Our PHEV at a remote campsite near Yamba.
We’ve had our Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) for over a year now and we absolutely love it. We charge it up from our solar panels during the day and do most of our local driving powered by our own renewable energy. We’ve taken it on lots of camping and surfing trips, slept in it, pulled boats with it, hauled building materials and trailers with it… in short it has done everything we’ve asked of it comfortably, quietly, efficiently and economically. We reckon it should be the most popular SUV on the Australian market and yet, hardly anyone even knows it exists. I put that down to an abject failure on the part of Mitsubishi to effectively market a car that would sell itself if people knew about it.
Anyway…. we love it!
So it was nice to read this article from New Atlas which cites a Lifecycle Assessment study comparing a Mercedes E350e (PHEV) to the standard, petrol engine E350. Here’s a quote…
‘According to the lifecycle analysis conducted by TÜV, building, owning and recycling the new E350e emits around 44 percent less C02 than the outgoing E350 CGI, which offered similar performance to the new hybrid, but ran with a conventional petrol engine instead. The testing assumes the car has been charged using a conventional European plug, but also says using renewable energy to charge the battery could improve that figure to 63 percent over the course of 250,000 km.’
Since we primarily charge our Outlander PHEV using our own renewable energy, it looks like our we should see something like a 50-60% reduction in GHG emissions over the life of the car. So not only is it perfect for our needs, it’s significantly better for the planet.
That makes me even happier.
Just went to the Mitsubishi page to check out the PHEV, and there is a new one coming so there is nothing on the site for it.
Sad that I can’t check out the vehicle, but at the same time hoping that new one is even better than the current version.