The Outlander diesel’s combined cycle consumption may be 5.8L/100km, but we’d bet our house it would do better than that on the freeway.
That said, particularly with harmful NOx emissions, the diesel is far worse than the PHEV, and without even stop-start technology it will always be pumping fumes into the face of pedestrians around town.
The Outlander PHEV became the first vehicle I’ve ever driven to Jindabyne that couldn’t make the trip from Sydney on a single tank of fuel, though. Because of the space taken up by the batteries, the PHEV only gets a 40-litre fuel tank, down from 60L in the diesel. That contributes to a total freeway range of just 471km, even with the initial 50km of electricity and subsequent 38km recharge.
The trip computer was dead accurate â€" 8.0L/100km was its actual figure.
Because the Outlander PHEV has a 15-amp plug, its lower prog is longer than that of regular plugs and thus won’t fit in a regular powerpoint. This was a problem in Jindy, as we found. The only option would be to hire a caravan site for $36 per night, but that would mean paying a substantial cost just to get the Outlander PHEV charged for 50km of driving the next day.
It’s a 60km round trip from Jindabyne to the Perisher ski fields, and we’d be doing that trip twice, so if we had camped it may have been ideal. But the warmth of a lodge won out because the days of mates and I being cash-starved uni students are long gone.
The Outlander PHEV also needs to climb from 915 metres above sea level to 1720m, then at the end needs come back down, and this is where things became interesting.
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