Mitsubishi Outlander Exceed Tourer gives motorists the power of choice

To be green or not to be green. This surprisingly good and good-for-the-environment Mitsubishi allows you to be both - for under $70,000 | FULL REVIEW

Stephen Corby

3 min read

12:00AMJuly 01, 2023

The Weekend Australian Magazine

Mitsubishi Outlander Exceed Tourer can be driven entirely as an EV, albeit one with only 84km of range.

I do not like to discuss my own laziness (although my wife considers it a favourite topic), let alone publicise it, but when it might affect the long-term future of the planet I feel I must be selfless and naked in my honesty.

I have long held a theory about plug-in hybrids – like the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV I’ve just spent six months living with – being like puppies for Christmas. Sure, you think you want one, and it’s good for the children (by reducing your CO2 footprint, and your fuel bills, thus leaving them both more planet and money to inherit), but will you really want to play with it a few months down the track, particularly if you don’t really have to?

The Outlander can be driven entirely as an EV, albeit one with only 84km of range, so if you charge it regularly and don’t leave town it can be a zero-emission vehicle. If you need to go further, however, its 2.4-litre petrol engine will kick in and take over from the two electric motors when the battery goes flat, then you can just drive it like a normal SUV (and a particularly comfortable one, with lots of leather and heated seats in the range-topping Exceed Tourer model).

I’ve spoken to one owner who’s driven his beloved Mitsubishi Outlander many kilometres over six months and only filled it up with petrol twice. As for me, excited to play with this new toy and making sure to charge it only during the day via my solar panels, for maximum green goodness, I got more than 1300km off my first tank of fuel (claimed range is “850km+”, while theoretical fuel economy is 1.5 litres per 100km).

I would have gone even further, but I took the big beast for a long road trip, on which I found its combined power figures of 185kW and 450Nm (an impressive 50kW and 205Nm more than a non-hybrid Outlander) ample for freeway cruising. I was, however, struck by the weird noises you don’t notice around town. Up above 100km/h, the mild-mannered Mitsubishi makes very strange rocket-like whining sounds – a result, it seems, of its use of a single-speed transmission, just like a full EV.

Above 100km/h, the mild-mannered Mitsubishi makes very strange rocket-like whining sounds. Photo: Supplied

I also took the Outlander on a camping adventure, because I am a hugely rugged kind of guy who loves nothing more than to sleep on rough and muddy ground like a hog (or possibly because I was forced to go). While the whole experience was miserable, I did get a chance to shine when I demonstrated the car’s V2L (Vehicle to Load) technology, which means it has a familiar three-pin plug in the rear load area, into which you can plug an electric fry pan, for example, and draw power from the vehicle’s battery.

Cleverly, you can set a limit for how much of the battery’s charge you’re willing to sacrifice, but of course even if it did go flat you wouldn’t be stranded because you have a PHEV. Other campers worshipped me as some kind of Erich von Däniken-imagined creature driving a Chariot of the Gods, mainly because I was able to charge up all of their phones.

It seems like a tale of green-tinged success, then, except for the intrusion of human weakness; specifically my own. The thing is, I really wanted to be good and to keep the Outlander charged up, but I knew that I didn’t have to. And, well, you know, it can take a whole minute or two to plug it into the home charger, and that also means reversing it into the driveway, and moving other cars out of the way, and the night is dark and full of terrors.

Oh, all right, so I can be a bit lazy, and while this isn’t a problem when I borrow a fully electric car, because you have to charge them, the fact is that when you know you don’t have to plug a PHEV in, sometimes you won’t.

I know people think of my role as being a dedicated scientist crossed with an engineer, and that I’ve let them down, and I know the kind of person who actually does the research and decides they want to buy a hybrid will make a more concerted effort to maximise their fuel economy and minimise their emissions. I also think that kind of person would be very happy with this Outlander, because it’s a vehicle that asks you to make no compromises at all, it’s comfortable, capacious and even a little classy inside, although it does look a bit like a four-eyed fish from front on.

Number nerds will be interested to hear that I drove 3836km and achieved an energy efficiency figure of 23.2kWh/100km, and an overall fuel-economy figure I feel slightly ashamed of, at 7.0 litres per 100km, which is not exactly close to Mitsubishi’s claimed number.

It could have been better, of course, if only I was a better person.