The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV is a 4 x 4 with a conscience, the 4 x 4 that you can, quite literally, look down on other drivers from. There haven’t been too many times in the past when an off road driver would be looking through the motoring press to see if their vehicle had won another environmental award but this is now where the Outlander driver finds themselves. This is a particularly strong time for Mitsubishi at the moment as Outlander PHEVs are flying out of the showrooms whilst the new technology invested in the vehicle is gaining recognition from many different sources within car manufacturing and from outside as well. See https://motormartin.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/news-mitsubishi-outlander-phev-is-suv-of-the-year-at-2015-next-green-car-awards/ for a previous award.
MotorMartin has now been made aware of another feather in tbe PHEVs cap as Mitsubishi’s best-selling game-changing Outlander PHEV has been named Plug-In Vehicle of the Year by Scotland’s national newspaper.
The Scotsman, which has been testing one of the vehicles over the long term, said the world’s first 4×4 plug-in hybrid SUV had ‘lived up to its ecocredentials and impressed as a genuinely practical motor’.
The title’s Steven Chisholm called the Outlander PHEV ‘an exciting prospect for anyone looking for an SUV that’s easy on the wallet as well as the environment’.
Mitsubishi have been at great pains to stress to MotorMartin that the Scotsman praised the vehicle’s material and build quality as well as the cabin’s planning and space plus ‘huge boot’. In addition, Steven Chisholm highlighted how – thanks to the Outlander PHEV’s all-electric range of 32½ miles – staff would ‘relish the challenge of hyper-miling the battery’ on their 30-mile round trips from home to the office and back again without using any petrol at all.
And it was the Outlander PHEV’s great fuel consumption as well as its SUV practicality that combined to make it the newspaper’s winner.
The Outlander PHEV currently accounts for around half of all Plug-in Car Grant applications and is the UK’s favourite choice of plug-in vehicle, with Mitsubishi having sold more than 15,000 of them since it was launched last year.
The new Outlander PHEV, which was unveiled in Tokyo in October 2015, has seen the fuel economy improved – up from 148mpg to 156mpg – while the CO2 emissions are down from 44g/km to 42g/km.
Those ultra-low emissions mean that no vehicle tax is payable, and its electric power combined with the efficient 2.0-litre petrol engine deliver an anxiety-free driving range of 541 miles.
This is the latest in a long line of awards for the Outlander PHEV. Last year, for example, it won Diesel Car’s Best Alternative Fuel Vehicle award as well as Business Car’s Best Green Development trophy in its Techie Awards, while in May this year it was named Best Ultra Low Emission Vehicle at the Fleet World Honours.
Will Mitsubishi need to put up an extra couple of shelves back at base to hold all their current and future awards? Most likely, if the previous year has anything to go by.
Where will you go?