460 mile with plug-in hybrid-Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV

Now I have made a trip that this car is not really intended for. We made a trip to Kalix for Christmas celebrations. The trip was 460 miles and took 8.5 hours. We packed the car full of suitcases and gifts, the boot swallowed it all very well. Our children (4 and 7 years old) were placed in the the back seat in booster seats. The space in the back is a little worse than in our Subaru Legacy station wagon from 2010. It gets pretty crowded for an adult to sit in the middle between the booster seats.  In the front seats my wife and I sits very comfortable . I’m very happy with the choice to not have full leather seats, I have not yet felt the need to keep the heat on in the front seats. The Comfort Tech fabric seems to work. In our old Subaru with full leather seats I had the heat constantly on so as not to freeze.

My wife always has cold hands and she´s loving the steering wheel heater. In the tray between the front seats there is a USB outlet where we plug in a USB flash drive with music which can be controlled from the radio. When we get tired of the music we  hook up my smartphone with Spotify via Bluetooth and it works very well to control with the radio.

In the tray between the front seats, there is also a 12 volt outlet where we plug in charger for cell phones and DVD players. Unfortunately a fuse had gone in our house during the night so the car was not fully loaded at startup. Since the battery capacity is not enough to run on electric drive the whole journey I try to save it by pressing the Save button and start the electric power only at distances where the petrol engine would consume the most, such as slopes and city driving.

The car feels solid and stable and there are no problems overtaking on a slushy E4. The acceleration is actually really good, something I was a bit worried before I bought the car. Since the range of the electric drive is about 30 miles, this is not a stretch when the car is performing its best. I stop along the road at a gas station to fill it up with petrol, the consumption is around 8 lit/100 km (35 mpg) It had probably been a little better if the battery has been fully charged from the beginning. The car is fully loaded and it’s winter so the capacity of the battery is reduced, moreover, we are charging DVD players, mobile phones and listening to the radio and that also consumes electricity.

I’ve now been running 620 miles totally in this car and I notice that the studded winter tyres Pirelli Winter Carve Edge is not the tyres to recommend for this car. The noise from the wheels are too strong. The question is, however, if it is the brand of the tires that matter. I have had contact with a guy who also recently bought a Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid and he had Good Year studded tires on his car that he immediately switched for friction tyres due to the noise. So maybe friction tires is recommended for this car model. It´s a pity that the tires are going to ruin the whole experience.