Hybrid or PHEV towcar
Comments
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Some interesting comments here.
It seems that the Outlander PHEV is the only serious hybrid suitable for towing a caravan at the moment.
The figure of 22mpg towing is a concern. Even our Volvo XC90 (a much bigger car, I think) will usually top 25mpg - higher if I stuck to 50mph.
Also didn't like the bit about hills. In cruise control, our Volvo might just drop a gear and carry on regardless. Cross winds are not an issue, It tows like dream.
That said, it only does about 30mpg solo on local short trips. So compare to about £1 per battery top up on the PHEV (I think) that is a big difference.
I would have to do some serious sums to see how it all works out.
Does the PHEV have a masive boot?
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Hi Ian, re the boot, I'd say it was comparable with most mid sized 4 x 4's. Maybe not as big as your XC90 or our old Touareg, but still very decent.
I can get our porch awning and poles, together with 4 large collapsible chairs, width ways in the boot. Then on top them the aquaroll, rolled up ground sheet, various water, beer and a couple of toolboxes etc etc
On the way home we also put black bags of dirty washing for the 4 of us on the top that.
Lots to consider.
Cheers, Alex.
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@ IanH The figure of 22mpg towing is a concern. Even our Volvo XC90 (a much bigger car, I think) will usually top 25mpg - higher if I stuck to 50mph
A concern? I don't get 22mpg while towing .... might just about get 20. all things are relative when comparing tow vehicles. And mine is about as big as yours ..... Oooer!
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I still think that the PHEV is too much of a risk for serious caravanning at the moment. It is clearly at the front of the pack, but actually I think that it is not as good as the Hybrid RAV4.
But seriously I think that this is a repeat of the old TV video recorder battle of the 70's, Betamax Vs VHS. My recommendation - hold off buying until a clear victor emerges. Don't risk buying the wrong one!
There is still nothing to beat the Torque and low end power of the Diesel. I need clarity on the status of the new Euro 6 Diesels running on AdBlue. From what I can glean from looking at manuals etc, the new Euro 6 Diesels are actually cleaner than Euro 6 Petrols.
So where the h*** are we?
TF
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The PHEV has a third row of seats and still some boot room without the third row the boot is very spacious. I have carried 3 labs and a GSD x but normally it's just the GSD x Rottie and a lab! With the back seats down there is 6'2" of space - I was thinking of sleeping in it for island hopping in Scotland! I have the Outlander diesel but it's identical inside to the PHEV. I wish I was convinced the PHEV would tow as well as the diesel. Incidentally the overall length is shorter than my previous Skoda Octavia scout.
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i tow with a mitzi phev i agree it is not a great tow car i get 20-26 when towing but make up for this on arrival and then i never have to put petrol in and start exploring i do charge up on sites the cable that comes with the car is designed for home charging fitted with a domestic 3 pin plug it initially starts at 10 amps and gradually drops to 6amps over a 5 hr period there should not be any need to plug straight in to the site bollard
the club has installed charging points at brighton club site however these i suspect are fast chargers 20/30 mins and it is fully charged however mitsubishi dont reccomend fast charging as damaage to batterys may occur
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In the end I went for a Euro 6 compliant ML350 Bluetech. Its towing 1650Kgs at 24 and solo's at 34, so I'm quite happy. Will wait until the Electric v Hybrid battle is over and the technology has developed. Will probably be past caring then anyway.
TF
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The quote about the third row of seats in the Outlander PHEV is wrong. That's true for the diesel but it's where batteries are placed in the PHEV. With a 20 mile commute and a socket at work I averaged 94mpg throughout 18 months of ownership including towing the van (Eriba 540GT). I'd agree with many of the negatives and it depends on the amount of towing and nature of driving/commuting. As you can imagine I didn't care about the towing mpg with such an amazing overall average! Having said all that, the car was dull dull dull, so now I drive an F Pace and suffer the BIK and fuel cost hit.
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Mitsubishi PHEV towing a Coachman 460 VIP last summer to the French Alps...............
Forget charging up on the way. Fuel economy was 15-16 mpg, and on two days I filled up 3 times on the journey.
Pulling up long hills a dashboard message pops up 'propulsion power is reduced'. That's the last place I want to lose power as I slowed to 40 mph. After checking the handbook its all to do with letting the drivetrain cool. It also does this going over the M62.
On a good day and a full charge I only get 21 miles, so pulling a caravan I would not expect to get more than 15 miles if lucky.
My last car was a Skoda Superb diesel and I think the Skoda build quality is better, and more comfortable.
The Outlander PHEV is good on company car tax, but apart from that I reckon its a gimmick and I would not want another.
Yes I would rather pay more tax and go back to a large diesel with mote torque.
(Overall I checked my fuel card over a 12 month period and the car averages 34mpg. I do 30,000 miles a year).
NOT recommended by me as a tow car.
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At the moment I would not even consider either a fully electric or a Hybrid as a towcar.. I'd stick to a decent diesel car for towing in the meantime. The EU are changing continually changing the rules on emissions and who knows what will be the policy next year or the next again.
Since there is an emissions a problem in congested cities, the sensible option is to ban diesels from entering cities and leave the rest of the country to continue as it is. This will not affect caravanners or those who enjoy touring.
K
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Hello. First time poster. No caravan as yet but looking at changing car and have test driven a PHEV. Can I ask what is probably a daft question but if the towing limit on a PHEV is 1500kg, how close can the MTPLM go to that limit (for comfortable driving) and would I find a 6 berth caravan that would be towed by a PHEV.
We won’t be holidaying and I’m not concerned by the poor mpg when towing - we will more than make up for that in the rest of the year.
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Hi, the PHEV kerbweight is 1845kg, so the MTPLM can go right up to the 1500kg and still be around the 85% guideline and therefore comfortable.
Sorry, can't help with suggestions re-6 berth van.
Cheers, Alex.
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What PHEV are you referring to? There is more than one on the market! Personally i dont think the manufacturers are yet giving sufficient consideration to towing capabilities with hybrids and PHEVS so will be a long time before one sits in front if my caravan. And a lot of high mileage drivers are finding petrol PHEV’s are significantly less economical than diesels on long journeys...... Given i tow and cover a high mileage my guess is it will be at least 10 years before used ones are available which i can afford and meets my requirements.
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I used the matching service and chose the 3+, auto.
I'm not sure that there is much difference in kerbweight across the range, well not enough to substantially affect the car/van ratio.
The 3+ is about mid range.
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I think Kennine has got it just about right in terms of how an end-user can reasonably expect to deal with the thin end of what I perceive to be a particularly long and heavy wedge.
The finite availability of all global fossil fuels means that all world governments will be thinking in the long-term towards discouraging private users away from diesel in order to maintain essential service transport e.g. miltary vehicles and bulk food transport.
HMG (UK) are bound to be looking at progressive increases in excise duty on the cost of any privately-owned diesel-engined vehicles as well as the fuel duty.
As a general point, I'm not sure that the UK mobile leisure industry has woken up to the inescapable fact that in the next ten-fifteen years, the demand for caravans and motorhomes will be in sharp decline, along with the dwindling numbers of 'cash-cows' (defined-benefit scheme pensioners, credit-rich millennials etc.) upon whom the industry has been feeding so voraciously.
The capital outlay on electric/hybrid-electric vehicles is bound to be biassed towards the recovery of development costs (as well as cross-funding other activities such as recoverable space flight delivery systems, sideline publicity stunts - launching one's personal Tesla into orbit ... allegedly). It's the consumer that ends up paying for it every time - and just when we think we're ahead of the curve, the technology changes / regulation changes and we end up taking yet another hit in the bank account.
For my part, I have no intention of changing over from my 2.5 litre turbo-diesel (Euro 6-compliant) to petrol or any form of electric/hybrid-electric vehicle. The 'do nothing' option is an entirely valid and reasonable one as far as my mobile leisure activities are concerned.
Cynical? Moi?
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I am referring to the Mitsubishi Outlander.
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Sorry to bring this back up again.
But is the consensus still the same a year or two later?
I am in the process of ordering the new V90 T8 Hybrid, which seems to rate as an excellent tow car.
Thoughts, please? Also, what are the thoughts on Factory fit towbars vs Retro Fit?
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I was hoping that with some R & D the Outlander PHEVs towing limit and battery range would improve over the years. Making it a more attractive proposition.
Seems that'll not be the case and the industry is moving away from hybrids.
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Just to add my tuppence worth.
I have an Outlander PHEV and it works for us.
Not so good points:
The fuel tank is 45 litres, that is the same as a Corsa
Towing it is noisy, slower acceleration than a diesel, and the fuel economy is poor (did I say the tank was small?)
It is not particularly exciting as cars go.
Good points:
I commute 14 miles each way, recharging at work. This is about 50p a day in electricity for me.
Having adaptive cruise control means I can sit comfortably on the motorway behind another vehicle making it quite stress free.
We use this car more than our diesel most of the time as we do many short distance drives and hence don't have to fill up often.
I read somewhere that from a full battery, the fuel economy beats a diesel up to about 145 miles.
Someone earlier wrote that they did 30,000 miles in theirs and the fuel economy was poor; I'm not surprised, this was never going to be the car for them.
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We faced this dilemma when choosing a new car to pull our new(to us) Unicorn Valencia in August, in the end we went for the diesel Outlander, and reading this I'm glad we did. It goes like a dream, we get 20-22 mpg on A roads towing with lots of braking and accelerating and my 50 miles commute on single carriage way roads give 39-41 mpg. We've not towed on motorways yet so that remains to be seen. It's got a 60 litre tank so reasonable range.
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We are looking at the new Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV with the new 2.4 engine uprated generator and motors along with larger battery, hopefully it should perform better as a towcar. It is not going to be for the next 18 months or so to see how the markets progresses ?
We average about 5000 miles (which includes towing) a year all quite local less than 25 miles, we can charge up at home, we tow a couple of times to the new forest (720 miles) possibly down to Devon (440 miles) and 2/3 more local sites (450 miles) totalling approximately 1500/1600 miles.
On paper using electric at home and CAMC sites it would appear to be cost effective plus reducing our carbon footprint .
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We have a 2 year old Outlander PHEV. We towed a Sprite Major 6TD loaded to 1495kg around France and Spain last year covering about 2000 miles. In total we have covered 35,000 miles in the car from new. Most of our journeys are short and we fill up once or twice a month otherwise using electric.
Towing fuel consumption was 21mpg on the French motorways driving at 56mph and up to 25mpg on Spanish N roads at slower speeds.
We had no problems of power availability. Our friends were towing a similar weight Sprite using a 2litre diesel golf. The Outlander never had any problem pulling away from them on the uphills. The dreaded tortoise light came on a couple of times indicating depleted batteries but this did not force the car to slow down.
The small tank however does mean frequent petrol stops so we planned for one every two hours in any case and topped up when it was on about half full.
Note that this is the 2.0 litre version and I would hope that the new 2.4 litre version would be better still.
I am very happy with the car as is SWMBO
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