on motorway

[Trex]

Hi jaapv,

In the first post itserve wrote : "The car just lost all power on the busy A11 on a stretch with no hard shoulder. I could only coast to a halt."

It does not sound like he hit a brick wall. :?

itserve later wrote : "We got back from Austria with no further problems by leaving the charge button pressed" and "Dealer has looked at the car and no fault codes were logged " and "My speed was between 80 and 85 mph. Fully laden with a roof box too."

I am only guessing but it sounds like a SOC problem.

Regards Trex

 

[jaapv]

... I was approaching a roundabout and it was as if the Phev decided to do it's own emergency stop: anchors down and ABS doing its stuff.

Here.

 

[ian4x4]

I am puzzled why no one has pointed out that at 85mph with a roof rack on the engine (119bhp max) will probably find it impossible to push the large frontal area (including roof box) through the air.

Have a look at the 'sweet spot' graph in the 'technical graphs and images' and add on say 25% resistance for roof box. I think that the power & resistance graphs pass earlier than 85mph.

If you drop back into 'series' mode then the generator allows even less power.

Therefore once you have run battery to its lower limit you must slow down or the car will panic.

Also emergency braking mode is common on most cars now, and will react to the speed of movement from accelerator to brake.

Regards Ian

 

[FrancoPHEV]

I had a similar experience last week when, after a steady run up from Paris to Caen at an average 115kmh, I was approaching a roundabout and it was as if the Phev decided to do it's own emergency stop: anchors down and ABS doing its stuff. Thank goodness there was nothing behind me. I still have absolutely no idea what happened but 1100km and 4 similar journies later, I have not had a repeat performace.

Do you have FCM? If the radar sensor picked something up mistakenly it would do exactly that. You would have had a large sign "Brake" flashing in that case.

No I don't. It was the second thing that crossed my mind - wonder if it is fitted but "not declared". No prizes for guessing what my first though was!!

 

[jaapv]

I am puzzled why no one has pointed out that at 85mph with a roof rack on the engine (119bhp max) will probably find it impossible to push the large frontal area (including roof box) through the air.

Have a look at the 'sweet spot' graph in the 'technical graphs and images' and add on say 25% resistance for roof box. I think that the power & resistance graphs pass earlier than 85mph.

If you drop back into 'series' mode then the generator allows even less power.

Therefore once you have run battery to its lower limit you must slow down or the car will panic.

Also emergency braking mode is common on most cars now, and will react to the speed of movement from accelerator to brake.

Regards Ian

I have driven it on the German Autobahn full load - skibox for about 7500 Km at speeds between 130 and 150 sustained.
I only saw the warning once - on a long incline when the speed was more like 160-170. The car did not slow down ( there is quite a lag before it does, I suppose) and the warning disappeared as soon as I dropped speed slightly for a few minutes, never to return

 

[anko]

EDIT the exact phrase in Dutch is : "13% SOC: Als de benzine op is zal de auto stoppen. " . jaapv or anko :?: Is onenote translation correct?

When you reach 13% with no gas in the tank, the car will come to a stop

 

[Trex]

EDIT the exact phrase in Dutch is : "13% SOC: Als de benzine op is zal de auto stoppen. " . jaapv or anko :?: Is onenote translation correct?

When you reach 13% with no gas in the tank, the car will come to a stop

Thanks for the translation anko. Which makes sense ie why stop the petrol engine when the SOC is getting very low like onenote inferred in its translation.ie " 13% SOC the petrol motor on the car will stop."

What are your thoughts on itserve sudden loss of power?

When it happens 3 time to itserve and then he uses charge button, and then has no more problems, it still sounds to me like a SOC issue .

Regards Trex.

 

[anko]

If you drop back into 'series' mode then the generator allows even less power.

Not necessarily. At 80 - 80 mph, the engine is not max max rpm and not at max torque. So, definitively not at max power.

Question is, do you have more or less than 60 kW mechanical power available at 80 - 85 kW? I guess it could be less.

If that was the case, I can see a scenario where the car dropped into EV mode, because it had slightly more power. But not enough to restore SOC. So, EV mode was sustained for a long time. And at some point either the engine was overloaded or the e-motors. Let's not forget, the e-motors are rated 60 kW each, but this can not be sustained over longer periods of time.

 

[jaapv]

Are you suggesting some kind of overheating safety cut-out, Anko? In that case the car surely would have displayed a warning message?

 

[ian4x4]

I can remember posting this a long time ago over similar worries about loss of power/speed once the battery has run low.

The BMW i3 forums make good reading on this sort of subject, as that car is severely limited by the size of its internal combustion engine (37bhp), and therefore in continuous non battery power.

Basically your max electrical power available is 160bhp, and I suspect that your 119bhp IC engine will be nearly going flat out powering the 70kw (93bhp) generator to top up the batteries.

I cannot see where any spare generating power is going to come from, the car is doing its best to delay the batteries from running down, after which you will have a 93bhp 2 ton car on a 1 in 3 hill!

Thus the advice to use charge before you get to the incline, to get the batteries in the best condition to help.

I believe that you will be left with only 93bhp to power your car as this is all the generator can manage. The engine torque is limited by the direct gearing to the axle and in extreme circumstances will decouple to allow the full 70kw (93bhp) to be generated and therefore used by the electric motors.

Regards Ian

 

[jaapv]

You are describing the operation span between "display-empty"batteries and really empty batteries here.
The car has been configured to manage this span optimally. First it will go into a "save"' type of mode to keep the SOC arond 27 %. This is the most the vast majority of users will ever see and the car can be operated normally. The range will be displayed as alternating between --.-- and 1.

If the battery level drops down to 20 % the car will go into a limited power mode (or turtle mode) to charge up the battery to over 20 % again. This will generate a warning on the dashboard.

Should the battery drop to 13 % (which can only happen if you run out of petrol as well) the car will stop.

 

[ian4x4]

Thanks Jaapv

I think the point I was trying to make is that if you push this or any other car up to, or beyond, the edges of it's designed operating envelope, strange things will happen as you cannot always foresee everything when you write the operating system.

When I read these ev/phev forums I get the impression that a lot of these cars are being driven by test pilots, and not by airline pilots.

Regards Ian

 

[jaapv]

Well, in a way we all are beta-testers.

 

[Trex]

Well, in a way we all are beta-testers.

Hi jaapv,

That statement has to the most profound thing I have seen written on this forum. We are beta testers and the series 2 Phev will be so much better for it.

And Mitsubishi should be congratulated for bringing in a new model that appears to have so few problems. Most of them are very minor IMO except for their hv battery problem in the early days and this sort of thread is a worry ie sudden loss of all drive power on motorway.

Regards Trex.

 

[itserve]

Came across this:

http://insideevs.com/mitsubishi-recalls-6517-outlander-phevs/

I believe the problem we experienced could be the software glitch being described. As Mitsubishi say, there are around 1800 vehicles in Europe potentially affected we need to get this looked at. They say no one has been injured yet as a result of the fault but my family were put in grave danger.

It is going back into the dealership next week as we had a further problem with the car refusing to start, requiring several shut down and switch ons, showing engine warning light, before finally the fault seemed to clear and the vehicle worked again as normal.

 

[JKL]

This recall is for PHEV's built in 2013 as far as I understood. The article is from early 2014...

 

[itserve]

There is no recall in Europe. The problem described is similar to the one we are encountering.

 

[maby]

There is no recall in Europe. The problem described is similar to the one we are encountering.

I thought that the previous problem and recall related to the low voltage battery discharging, not the HV.

 

[itserve]

I believe it did, and that this is what is causing our problems. Mitsubishi need to be taking this seriously as it is a very dangerous situation that it could potentially put people in. We will be writing to Mitsubishi with an account of the problems as well as seeing what our new local dealership say on Wednesday.

 

[itserve]

If the problem is not resolved we will reject our PHEV and give it back to the lease company. Also very unimpressed with our new local dealership. LEX leasing have been great though.