Mitsubishi still waiting on PHEV

Mitsubishi Australia has cranked up its sales forecast for the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV in an attempt to be pushed further up the production schedule for the plug-in hybrid SUV.

The PHEV has proved immensely popular in Europe and Japan, meaning local launch timing remains a mystery to Mitsubishi Australia. The original May 2013 launch has been set back month-by-month by Mitsubishi in Japan, now early 2014 is targeted for local launch but that remains unconfirmed.

“Originally we thought it would be a niche product, maybe 100 per month. We have had to move [our sales targets] to probably 200 to 300. But in the scheme of their [Mitsubishi head office] thinking it’s still not a big number,” revealed Mitsubishi Australia marketing director, Tony Principe.

Mitsubishi has also expanded its thinking on Outlander PHEV model lineup, considering a sub-$40,000 model as well as a sub-$50,000 version.

As well as global demand, limited production of the lithium-ion battery used by the PHEV has been blamed for the delay. A fire at the battery plant in Japan has exacerbated the issue.

“We would like the thing earlier rather than later but we just have to wait and we need to see where we are at and how quickly they can ramp up production on the batteries. That’s the choke point,” Principe explained.

“From what we were told it takes a long time to increase battery production,” he added.

“It requires quite substantial additional investment as well, we have been told. Because of the nature of the production it’s a very, very exact and clean and sterile environment and you can’t just stuff around with it.”

Expected to be Australia’s first ever production plug-in hybrid SUV, the PHEV comes with only five seats because of its rear-mounted motor, inverter and transaxle. It is claimed to offer a zero-emissions all-electric driving range of 50km, thanks to a lithium-ion battery pack housed under the floor in the centre of the vehicle.

Combined with a conventional petrol engine, the Outlander PHEV is also claimed to offer more than 880km of total driving range, and CO2 emissions of less than 49g/km, making it one of the world’s cleanest vehicles.

The all-wheel drive Outlander hybrid will also offer three distinct drive modes: all-electric ‘Pure’ (Twin Motor 4WD EV), range-extending ‘Series’ (Twin Motor 4WD EV supported by generator) and motor-assisted ‘Parallel’ (ICE supported by Twin Motor 4WD).

Principe also said Mitsubishi Australia, which has declared an ambitious 100,000 sales per annum sales target for 2017, was still unclear whether the Attrage mini-sedan would be offered for sale here.

Released this week in Thailand (where it is built), the Attrage shares its mechanical basics with the Mirage hatch, which has proved a big hit in Australia, with more than 1500 examples sold in June. Early 2014 would be as soon as it would be seen here, if it is okayed.

“From what I can see we are still not on the official product plan yet. When you are not on there you are always worried because you don’t know what that means. But we went to their global distributor meeting two weeks ago and drove the car and that’s a good sign.

“We put our hand up pretty late… but we are pretty keen.”

Principe confirmed the Attrage name would not necessarily be used in Australia.

“There is a big debate about that globally because a couple of markets want to use something else, but we can’t even get into the debate because we are not on the list. Until we get on the list it doesn’t matter what we think,” he said.

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