By now our regular readers will be quite familiar with our Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle – new readers can get caught up here). This week we took it on our longest trip yet, were delighted with its performance and also received some interesting feedback from other PHEV owners.

Go West Young PHEV

Our Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV outside a fabulous off-grid cabin in the Warrambungles

After twenty years of living in Montana I have become quite fond of country music and this year I had three cousins playing in four different bands at the Country Music Festival in Tamworth. So, since Cintia and I love to dance to a bit of country swing, it seemed like a good excuse to take the PHEV on a roadtrip. We spent the first night on the way north with some friends near Orange and the second night at my uncle’s wonderful little cabin in the Warrambungles near Coonabarabran.

The original cabin was an absolute gem but tragically burned to the ground in the intense bushfire that ravaged the Warrambungles a couple of years ago. My uncle has spent much of the last year or so rebuilding and the resulting cabin is totally delightful. As you can see from the photo above, it has a small solar power system (enough to run some LED lights and a CD player); a rainwater tank (as well as spring water gravity fed from further up the hill); a small solar hot water system; plus an Aga stove with a wetback for winter hot water. It’s very small and simple with a loft sleeping area above the kitchen and a high ceiling over the living room. It was wonderful to stay a night in the peace and beauty of the Warrambungles and be reminded of how little we really need. It was also fascinating to see how the bush recovers from such a devastating fire. In a couple more years it will be hard to tell that anything happened.

Since we were there in the middle of summer there was a total fire ban in place so we weren’t able to fire up the wood-fired pizza oven which also doubles as a water heater and shower facility. We’ll have to save that pleasure for a future winter trip and we definitely need to allow more time to just relax there and unwind.

Front and back views of the hand-made wood-fired pizza oven, water heating tower and shower structure.

It was tempting to ditch our plans for Tamworth and just stay there for the week but the call of the dance floor was too strong so we drove on. The following photo kinda sums up the whole Tamworth Country Music Festival experience.

The Big Golden Guitar.

It’s BIG, larger than life, hot, sunny… sort of tacky but good fun.

The locals were astonishingly welcoming and friendly, especially considering the town doubles in size for the ten days of the festival (from 70,000 to 140,000 people). It was brutally hot and would have been totally overwhelming if we didn’t have friends to guide us. As it was we lasted for three days, heard a lot of great music, danced for hours, slept in the back of the car and spent quite a bit of time at the swimming pool before giving up and heading for the beach. We got home almost a week after we left and have spent the last two days recovering.

7.3L/100km On The Highway with A/C

I didn’t have the opportunity to charge the car at all on the trip so it was another good opportunity to test the fuel economy in highway driving conditions. The heat meant that we had the air conditioning running for most of the time but we still managed to get 7.3L/100km which is pretty good for an SUV with the a/c on. It was right in line with the following comment I received last week from a reader and fellow PHEV enthusiast.

Great to hear about another happy PHEV owner. We have owned ours for about 9 months and its fantastic. We actually bought it after buying an iMiEV 2nd hand for $14k, so we’re now an EV family.
We have driven the PHEV from Sydney to Gold Coast twice and I can tell you the 3L/100km mentioned in your article as being claimed by the dealer is a lie. Its more like 6.7-7.3L/100km on a trip like that, which is still great for a medium SUV. Our overall petrol usage for 11,000km is 3.7L/100km due to lots of EV only trips in between the two QLD trips.
If any PHEV owner is interested, I’ve written an Android App which allows you to see what is going on inside your PHEV battery and Emotors etc. More details here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.EvPositive.EvBatMon

I’m pretty keen to check out this app and I’ll review it when I’ve had the chance to give it a try. Yet another reader sent the following comment…

Congratz on the PHEV purchase by the way. We’ve had ours for 9 months now and we love it. It was a no-brainer purchase for us. During our ownership we have visited the petrol station twice and it was only because an interstate trip was involved.

We’ve yet to receive any negative feedback on the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and it seems there are quite a few owners who are VERY pleased with their purchase. We are certainly happy so far and hoping that we can still say the same in five or ten years time.

That’s all for this week but, if you’re looking for more great information on sustainable living, there’s lots to be found on the website we’ve mentioned over the last couple of weeks, ShrinkThatFootprint.com

Chevy Bolt Released In US

The new Chevrolet Bolt EV goes into production

As described in this Gizmag article, Chevrolet has started production of their new ‘Bolt’ Electric Vehicle (EV). It will go on sale in the US with a price tag of around $38,000 (although the US offers a $7,500 rebate on EV’s so it will cost customers about $30k) and a range of about 320 km. Unfortunately there is no indication of when (or even if) it will be offered for sale in Australia or what the price tag might be here. This is a shame because it seems like it would offer an attractive alternative to the currently available EV options. Unfortunately sales of EV’s are very low in Australia so companies like Chevrolet are reluctant to offer their products here. If we’re serious about reducing our carbon emissions perhaps our various governments should consider offering some form of tax incentive or rebate similar to those available to car buyers in Europe and the United States.

But perhaps Australia will bypass EV’s altogether and move to an altogether more futuristic option…

The Ehang 184 AAV

Introducing the Autonomous Aerial Vehicle

Most readers will be aware of two huge current trends in global research and development… one is the Quadcopter and the other is the Autonomous Vehicle. Thousands of small quadcopter drones are being developed for a wide variety of uses ranging from aerial photography to delivery of parcels. There is also a massive effort by car makers and others around the world (Apple and Google being notable examples) to develop self-driving cars (or Autonomous Vehicles). What you see in the photo above is the Ehang 184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) which, according to this Gizmag article, will carry a single person at speeds up to 100km/h for up to 23 minutes on a full battery charge of 14.4kWh. And you won’t need a pilot’s license because the thing will fly itself… think of it as an autonomous delivery drone for people.

I don’t know about you but my mind jumps to scenes from science fiction movies where people move around cities via aerial highways. And while this is not about to become reality just yet (for one thing the Ehang 184 will cost between US$200k and $300k) we do seem to be heading in that direction. But for me this raises the question of how these developments are likely to affect our carbon footprint. A quick calculation based on the figures given for the AAV tells me that 14.4kWh of electricity will give it a range of about 38km. Meanwhile my Outlander PHEV (which is by no means the most efficient electric vehicle available) gets about 50km from a charge of about 10kWh. So at this stage the AAV is certainly not a more energy efficient form of transportation. On the contrary, it seems to offer a way for the rich and shameless to avoid traffic congestion but not a way for us to tackle climate change.

Understanding Our Carbon Footprint

Understanding our carbon footprint at a personal level, is a difficult and complex proposition, let alone trying to figure out how a whole society might reduce its carbon emissions. If you’re interested in gaining a better understanding of the many factors that effect carbon footprints, a friend has introduced me to an excellent internet resource entitled ShrinkThatFootprint.com

This is a fantastic website that clearly explains the many factors that make up our personal, national and global carbon footprints as well as offering sound advice on how we can reduce them. Starting with the simple question ‘What Is A Carbon Footprint?’ the complexities are broken down into comprehensible chunks and explained with the help of graphs and images such as the following:

The website is aimed at US readers but, as you can see, we Australians are not far behind the US in terms of Carbon Footprint per Capita so all the information and advice on the site is just as relevant to us as to the yanks. When you consider that the global average footprint is 5.6 tCO2e and ours is about four times the average at 20.6 tCO2e, we have every reason to be thinking about how we can make reductions. And this site offers plenty of advice along those lines. Below are links to the various sections of the site:

Introduction: The Shrink Guide
1: What is a carbon footprint?
2: What is climate change?
3: Carbon targets for your footprint
4: Calculate your carbon footprint
5: Shrink your housing footprint
6: Shrink your travel footprint
7: Shrink your food footprint
8: Shrink your product footprint
9: Shrink your service footprint
10: Take further climate action
Conclusion: Take action

Over the next few weeks I will be focusing in more detail on some of the key points and ways we can reduce our own carbon footprint and what specific things we are doing here at the Greeny Flat. Meanwhile you can use the links above to learn more about it for yourself and start thinking about ways you can reduce your own carbon footprint.

In last week’s Newsletter I wrote about our first week with our new Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV).

Cintia’s Thoughts About The PHEV

One regular reader commented that they would like to hear what ‘The Boss’ thinks of it, so I asked her to pen a few words…

What do i think about driving the phev?
Well, apart from the obvious that it is great to be able to do our driving around without spending a litre of petrol, it feels like driving a normal car being deaf.
I realise I rely a lot on noise in regards to cars, to the point that I was proposing to Andrew that we conduct a few experiments. One we've already done. We tried to run over Jane, his mother (with her consent) to see if she would be able to hear the sonar noise it is supposed to make. The results were inconclusive. We sort of of heard something as did Jane... We have to do it again. Any volunteers?
The other was to leave the car on and walk away. Will it turn itself off? Like I said I rely a lot on noise. My car just beeps for everything. Beep, you forgot the lights on. Beep, you forgot the seatbelt. Beep, you forgot to take the key. Since this car doesnt require a key to start, just a on/off power button, and it makes no noise I am really concerned about forgetting to turn off the car. I am known for forgetting stuff.
The other noise I rely on is the car itself. I always knew when A was home as Ivan, his little van, has a very particular squeeky noise. It was very useful when I was making this secret project, a birthday surprise book and needed to switch screens before he came into the house. I guess no more secrets...
Jokes apart, the car is great. Just feels like driving a normal car. And I guess for women with children it is good option as it is very spacious and has all sorts of little compartments.
I love watching A trying to beat his own record on 'this new game' of how to drive more economically, decreasing the consumption. Fun driving!

Andrew’s Thoughts

As I get to know it better I’m growing more fond of the PHEV and getting more and more excited about what it can do for us. It really is a pleasure to drive. It’s very comfortable and has every convenience that I could wish for (and much more). I particularly enjoy the regenerative braking. It has paddles on either side of the steering wheel that allow me to easily change the level of regenerative braking. By adjusting these I find I am able to make most trips with hardly a touch on the brake pedal. This means that we’re able to recover every bit of energy that would otherwise be wasted slowing the vehicle down on hills or in traffic and put that energy back into the batteries. It’s really fun to hit the top of the hill between Bowral and Mittagong with 13 km of electric range left in the batteries and get to the bottom of the hill with 17 km of range. Most of all, I like the sound this car makes. When we’re driving slow on electric it’s almost totally silent, there’s just a faint noise that sounds a bit like an electric train accelerating, a bit like something out of Star Wars, that tells me that we’re not using any petrol. The fact that the energy for our short trips comes from the solar panels on our roof gives me a big sense of relief and satisfaction.

Last week I was unable to give any real indication of actual fuel economy because I hadn’t filled the tank yet. During the last week I had to make a trip back to Lander Mitsubishi to have the tow-bar installed and I also drove down to the coast for a pre-Christmas surf with my brother. This meant that I used most of a tank full of petrol which gave me the opportunity to fill it up. Based on my records, on the first tank of petrol, I drove 659km and used 32.09L of petrol. This makes for an average fuel economy of 4.9L/100km.

This, of course, is much higher than the 1.9L/100km listed for this vehicle but is quite a bit better than I expected based on the research I did before buying the car. The rated fuel economy is calculated under specific test conditions that seem to favour electric vehicles. I don’t know exactly what those test conditions are but it must involve a lot of short trips with frequent charging in between. As I wrote last week, this is certainly achievable with the Outlander PHEV, depending on how far you drive and how often you recharge. Last week was a rare one in which I made two trips that were well outside the 50km electric range.

During the same period we also put a total of 30.6 kWh of electricity into the batteries. I’ve already figured out that driving on electric is cheaper than driving on petrol. We are getting a range of about 50km from a full charge of about 9.5kWh. We are paying $0.238/kWh so it costs us $2.26 to go 50km on electric. BUT if we charge the battery during the day [when our solar system is producing excess power and we are getting $0.10/kWh back from Click Energy in the form of a Feed In Tariff (FIT)], our net electricity cost is only $0.138/kWh which means it only costs us $1.31 to go 50km on renewable energy.

By contrast, when we drive on petrol alone, our fuel economy seems to be around 5.5L/100km (based on the fuel-economy gauge in the car). That means it takes 2.75L to go 50km. At our local price of $1.21/L it costs us $3.33 to go 50km on petrol.

These are only approximate calculations but it seems fairly clear that it is less than half the cost for us to drive short trips on electric versus petrol power. PLUS we have the satisfaction of knowing that we are using a renewable energy source. Even when I’m not at home during the day, I can still plug in to charge up knowing that the energy I’m taking from the grid at the job site is being replaced by our solar system at home. I may have to pay the full 24c/kWh for the power I take out at work but I’m still getting 10c/kWh for the power I’m putting in at home so it still only costs me about 14c/kWh.

I’m keeping careful track of how much energy I’m using to charge when I’m not at home. It will be very interesting to see, over the course of a month or a year, if our solar system can provide enough excess power to cover all of our electric driving as well as running our entire house. As you can see if you take a look at our Results Page, we continue to export over three times as much power to the grid as we import from it. Last month we exported 370kWh and only imported 70kWh. This means we had an excess of 300kWh for the month or an average of 10kWh every day. Since it only takes 9.5kWh to completely charge the car batteries, we could theoretically drive up to 50km every day and still have excess power. Most days I don’t drive that much.

The dream for me is to be energy positive with both the house and the car. So far this Outlander PHEV seems to be a great step in the right direction.

p.s. One astute reader pointed out that all vehicles have ‘optimistic’ odometers. In other words the speedo is factory set to show a slightly higher speed than you’re actually doing (no doubt to avoid possible litigation from someone who got fined for speeding when their speedo showed they were ok). This means you don’t travel as many km as your odometer says you do. So, if fact, our fuel economy will be worse than we think it is based on the odometer reading. His advice is to use the odometer check markers along the highway to figure out how far off the reading actually is then apply a ‘correction factor’ to the distance traveled to give you an accurate figure. I haven’t had the chance to do that yet but I will when I can. Meanwhile, since we’re primarily comparing electric driving to petrol driving using the same odometer readings, I think our results are close enough for the moment.

This whole Greeny Flat thing started with the idea that we have to learn how to live without fossil fuels. By designing, building, living in and monitoring the Greeny Flat we’ve been able to prove that it is relatively easy to inexpensive to create a house that makes more energy than it uses. In fact, over the year-and-a-half that Cintia and I have been testing it, we have exported over three times more power to the grid than we have imported from it. So what’s the next step? How can we use that excess solar power to further reduce our carbon emissions and dependence on fossil fuels?

Well… may I present our New Car!

Our new Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hybrid SUV.

The Greeny Flat Gets New Wheels

Regular readers of these Newsletters will know that I have been looking into Electric Vehicles (EV’s) in great depth over the last year or so. In fact, as I wrote in our Newsletter just two weeks ago, we recently went to Canberra to march for climate change and to test drive some EV’s. It was at the Climate March that I saw my first Outlander PHEV and yesterday we drove home in our own.

PHEV stands for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle and the Outlander claims to be ‘the world’s first plug-in hybrid SUV’. (SUV stands for Sports Utility Vehicle and basically means a four wheel drive although, these days, they’re a far cry from the early Jeeps, Landrovers, and Toyota Landcruisers which were rough and rugged). The SUV we drove home yesterday is a highly sophisticated, luxurious, technological marvel but if I had to drive into the outback I’d take an old Landcruiser any day. There is way too much that could go wrong with the PHEV. But we’re not looking to explore the bush in it… we just want to help save the planet with it.

After looking carefully at all of the available options for plug-in EV’s in Australia we decided that this is the one that makes the most sense for us. As I wrote two weeks ago, A Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) offers something like the best of both worlds. It has an electric motor and enough battery capacity to give it a range of about 50km after which the petrol motor kicks in and it becomes a hybrid vehicle, much like a Toyota Prius. The difference is that the Outlander is a 4WD SUV so is quite a bit heavier and only gets about 6L/100km. But the fact is that most people only drive a short distance on a daily basis and only take occasional longer trips. A PHEV has the advantage that you can do your short trips in all-electric mode and you don’t have to worry about the range for longer trips. The disadvantages are that you have two complete sets of drive system which makes the vehicle more complex and heavy.

1.9L/100km… an eye-catching but extravagant claim!

There is clearly a big discrepancy between the 6L/100km I wrote about above and the sticker on the back of the car which claims 1.9L/100km. The latter figure is the official fuel-efficiency number for the Outlander PHEV and the sticker was put there by the nice people at Lander Mitsubishi in Blacktown to grab people’s attention. I plan to leave it there for the same reason. In fact I’m leaving all the stickers on the car for two reasons. One, because I want people to ask me questions about the car, and two, because Lander Mitsubishi gave me a very good deal because I offered to advertise for them. And I’m happy to do it because I believe that this car is an excellent step in the right direction towards a fossil-fuel-free future.

The car we bought was a demo model with about 7oook’s on the clock and we paid $30,000 for it. The retail price is about $49,000 and there are similar models on carsales.com.au for anything from $30k up to $55k. I’ve never spent anywhere near this much money on a car before and part of me thinks I’m crazy. But I’ve done my homework and this is the best-value car that will do what I need it to do (I do quite a lot of building work and I have the occasional guilty pleasure of a trip down the coast for a surf so I need a bit more size, range and versatility than the other EV options offer) while also doing what we all need to do… i.e. reduce our carbon emissions.

As for the fuel economy… time will tell. After driving it home from Blacktown yesterday with the air-conditioning running it was showing that we had used 5.4L/100km which is pretty impressive for something this big and heavy. In fact it’s about what Cintia gets from her beloved little Honda Jazz. We have yet to become familiar with the car but we’re already learning that the way we drive will make a huge difference to our fuel economy.

The Instrument Display of the Outlander PHEV.

The photo above shows the dashboard display of the Outlander. There is another, larger, touch screen in the centre console that controls the ‘Communications Centre’ but, in terms of getting the most out of every litre of petrol, this is where the action is. The dial on the left shows, at all times, how economical the driver is being. We’ve already learned that we want to keep this as close to the blue ‘Charge’ area as possible. The car has 6 levels of regenerative breaking which adjusts how much you use the electric motors (the Outlander has two) to slow down while generating electricity and saving it to the batteries.

There are many different settings for the power management display in the centre. The one in the photo is showing that we have 9km of range left for driving in electric only and a total of 476km of range using petrol and electric. The blue gauge on the left shows how much charge is left in the battery and the one on the right shows how much petrol is left in the tank.

As we get more familiar with the car and how to drive it most efficiently we’ll find out what sort of fuel-efficiency we can really get. One of the salesmen at Lander said he drove one up to Queensland and back and averaged 3L/100km with only a charge before he left Sydney and one before he left for the return. That seems hard to believe but I’m realising that, if we charge the battery regularly and only drive short trips in all-electric mode, we could go weeks without using any petrol at all. In fact the Owner’s Manual (Cintia can’t believe that I would actually read it) warns that we should be careful to use at least 20L every six months otherwise the fuel can deteriorate in the tank. Not many car manuals have that sort of warning!

Obviously, charging it and driving it on all electric is only of benefit to the planet if the electricity we use to charge it comes from renewable sources. We have a lot of excess power from our solar system and it’s going to be very interesting to gauge whether that’s enough to power the car for the majority of our close-to-home driving. The dream is to get to where we can run our house and car entirely on renewable energy. We’re not there yet but our new PHEV should help take us a few more steps in that direction. Stay tuned as we learn how to get the most out of it.