EP233 - Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV - A dying machine? Answers from Japan🎌 

In other words: MMC says to all serious "this bug is not a bug, it's the learning curve of our engineers" ?!?! My words: Congratulations! (And don't buy Mitsubishi's as long as these gentlemen are still learning!)

My test for this car is based on the bottom line that is how much petrol I have to buy each month to get to work. Work is exactly 30 miles each way. I charge at home, using chargemaster charger, and at work using the granny charger. This week I have only put £10 in the tank and still have plenty left for next week. This has been consistent for the time I've had the car, 18 months. I also do a simple test to see how close to my kids school I can get before losing a bar of charge. This morning I broke the record, which may be down to my ability to maximise range improving or maybe the battery is the same as its always been. For me cash in the tank is the true test, the rest is just software, which is only ever as good as the author.

@Andy... it's nice to see that some one can challenge the suppliers based on the given parameters and practical sence. I am not a hybrid or electric user. What you have shown here will give the consumers an edge on the decision making... good job..

Hmm. Q&A #2 seems to sum up most of the answer to this mystery for me. Because this is a formative technology and while MMC has had its full EV car for nearly a decade, the PHEV concept is fairly new to them. So to be as conservative and "safe" as possible, they have engineered their software to under-estimate the health and capacity of the batteries to basically CTA (cover their arses). To drop the usable capacity is an effort to prolong the overall life of the battery as long as possible. They really have not enough life-time data to trust their technology to just run at full capacity as we would wish. The battery could wear out or fail more frequently or much sooner if something unforeseen in the system occurred. This all seems to follow along with why they rate the battery at 38 Ah and why their advertised range is far less than what we see when the car is new. The 22 mile, or 35km, estimated range is, again, an ultra conservative number that CTA under their 8 to 10 year warranty. They seem less afraid of a software related lawsuit than a hardware one, if you follow me. Another consideration for this engineering decision is that driving conditions and habits range as wide as the world. With such a small battery to handle this wide range, there could be a huge global discrepancy issue with the life and capacities of the batteries if they didn't program in a liberal amount of capacity loss and advertised a low range estimate. We are in a transitional period as we fossil fuel dependent creatures try to move to Electrification, Battery technology will improve just as all technology has historically. Thus we are the willing, yet frustrated, guinea pigs in this transitional period.

Great consumer information again, Andy. Predictable corporate response. Once they have your money, they will do everything and anything to leave you on your own. I was prepared to buy this car but Mitsubishi lost a sale. I'm hoping Hyundai make PHEV SUV soon.

Thanks for the video. I glad I watched this as I was thinking about getting one. There's no wonder the value is already half price on a 4-year-old model. Looks like I'll keep saving for the 3. Grueße aus Springwood NSW

Well said and explained

Thank you, Andy, this was a very useful video showing that Q&A to all of us. Much appreciated. They obviously try to write themselves out of a pinch, but it remains to see if it will end with this or not. Other initiatives may result in some action being taken, who knows? Actually I do not have very high hopes. I work in the software business myself. The BMU issue may not even be considered a bug by them, but a request for enhancement, hence given lower priority. I can for example imagine Engineering managers in Mitsubishi may be thinking that the risk of enhancing the software, to please what may seem to them like a few youtubers and their followers, is too high compared to the benefit from their perspective. With any change there is a risk of introducing new bugs, and the testing required to verify a fix like this properly, and avoid regressions, is not cheap. For Mitsubishi there seems to be mostly a tangible cost and little benefit. The benefit will be happy customers and increased future sales, but that is not so tangible. Considering the time it takes for new cars to hit the market, it may be realistic to assume that the BMU software/firmware was written in 2012 or so, and that many of the engineers involved are working elsewhere now, making changes even more risky. The focus at the moment is probably on the model that is to replace the Outlander PHEV in 2021 or so. I'm pretty sure certain youtubers and their followers will not be first in line for that ;)

very nice experimental information

Wow! I’m speechless... (and really angry). Question is how do we convince MMC they are very wrong?

I have a few comments on what you have said in this video . This is my opinion and I am not denying that the problem does not exist, but I also think that the problem is exaggerated. Numbers refer to the document sections from the video. 1.1. This is translated document, as you said yourself, so you cannot refer to any word in it and say that it is exactly what MMC wanted to say. The word "issue" in translated document may be not an "issue" in the original document. This also does not mean that Mitsubishi acknowledges anything. The acknowledgement of the issue by MMC would be if they will release some official document, issue a recall or something like that. A simple Q&A letter acknowledges nothing. The person answering questions may not even be allowed to make any decisions like this. 2. "Engineering choice as part of the learning curve" is not "an issue". It is a natural process when creating any software/hardware. So what is BS about it? The question is only how complete the software will be after this process is over and where will be the compromises made. If it is a Mars rover, then you will spend months or years until you say its finished, but if it is a car, then this process will end much sooner accepting some imperfections. All engineering projects are based on learning from previous mistakes. The only people who don't make any mistakes are those who don't do anything. 3.1. 2019 year model is almost the same model like the previous one. They most likely used the same components from the previous model, because the change is rather insignificant. Maybe they fine tuned some parameters, but not a full redesign as you suggest. Based on this www.mitsubishielectric.co.jp/automotive/tms2017/english/system/pdf/battery_management_unit.pdf it looks like Mitsubishi BMU has different generations and the new planned generation should have CMU integrated into BMU. The current BMU have external CMUs for each battery cell, so I assume that 2019 model is still using the BMU design from 2013. There is also no perfect solution in engineering. You always deal with issues of various kinds and should accept compromises. You do not know what they had to deal with to arrive at decision they have made. Maybe allowing for more optimistic degradation values leads to battery premature failure because of battery discharge to lower level (e.g. down to 20% instead of 25%). It is easy to blame anyone without knowing what is their actual story. 4.1. The most optimal is not the same as the best. There is no such thing as the best, especially knowing that the perfect SoH calculation does not exist. The optimal solution means the best solution given the compromises they had to make. Since you do not know about any of those compromises they had to deal with, it is not smart to claim that they could do a better job. By definition you can always do a better job, but then we have to ask other questions, e.g. how much resources have to be allocated to improve the performance by e.g. 1%. Maybe it took them a year to write and test the SoH estimation algorithm which estimates SoH with max. 3% error. Would you spend another year and use double the resources to go from 3% error level down to 2% error level? If it is a $2.5 billion worth project (Mars rover), then the answer is "probably", but if it is a $40,000 worth project (Outlander PHEV), then the answer is probably "no". By spending extra resources they will need to increase the price of the car and then you will not buy it, because it will be too expensive. Then you will complain about it being too expensive and will find some components in the car which could be taken out to lower the price. This story never ends. 4.2. You have accepted this answer as correct, which is exactly the answer why the degradation calculated by BMU cannot be any better according to MMC. So why are you complaining about BMU not computing the degradation correctly if you agreed yourself to MMC claims that it is not possible? To get what you want MMC should either perform DBCAM once a month or they should add an intentional error to their optimal SoH computation procedure to make you think that battery is degrading slower. To estimate the true SoH is a challenge, because you have tens if not hundreds of variables which you practically cannot account for with 100% probability and you are complaining about the relatively small error in this computation. I doubt that this would be any better even if they used AI to estimate the SoH. You will still not get a real estimate by a significant margin, because for AI to understand what is true SoH, you still need to perform DBCAM procedure as often as possible. The degradation process is not linear and you cannot just add some coefficient which would artificially increase or decrease estimated SoH value. I assume in their calculations they use all physical variables they can measure, but they cannot estimate things like driver behavior, or charging habits. All variables in their computations must be based on real data, scientifically correct and approved after tests. What do you suggest they should do in order to fix this? The restored battery capacity after DBCAM in most cases is because of cell smoothing performed during this operation. If you will discharge the battery completely during this procedure and then will charge it again using CHadeMO DC charger to 100% instead of slowly charging and doing cell smoothing, then the battery capacity (I bet) will not go up, or at least not by significant amount. This would be a fair procedure to perform in order to determine if BMU computes correct SoH value. If the battery capacity will go up by significant amount after such procedure, then you can say that BMU is doing wrong calculations. However, if cell smoothing is performed, then you compare apples to oranges. How BMU can account for cell smoothing procedure before it happens? It can only use parameters it measures and it measures battery cell levels as they are in real time. Moreover, if BMU could account that after cell smoothing procedure the actual battery capacity is higher, would you still want BMU to show you that higher value, even though that capacity at given moment is not achievable, e.g. it is lower because of actual degradation? There is no doubt that after capacity recovery you can drive more distance, but it is not because BMU computed wrong degradation values, but because the battery was reconditioned to be able to use more capacity. It is enough for 1 cell to degrade and it will take the whole battery with it, even though all other cells are in 100% SoH level. 5.2. The time and conditions of what they mean by "transport from manufacturing plant to final customer" is unknown. It could mean that this is what battery manufacturer promised to MMC and the figure is based on technical battery module and battery assembly specifications. It could be that they do not perform any calibration procedures in the factory assuming that in the worst case scenario the battery will not lose more then 2 Ah until the car will be delivered to a customer, so they just install it and send the vehicle wherever it must go. The actual calibration procedure is time consuming and expensive process for a factory, e.g. DBCAM can take several days. It may be cheaper to write off 2 Ah from total capacity instead of doing precise calibration, which still does not guarantee anything in 100% probability. For example, the similar thing is also done with ICE engines, where engine output is intentionally reduced in ECU to account for manufacturing imperfections and also to lower probability of premature failures. This does not mean that these engines have any problems, but by lowering the output you exclude the possibility of failure and do not have to extensively test each engine leaving the factory. Even with degradation being a problem the Outlander PHEV is worth the money. No other car comes even close for the price you pay for this car. Where I live you can only buy Hyundai Ioniq PHEV for the same money and Outlander PHEV is heaps better car from many perspectives (in my opinion).

Great work. 👏👏👏

I like the car. My issue is with the customer support. Why don't they provide a health check of the battery after a service? How is anyone supposed to know if the battery has degraded to the warrenty limit if this info is not provided.

Great video thanks. You are saying "You always have the warranty" funny enough is not the same in all countries. Here in NZ we don't have a degradation warranty at all, we only have a Failure or not working warranty. :(

wow! im so glad im only leasing my 2019

DBACM Drive Battery Auto Capacity Measurement is exactly what its called on the MUT ,I will have to try it myself!

Good video Andreas - I've been trying to process this MMC response and you have done a good job on taking it as "written" but when you reflect you will find so many unanswered questions - just how does it explain all the goings-on you have seen with both batteries? Particularly the ability of a SoH battery to bounce back and perform at close to the 100% level before being gradually dragged down again by the BMU? This "optimal SoH estimation" algorithm clearly cannot be working in many of these differing situations. How optimal can it be! And - yes- the proposed triple procedure also from MMC - directly conflicts with this advice in which MMC says "Don't fight it Marsha Its bigger than both of us" (hint: Kiwi music reference) Keep on fighting - see you in the next video.

This attitude of MMC is insulting!

Well this confirms my decision to only get a 3 year lease was the right choice. I hope places which have decent consumer protection will take Mitsubishi to task but it won't happen in Canada where our regulation is lax and enforcement almost non-existent. My current hope is that we'll be able to get resets periodically even if they have to be done by providers other than the dealers or perhaps ourselves.

Is it recommended to have the timing chain replaced on these? Also, what milage would you suggest to change the gearbox and dif oils?

When it mentioned ‘not normal charging’ are we sure they mean Chademo charging or those who never mains charge (hybrid driving). I’m sure both are the same result: no opportunities for the BMU to do a full capacity check. This is something we can apparently force the car to do (according to some forums) by running the car low (driving to zero-EV miles, then put a heater on when stationary), but I’m not entirely sure it’s as good as a full DBCAM.

Thanks for this very interesting video. I've just bought a Mitsubishi Phev in France. I would probabely have consider your video before... Now, too late. The car is satisfying me, but the durability is important. The 8 years warranty was a criterium in my décision to buy. But whatabout a battery softly but quickly loosing its initial spécifications ? That situation might justify a class action by Phev customers, doesn't it ?

Awesome, I just bought a Feb 2019 manufactured example, as a "new" car (14km on the clock) in Nov 2020. I should mention it was crazily discounted - a brand new 2020 model (with the 13.8kWh battery+2.4L engine) is $55,000AUD, we got ours for $37,000AUD. We picked it up and a week later I tried out PHEV watchdog, says 84.3%, 38.8Ah. Few days later it was 83.9%, 38.6Ah. I have successfully driven 51km on EV with aircon on once, not using the car a lot at the moment with a baby so only short trips, charging on AC. Are you saying the 2019's drop their range/Ah rating really quickly in first 10,000km? To be honest, I don't think I'll be obsessing over this too much, clearly if it drops to 15km range I'll complain but I figured I have 8 years of battery warranty ahead of me, if it proves dodgy I'll have the battery replaced and sell it. The "guess-o-meter" clearly is pretty much a guess based on driving style. I'm not sure how the Ah is calculated though, if you do have a link to some documentation, that'd be worth reading to see how much attention I should be paying!

Replaceable Database Driver (or Replicable Database Driver), a component of computer software that performs database operations, supported by languages such as Clipper

Great follow up Andy... I think I know a guy who has the same feelings about this Q & A.... I hope you are not serious about stopping the Watchdog App...

NOT good. Back when I bought a 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid I unexpectedly received a cheque from Ford for $1000 because they had overstated the EPA mileage capability of the car. This seemed quite fair to me. This resolution came about from a class action suit. Is that where this has to go for us to be compensated for this virtually criminal behavior by Mitsubishi?

I'm considering buying MUT III and performing the initialisation and the DBCM myself at least twice a year....

Thanks for your entertaining and informative videos. I just bought one here in Denmark, delivered Jan. 26 2020 - before learning of this discussion! (The charging history shows a trace from August 2019, so it may be manufactured then). They had a campaign on all three equipment grades, and I chose the basic one (called Invite here) at DKK 299.900, equal to USD 44.000 / AUD 67.800. I just wonder if this protracted discussion of the problem has caused them to change anything in the 2020 model - and if there will be no significant degradation if you only slow-charge, which my driving pattern would dictate - i.e. do the worst cases have to do with predominant - or exclusive - ChadMo charging, and thus, non-compliance with directions in the manual, as you also mention in this video ?

Yes My PHEV 2014 now only charges to 25 KM

Hi Andy - Based on what you have told me about some owners having BMU capacity estimates that do actually increase the PHEV's battery SOH variable and the EV range in the car, when normal charging and balancing has not occurred by only using the car as a hybrid for years. Due to the owners not normally plug in charging, so balancing and estimating capacity does not happen for the battery. My reasoning follows - Since it makes zero logical sense for Mitsubishi to deliberately program the BMU to only allow a capacity upgrades after a year long period of non-charging, I suspect the time needed to allow the BMU to upgrade capacity will actually be much shorter. Also since Mitsubishi recommend a maximum period of 2 weeks between normal charging and balancing , I wonder if the owner fails to do as recommended by MMC, if normally dormant routines in the BMU software are enabled, that have the ability to upgrade battery capacity? We all know that when the owner charges normally every day the BMU capacity estimate never increases the battery capacity and only decreases it rapidly. Even when eventually doing a DBCAM corrects the accumulated BMU capacity estimate downgrades and the SOH variable. While advisably from MMC it seems when the correct conditions are met, the BMU itself can correct the SOH to reflect the real battery SOH without the need to do a DBCAM it does not do it while charging and balancing daily. Given my reasoning above I wonder if it might benefit owners to run in hybrid mode without charging for a month to test if exceeding the maximum recommended charge interval enables the BMU software to increase the SOH to values similar to what would be measured doing a DBCAM?

I had a face to face chat with the Manager of my local dealer. He clearly stated that they can do nothing before battery hit 70% threshold. And currently the PHEV is sold so well in EU, and customer has to wait 3-4 month to get new one.

Unfortunately, this Q&A is a classic interpretation of engineering statements by a customer service team and will not contain the reality of what the real Engineers meant. As a design Engineer I have come across this so many times in my long career where the sales and customer service team are not cognizant of what the Engineer is saying, so put their own interpretation on it to satisfy their perception of company needs. I'm afraid we are all guilty of doing this, particularly when personal frustration is high, and this colours and exaggerates the underlying realities! This feeds "populism" and we all know where that leads!

Thanks, was thinking for buying an Outlander in Finland, Europe... After this video, I have made a decision to not to buy and stick with reliable Toyota. your video helped me a lot. thanks!

Looking back over the past episodes, you explain in the BMU episode, (having plugged tour actor/programmer friend, that the BMU has no fixed intro to the battery and "guesses" the value after a reset. Could this be hacked so the initial value is a "fixed", not variable parameter and the BMU then has a fixed starting point?

Mitsubishi summary: That is how it was designed which was the best we could do. We will not change anything. Personally, as a design engineer myself, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the engineers for their first effort, but mistakes are always made in new designs and not all of them will be found and fixed before they go out the door. It has been 6 years however, and any lack of effort to fix a known problem has got to be due to bureaucratic/financial nonsense. If I had to hazard a guess, they calculated the total potential financial and legal cost of fixing the problem as being far greater than downplaying it and eventually honouring warranty claims amongst the apparently small percentage of owners to treat it as an electric vehicle as opposed to a regular hybrid and are knowledgeable and determined enough to force the issue. A software update shouldn't cost that much to fix, so maybe it requires a hardware upgrade in the battery current measurement unit? Or the original firmware engineer is no longer around and they don't want to risk creating new problems and/or doing extensive regression testing. Makes me want to try designing an open-source BMU and fixing the problem, and maybe selling it as an upgrade for older out of warranty Outlanders. Aside from potential liability issues, what do you think?

Thanks Andy, sad. How “strange” that my battery increased to 39.9 Ah after a “triple procedure” and although it was then steadily falling, I had around 60km of range if driven carefully. Voltages at both top and bottom of charge were absolutely fine. In most respects the car is fabulous..... I honestly still mostly love it, but certainly NOT in relation to it’s BMS (or its 4wd abilities)! Maybe the answer is to not plug the car in, and drive it as a hybrid. However, that’s not why we bought the car!

Usually if a company refers to "learning curve" then it can be translated to "at that time we didn't know better" or even worse, "we screwed up". In the Q&A, MMC claims the state of health calculated by the BMU is very close to the real state of the battery. By that MMC "fixes" the problem on paper - because they rhetorically just eliminated the existence of a problem. The truth to the matter is however that it's not as simple as MMC maybe would like to have it, as there seem to be a growing number of cars where the tripple procedure was done already and where the effective capacity and subsequently the effective range was succesfully restored. This is a reality that stands completely in contradiction to the claim of MMC and hence invalidates their argumentation, including their justification for not updating the software and for not planning to introduce the tripple procedure (rebalancing) as standard service when the car comes in for scheduled maintenance. What's worse is, I haven't seen an Outlander PHEV prospec/leaflet that would inform a potential buyer about "a built in battery degradation function" based on a software algorithm, leading to a considerable shorter EV mode range after a fairly short period of usage, respectively ownership. The first paper that actually informs the customer about this fact is this Q&A paper - only that piece of information was provided after 200 thousand people already bought this car.

Thank you for this information. Actually, I've been thinking about buying a PHEV early next year. I think MMC behaves here very ignorant of its customers. I will follow this channel very attentively, but under these conditions I probably will not be a Mitsubishi customer. :-( Greetings from Germany. ;-)

I guess class action for false advertising starting with 38ah fron the start vs 40ah as advertised and whole artificial drop in capacity. Wonder what our chances with that one.

Does the battery problem carry forward to the MY23 OUTLANDER ???

Wow.. that's sux Andy. Where to from here with Mits? Looks like they have given up. Also looks like someone is going to go the Tesla stretch when the tow bar is available 😉

Great and informative video as always. MMC made me really mad, my jaw dropped. Pure bureaucracy, and absolute zero humility! WooW.

Off topic (a little) Just a thought Andy... Do you think you could find time to talk about the cameras that you use in producing your videos? Perhaps the editing software and how you use it? I would think that there could be interest in how you put these excellent videos together for your RU-vid site!

Thank you so much for the very critical information. And Attention. I’m the Outlander PHEV owner in japan around 3 years. I can say Mitsubishi was worst motor company in my life ever regarding customer service and almost every single issues I had during 3 years, almost they couldn’t fix it properly. One time I hardly complained to HQ of Mitsubishi motors about customer service but HQ was worse than local dealer. Why don’t you consider reliable motor companies. It can be more important than nice cars many times.

Moin Andy. Danke für deine hervorragende Arbeit. Ich würde mich aber sehr freuen über das ein oder andere Video in deutsch . Das eine habe ich gesehen und die komplizierten Zusammenhänge, doch deutlich besser verstanden. Grüße aus Deutschland

This reply by Mitsubishi is a desaster. As a very recent customer who bought the 2019 model I don't feel taken serious by the company. Whoever is in charge of this customer information has done a lousy job!!!

I am dealing with Ariel too. After having the car data downloaded by the local dealer I heard nothing. I then made a complaint to Ariel and the CEO of MM UK. Within a dew days I had a call from the local dealer to book the car in for the discharge/re-charge process. This happens on the 13th. Obviously I will report back on the results. So far my MY18 has lost 6% since December and 10% overall with 6600 miles. But to say this is hardware not software is frightening. Looks like I'll be using the 8 year warranty in the next 18 months.

So, do we find a way of resetting the BMU for ourselves or do we find a replacement battery to give us better range? But then we'd only have the same degradation, thanks to the BMU's calculation. There must be a way of doing the reset for ourselves.

They just lost a customer. I wanted to buy a outlander phev. But with bad batteries and low points on rust tests.

Hello Andy, thanks for your report and thoughts ! Because I think about buying a new 2019 Outlander, I asked Mitsubishi Netherlands for a comment. Their answer was : ' Het accuprobleem waarnaar u verwijst heeft waarschijnlijk betrekking op een bekend RU-vid filmpje van een Australiër. Hier wordt bij het vervangen van de drive battery de BMU al gereset waardoor het capaciteitsverloop uit het verleden niet meer telt en dus een gunstiger beeld geeft. Het is echter normaal dat een lithium ion cel in het begin sneller capaciteit verliest maar dat het verlies na verloop van tijd afneemt. Het capaciteitsverlies zal dan ook steeds langzamer gaan. De BMU is zo ingesteld dat deze metingen verricht gedurende de gehele levensloop van de accu, om zo een juiste berekening te maken van de accucapaciteit. Deze metingen zijn ook zo beoogd. Mocht de accucapaciteit onder de gestelde norm van de garantie uitkomen (voor de meeste PHEV's geldt onder 26 Ah tot 8 jaar of 160.000 km), dan kunnen deze auto's in aanmerking komen voor een nieuw accupakket. Dit zal moeten worden vastgesteld door een erkende Mitsubishi dealer. Wij ondersteunen dan ook geen andere procedures en zien geen defect aan de accu van de Outlander PHEV. ' Hope you can read or translate it with Google translate. ;-) So, the best decision could be : NOT buying this car ? ? ? My problem is: In the Netherlands I can buy this Mitsubishi Outlander for 35.000 euro , for the basic pure-edition. What plugin-hybrid car, which has 4wd , and lots of person and cargo space , can compete for this price ??? What do you think ? I could wait for a new and better model of Mitsubishi....... :-) I drive Mitsubishi Pajero since 1990, and must give them a compliment, they are excellent and very reliable cars !

A thought - When has a DBCAM ever been far away from the actual SOH as read by the DOG? Never, it is always just up or down from it. So assuming at my last BMU RESET 16 months ago when the SOH read 88%, how come I went back to 100% and whilst it has been been going down again, I have enjoyed excellent EV range. It is just now getting noticeably worse again under 90%. These 2 facts are hard to reconcile. If in fact the SOH was really 88% as I suspect would have been confirmed from a DBCAM then what happened after the BMU RESET is impossible. The only conclusion I can draw js that the way the DBCAM calculates the SOH is flawed.

Andy, here's a thought.....I have seen now 4 x 0.5Ah increases. That's my 2Ah back that they say will come back? Now at 90.4% after 3 years and 22,000 miles (about 35,000 km).

Can't they make a new granny charger with a DBCAM button so you can perform this yourself?

We can say: The BMU estimates the real degredation of the battery.... well It's not a bug... it's a feature 😂

Wow - that ridiculous response by Mitsubishi to their customer's complaint is contradictory and often technically incorrect! So basically as a result says very little of importance other than MMC apparently plan to do nothing to fix this problem so it makes the Outlander a non-option for my next vehicle purchase!!!! I might lease one for a few years but that's about it. Regarding the issues that current owners have I believe it is a combination of complex factors with the root cause being that the battery is actually degrading because the BMU always charges it to 4.1volts or 100%SOC with no temperature control while charging, which is certain to cause accelerated degradation given the battery's specifications! Particularly with the Yuasa LMO battery chemistry they use in the Outlander. Basically their design engineers stuffed it up by not allowing the users to charge between 3.9volts and 4.1volts/cell and routinely charge to a lower voltage to save the battery! This statement by the Mitsubishi engineer is only partially correct - in that the BMU does not PRECISELY measure the battery state of health in normal operation because it cant without doing a full DBCAM capacity analysis. However it can do and clearly does do an approximate real time capacity calculation by simply measuring the time it takes from start of charging to maximum voltage or the time from maximum voltage to the fully charge condition when engaged in routine fully charging. This is one reason why when the user does not routinely plug in charge the SOH does not decrease... The result of this real time approximate calculation is then used only to reduce both the battery SOH ah and depth of discharge allowed before the ICE kicks in because the charge voltage never changes from 4.1volts. This has the unfortunate effect of reducing the total EV range per charge over time regardless of whether the degradation is real or not!. Since the BMU always charges to the maximum continuous voltage allowed of 4.1 volts or 100% SOC any software induced reduction of calculated capacity must only effect the depth of discharge allowed by unnecessarily increasing the battery voltage needed for the ICE to kick in. However this will only be true if the software in the BMU is mistakenly calculating too much battery degradation. If the battery degradation is actually real much the same thing will happen because the charge voltage never changes from 328volts or 4.1v0lts/cell. Real degradation must also reduce the total charge by eating into the allowed depth of discharge by increasing the battery voltage that the ICE starts to charge the vehicle. In this case however this would be an appropriate response to real battery degradation and should remain. Sadly I believe Mitsubishi have completely failed to address the real problem with the Outlander PHEV battery system for years and it seems they have no intention of doing so anytime in the foreseeable future.

Liked the Video. Make a sticker to go on the back window saying """ Don't buy one of these Cars as the Battery is dying and No Fix"" When are you getting rid and get your new full EV

The thing that confuses me is that after the DBACM it determines that there is 40Ah battery capacity. If the battery had degraded the DBACM would come back with something different like the 34Ah reported by the BMU before the DBACM. So if this is the case the BMU's calculation is not close to the actual SOH. One woukd assume the BMU calc needs changing or a better process is required to calibrate the BMU at regular intervals. This could be done at user request or at service. Has anyone done a capacity measurement on a battery pack that was replaced?

Hi Andy 👍 Good video m8, its a chuckle a minute with MMC,my friend at work deciphered "MMC" but its far too rude to put on your nice clean you Tube comments heehee 😁 Anyway, moving on, I can see their logic, but we know they have got it wrong, clearly getting them to admit is will take more than a few signatures and videos. I'd like to send you a "man hug" m8, I can see your frustration 🤦‍♂️ 200,000 multiplied by X$$ probably makes someone @ MMC break into a pretty big sweat lol Interpretation between management & engineering, as you know is always "tongue in cheek " However, you are at last seeing my point, when I previously said "just enjoy it" it is a nice car, when you get the urge change to a BEV, thats what I will do, I wont regret having the Outlander Phev, I do love it in many ways, I have the "dog" but use it to check the charge when Im using the Chademo haha....I have noticed more than once when I use home charge (cable out of the 2nd floor flat window) my SOH goes down within 1 day. I also was reading one of the guys mentioned on your comments : "Me and some other owners have managed to push the Ah a little bit upwards but only with some tricks and hacks, it does not happen under normal usage whish again profs that the software is not doing what is designed to do. " If he does share that info & it actually works, it would be a nice add to your channel, Im sure lots of Outlander PHev owners will be interested & who better to tell them than our m8 Andy 😎 Im not going to chat about the Q&A I think you made a pretty good job of that. Stay Charged m8 👍

OK, I think that most of their thinking and decision on how this SHOULD work makes sense, BUT I don't believe the batteries are dying so fast. The software is simply not doing its job. How I understand this Q & A the 38Ah batteries should have gone up to almost 40 Ah after the owner start to use them, but they don´t and then the curve is going down way to fast to be normal battery degradation. Me and some other owners have managed to push the Ah a little bit upwards but only with some tricks and hacks, it does not happen under normal usage whish again profs that the software is not doing what is designed to do. Bottom line, I think that MMC approach and engineering decision on how this could work is OK, but then the software must then be able to do its job, but it obviously can´t.

Hi Andy. The link to the Q&A links to a statement in German, not the actual Q&A. If this is written by a qualified employee at MMC, then they don't know how the BMU works. Or even worse, they know that it doesn't work as described and are lying. Either way, we aren't going to achieve anything directly as customers. Only pressure from the press, consumer offices and authorities will. So sad.

"We're selling boatloads, go away pesky customer" lalalalalala cant hear you!

Hi Andy, a total cop out by Mitsubishi to this problem. They obviously don't have the expertise to solve this! I've been following you and others re this situation before buying this car. I can say now that I will not be buying this vehicle. How many sales will they now lose due to this I wonder and what will this do for the resale value of the car. Mitsubishi are making a huge mistake by taking this attitude. I can only do them harm.

I can't get my Dog to work. In light of this, I think I'll join you and not bother. Once I can be less under water on the PHEV, it's outta here. Even a Diesel LR is looking real good about now. Maybe the new Defender won't suck.. But question. I know someone got hold of the microcode for the BMU, but do we know if it's housed on a ROM, EPROM etc? Or has someone tried to 'root' the ROM and update it without Mits help? I also wonder if we could do our own triple procedure by buying our own MUT III devices? Also, was there a link to the PDF that you're referring to?

Hi Andy, Thanks for sharing this. I must say this is very poor customer service and quite surprising for the Japanese. I live in the Highlands of Scotland and thought I'd go for Outlander PHEV, having driven a non PHEV Hyundai Ioniq (Drove from Inverness to Perth and back and only used up less than quarter of the tank, 220 mile in total) . Being a sucker for tech I was anticipating the same level of excellent regenerative braking but was disappointed. I also noticed that for a less than 2 yr old car the battery range was below 75% and came across your videos and thus complained to my dealer and quoted the Consumer Rights Act 2015. They took the car in and performed battery smoothing procedure and battery went from 74.4% to 91%. I tend to deplete the battery completely before charging up and have stuck to this regime since purchasing the vehicle. Using the Watchdog I am getting 38Ah but the range does tend to vary between 32, 30 and 29 miles on the dashboard. Probably something that everyone already knows but thought I'd mention it anyway, range went down to 17miles at the height of winter where we had -10 degrees. Dealer mentioned that the BMU takes variables such as this into account as well. Not sure if you or anyone has encountered this? Happy to send you my watchdog data if this would help everyone on the forum.

Somehow I get the feeling that this is very much a personal problem. Some engineers in Japan who think very highly of themselves cannot say that maybe they have made some assumptions that where wrong. And as the car is selling as Mitsubishi is expecting they will not consider differently. So they will stay on there high chairs until they fall off. Ore until Mitsubishi might be ruined even more. My Husband did not want to buy a Mitsubishi because he thought the Company was not doing so well and might just go bankrupt in a few years. In this perspective we might as well see that this indeed might be a big possibility in the near future. I am happy that we did not sign any contract so far for buying one of these cars. At the moment it seems there is no possibility for us buying an ev of any sorts as all are sold out, bad like this one, ore just to expensive. Makes me very sad indeed.

Hmm, I thought Apple tried to limit the battery capacity in their iPhone via software. I don't think that turned out too well for them. Sounds very familiar.

My interpretation is that they can't measure the quality of the battery from the car, therefore they will calculate the degradation according to worst case to protect the battery. That far I follow their argumentation. The logical solution would therefore be to run the triple procedure at every service. They don't want to do that and here they lose me. Is it too costly for them to run the triple procedure? Is the triple procedure introducing battery degeneration over time or what? They are not telling the entire truth here. I will require a triple procedure at their expense at the next service. Whether I get it or not is another question...

Did you consider about dangers from Lion bateries ? because safety is big issue, if you use full potential of lion battery at this size, it can explode and burn whole district in your town... i beleave they do that to be 100% safe, not because you can drive 5km less on ev mode... we have 2019model 2.4 with 40000km i have tested battery with watchdog and it was 86.5% at 39.9amps we live in Baltics, EU. we have winter and its cold, at 85% of charge car predicted 30km range for ev. and -3C ambient. And we drove it for 30km battery was 2 bars left.. so kinda ok. I will try somewhen to reset bmu and see if this affects range. Also thanks for your videos , they realy helped to get more understanding about MO phev. As i understand now you gave up MO and gone for tesla ?

„Yes it was an Engineering Choice as part of the learning curve of this first-ever plug-in Hybrid.“ Polemical spoken its a bit like, ok we Build this Car 100 years ago and current we create this car like 100 years ago. I mean where is the inovation, improvement, Progress of the Basic concept, or better, the Software.

Hallo Andy, as I promised, here the data from my brand new PHEV. Km77 / 101,1% 44,5 Ah. km155 / 100,9% 44,4Ah. Degradation in 78km and 3 days -0,1Ah ! Unbelievable. I’m totally disappointed ☹️. Kind regard from Germany 🇩🇪 Roland.

Is this issue something that was remedied for the new model? I just put down a deposit and hope to not have these issues.

Make a sticker for the PHEV's: BEWARE OF THIS CAR ! Mitsubishi is unaware how it really works!

Why not reverse the DBCAM commands so this can be run on demand without a dealer?

I am loath to admit that I received my PHEV 3 days ago (seems that all the videos that I watched were from the "happy customers"). Only 205 km on the vehicle and the battery will not charge above 36.7 Ah.

Btw, Nissan is owned by Mitsubishi, and they had this problem of high degradation in the first Leafs....they fixed it.

So maybe Tesla is correct that they do not allow any 3rd party software, they don't use OBD2 and because customers are buying a black box they are so happy.

Bet if ACCC sued them there would be a fix the next day

If it only was a learning curve of their engineers. It's a flat line, and they admit it :D I start to understand why they avoid communicating with their customers, first they must learn to communicate with each other.

@unplugged EV let me explain how I understand that statement. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Q0w0frL8aW4.html They just saying that because the DBCAM can't be performed during the normal vehicle operation time, they HAD TO figure out the mechanism to let BMU know about assumed degradation. SO, that's why we have this algorithm that cuts SoH by 0.1Ah for a while. They think that they need to do it by this strange formula to "safe" our batteries. Otherwise there would need to trigger DBCAM against every car during every regular maintenance appointment. And because it takes even 72h (when battery is full at the beginning) they wanted to avoid that need. Also they assumed that some owners do not go back to the dealership for maintenance, so MMC wanted to cut SoH just for any case!

The answer is to threaten them with a class action providing you can guarantee your data. However you have to understand that they have to save face being caught out is not Japanese.

I cant really understand how they can actually take pride in that kind of software, or hardware if it really is the battery that is degrading. But then that is even worse! Could someone possibly demount a battery from the car and then do a real meauserement on it and then compare it to the soh from the software? That would be so interesting to see!

What, you should, be, doing is, a, video of people clearing said fault and, making battery's good please, do it for the community 🙏

Battery is not degraded that bad as MMC claims. Real reason MMC still claims that, is legal. They can fight an overall recall easier this way, since most warrentees "accept" some sort of degradation, while faulty software HAS to fixed. How to prove it? get your hands on one of those replaced "degraded" batteries and check its actual capacity....

Why dont they update their software?

Sounds like Mitsubishi is almost as bad as Nissan. I was considering a Outlander PHEV next time round when I update my 2019 X-Trail ST-L 4WD but not after that Q&A...

I would get all the cars in Australia and ship them back under the lemon law. That will make then wake up. I for one will stick with my 17 year old toyota yaris verso, next to no parts spent on it. I now think that's wiser. One great way to lose customer's 200,00 or not. Bad words sinks companies.

Wish I could get 64K I normally get 18 - 21 miles with my 2016 model.

What would be your wish, they will performe? What was your realistic expection, of MMC? I wished a BMU exchange or software update. I expected a DB CAM one time a year for small money. The answer, they regret to performe a DB CAM of normal charged cars, because there is not a higher degradation, is not acceptable. The degradation is not the physical one. It is over-degraded by the software. This is a disadvantage for me.

thanks Andy. Really interesting analysis of their shitty statements. a real shame. totally agree re: not worth the money. I dont get all the comments on the FB page where people are happy to see their EV range simply drain away (pun intended!). They are happy to drive few and fewer EV kms, and more and more petrol, while hauling a huge battery around. That's f*cking nuts. Why buy a car that carries a premium price if the benefit rapidly disappears?? Where to now? Ho hum. I'm off outside to carry on building my new deck. Have a great weekend Andy.

I have difficulty understanding all this. I do know a bit about lithium batteries. My vehicle is two years old and I still get roughly the same mileage out of the battery. I only charge with the supplied charger. I know that fast charging of lithium batteries makes them deteriorate faster, so I don’t do it. Deterioration of lithium batteries is going to happen with all makes of electric vehicles. Are Mitsubishi saying that the system allows for this because it is normal? As someone else has commented, I still put the same amount of petrol in as I used to. I don’t really understand your basic problem. Is it that the batteries deteriorate, or that the computers are not allowing sufficient charge and discharge? Overdischarging kills the lithium battery. Overcharging will cause fire.

What...they contradict themselves. First: "Q: Are we talking of an actual degradation of the PHEV capacity? A: No, the issue is about how the Battery Monitoring Unit (ECU) calculates the expected degradation, without doing an actual (automatic) capacity check in the life cycle. Q: Is thie phenomenon known from MMC? A: Yes - it was an engineering choice..." Then later: "Q: Is MMC considering to introduce a capacity measurement during maintenance to "re-calibrate" the calculated battery State of Health (SOH)? A: No. As explained, the calculated SOH will over time, through normal charging procedure, adjust to match as close as possible the actual SOH of the battery." Ummm, NO -- they actually explained that the system has no idea of the actual SOH because it just calculates the expected degradation! How does it adjust to match the actual SOH?? There is no evidence of that. Mitsubishi Motors Corp. will not survive the age of EVs if their EV batteries lose most of their capacity within 4 years of normal usage!

Wow! That's why I am getting 27 km max on a full charge! That's Bull****. 2018 Outlander PHEV.

Gary stole your thunder! If the cars lose 10-20% every year, no car should reach the end of the battery warranty with still 70% SOH, therefore without needing replacement. Any knowledge in that sense?

I honestly doubt the batteries are this bad in the Outlander PHEV. Then again I do not possess an engineer degree so I'm not going to 2nd guess the engineering decisions made at MMC when designing the car.

Soo... instead of accidentally making a lemon car, they purposely made a lemon. I still think I’m right.

It will cost them alot to replace all batteries every second years, and give another 8 year warranty each time. At one point they will realize there is a problem.

40Ah calibrated to 38Ah... I have no issue with that, I don't know why you're making a big deal of it. Tesla also manufactures larger kWh batteries than you are allowed to use as a customer. Especially in the case of the 75kWh batteries that were locked to 60kWh and sold cheaper. That's ridiculous! MANY outlander PHEV's were sitting in dealer lots for 1.5 years (like mine) so there can easily be significant degradation in that time, if it's sitting fully charged for that time. But PHEV watchdog showed 38.8Ah and then 38.6Ah as mentioned in my other comment - that actually sounds really good then?! Are all batteries in your experience starting at 38Ah?

We need replacement batteries as they have an 8year warranty

inzane!!

Ah. I love that, we sold over 200k of these cars and a few of you are bitching. Who cares, you already paid for the car. We are going to spend time making it better? What for? Very sad.