Mitsubishi's Outlander PHEV Noir tackles a mountain trip

By Jim Bray
June 5, 2025

What happens when you take a plug-in hybrid on a road trip far from any recharging stations?

Not much, as it turns out, except that you end up buying gasoline instead of electrons. And that's fine – it's really the secret weapon wielded by plug-in hybrids.

That's the upshot from my two-week adventure through the mountains of Alberta and British Columbia, with a side trip to the Home of the Brave: plug-in hybrids are great in the city if you don't want to buy that evil gasoline stuff – but away from charging stations they become just another car, SUV or truck.

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And that's why, in my never humble opinion, hybrids – whether plug-in or not – are more practical than straight electric-only vehicles for people who venture far from their home bases.

My dear wife (as opposed to my other one…) and I had planned a trip to visit our son and daughter-in-law in Bellingham, Washington and then on to Vancouver Island to spend a couple of days with my brother and his wife in Victoria and my wife's cousin and his wife up the mountainside beyond Qualicum Beach.

Mitsubishi offered me the use of its Outlander PHEV for the trip, in top-of-the-line Noir trim. So, we sallied forth on May first, leaving Calgary mid-morning on the first leg of the trip. We'd made reservations at a motel in Rossland, B.C. (in the glorious West Kootenay region where we lived for about 10 years in the 1970's and early 1980's), so we needed to make reasonably good time.

And we did. In fact, we made good time throughout the trip. Oh, the Mitsubishi could definitely have used more oomph to help in that department, but I say that about lots of vehicles I review. And what it lacked in gas-powered go it made up for with hybrid/electrical enthusiasm. Almost always. More about that later.

Designed as an EV first and a hybrid second, Mitsubishi says its Outlander PHEV is the only plug-in hybrid SUV equipped with their "legendary Super All-Wheel Control", a sophisticated system designed to optimize handling and control on any type of terrain. We never left the asphalt, other than a couple of rustic parking lots, so can't comment on its off-road stuff, but Mitsubishi is known well for its all-wheel-drive system.

The manufacturer also claims it's the only plug-in hybrid SUV that offers Level 1, Level 2 and DC quick charging as a standard feature, which means recharging its battery should be easy and convenient. We were about to find out.

When we picked up the Outlander PHEV at the local dealer, its battery was charged fully, which was a good way to start the test. How far would I get before the battery pack ran out and we were back to using that evil black gold stuff?

It wasn't very far, as it turned out. We left our home in North Central Calgary and headed down the Ring Road to the main highway (Highway 2) heading South from the city. It was about 20 minutes from our place to the Southern city limits and by the time were got there the battery reserve was spent.

That would have been bad news if we were in an actual EV that offered no gasoline engine backup.
To be fair, I think a dedicated EV would have gotten us farther that that. Last time I tried a road trip in an EV, Ford's Mock E "Mustang", I made it nearly an hour before having to recharge, and that was on a cold and wet day and I drove the "Mockstang" as if it were a real Mustang (hey, they pretend it is, so why shouldn't I?), so it isn't necessarily the rule that proves the exception.

Also, if we'd been in a dedicated EV, I would've been looking hard for a recharging station nearby and probably cussing the SUV for not going very far. But it didn't matter because once the electro-juice was depleted, we sallied forth as if nothing had changed, the Mitsubishi changing happily (and seamlessly) to the gas/hybrid mode.

The Outlander PHEV has an electric motor at each axle and the stored juice comes from a high-capacity 20 kWh lithium-ion main drive battery the company says was developed specifically for the Outlander PHEV. It's paired with a 2.4 litre four-cylinder, DOHC, 16-valve, Mitsubishi Innovative Valve-timing Electronic Control system (MIVEC) unit the manufacturer says puts out 131 horses @ 5000 and 144 lb.-ft. of torque @ 4300 (which is pretty anemic on its own, especially in a vehicle as large as the Outlander).

Fortunately, that isn't the end of the story because you have to take the electric stuff into consideration as well. Mitsubishi says the gasoline and electrics combination add up to 248 horses and 332 ft.-lb. of torque. That's much, much more interesting!

Until you climb some mountain passes…

Anyway, from Calgary, we drove south to Nanton on the main Highway 2 and then crossed over to Highway 22, which is much prettier, has a lot less traffic and is a lot more interesting to drive thanks to its hills and bends. We left the Mits in its "Normal" drive mode through all this section because it was relatively flat.

By the time we hit the Crowsnest pass, we were down to about half a tank of gas and so filled up there to avoid the extra taxes assessed currently in the People's Republic of British Columbia.

After a quick lunch in the parking lot at the oldest oil derrick in Canada on the western outskirts of Fernie, B.C. (where they did offer vehicle charging if you had the time to spare, which we didn't), we continued on highway three past Cranbrook and Creston (topping up the then-half empty tank in Creston) and onto our first real challenge of the day: the mighty Salmo Creston.

This is a mountain pass I know well and it's one that should always be treated with respect. British Columbia's socialist government mandates that drivers must use snow tires until April 30, though it can snow a lot later than that in these mountain passes regardless of the dictates of Big Brother. That made me glad that the folks at Mitsubishi had left the winter tires on the Outlander PHEV for me, just in case.

As it turned out, the road was bare and dry (though there was plenty of snow beside the highway) and the pass was as much fun to drive as I remembered.

This is where I first tried the Outlander PHEV's "Power" mode, which works like a hot darn! Twist the console-mounted selector wheel two positions from "Normal" (one notch past "Eco" mode, the bane of my existence) and after a second or so it feels almost as if you've activated an afterburner.

Almost. I've driven EV's that leap forward as if shot out of a cannon when pressed. The Outlander PHEV doesn't do that, but it tries hard and mostly does a good job of it; it just doesn't push you back in your seat like some dedicated EV's do. And that's fine, because outright speed isn't the vehicle's raison d'etre.

One annoying thing about pressing the Outlander is that its "reduction gearboxes" whine like an angry banshee when you put the spurs to the car. It reminded me of a conventional CVT (continuously variable transmission) a type of transmission I loathe. It isn't a CVT, though. According to my contact at Mitsubishi, since the Outlander PHEV is designed as an EV first and foremost, "it essentially uses a single-speed transmission based on the drive mode you're in."

That said, the Mits climbed the Salmo Creston without complaint. Coming back down the other side, we used the vehicle's regenerative braking to charge up the battery as much as possible while we used gravity (mostly) instead of gasoline or electricity. When we reached the bottom on the Salmo side we'd stored about 25 kilometres of electric range.

Or so the gauges said. It was only enough to get us to Salmo on pure electric power before we were back in hybrid mode.

This was repeated many times during our trip, which made me really appreciate the flexibility of the plug-in hybrid; it offers, if not the best of both gas and electric worlds, at least a decently workable compromise that means you can live easily with the technology.

We finally made to Rossland, where I had made reservations at a motel where the dude on the phone had assured me there'd be a place to plug in and recharge the Mitsubishi, even though they didn't offer dedicated chargers.

There wasn't. There were a couple of outdoor wall sockets, but placed across the parking lot from where we were allowed to park, and so they were therefore useless. My complaint at the front desk was greeted with a blank look and a "huh?"

Which leads me to a bit of advice: if you're travelling in an EV, check carefully for real charging points. A web search told us there was an "official" charger in the downtown Rossland area but we didn't see one – not that we spent a lot of time looking since the gas engine made it kind of moot.

Fortunately, it just meant we spent more money on gasoline than we thought we would, though at the end of it all my wife expressed surprise a how little we had spent. In fact, over the course of our two-week adventure, we managed to achieve average gas mileage of 8.9 l/100 km, which is pretty good for an SUV of this size (it's supposedly compact, but to me it felt more mid-sized when I was behind the wheel). And I drove the Mitsubishi the way I drive anything, as if it's a sports car (which it definitely isn't!), and that undoubtedly wreaked havoc on my gas mileage.

So, as they say, your mileage may vary.

Anyway, from Rossland we headed along Highway three, past Christina Lake, Grand Forks, Greenwood, Midway and up and down some challenging hills – mostly downhill during this section, which saw the regenerative braking doing its allotted task of putting juice into the battery pack.

We stopped in Osoyoos for gas again then sallied forth toward Princeton and on across Manning Park on the lovely, challenging and extremely fun-to-drive Hope-Princeton highway. My wife commented on the number of EV's we saw on that road, which was practically in the middle of nowhere, and wondered how they managed to cross that section of road without running down the battery packs.

We found out at the summit, where there was a charging station setup. We could have stopped there and filled the battery again, but we ignored it and pressed on toward Abbottsford, taking Highway one west from Hope.

Helping to control how the battery pack gets its fill of electrons is a pair of paddles behind the steering wheel that let you control the level of regenerative braking. There's also a console-mounted button that ups the regen ante via "Innovated Pedal," which lets you "control accelerating and decelerating with the accelerator pedal alone," according to Mitsubishi's Canadian website. "When it's activated," they say, "you can slow down by lightly releasing the accelerator pedal (the brake lights come on to warn the car behind you). It applies both regenerative brakes and friction brakes to recapture energy for the drive battery to help maintain your EV driving range."

I didn't use this feature a lot because I was more concerned with getting where we were going than I was with slowing down rapidly to charge a battery pack that would drain in minutes anyway, but it definitely works (though it feels decidedly weird only using one pedal to drive!) and I can see using it quite a bit in an urban environment where you're doing a lot of stop-and-go driving.

Which reminds me: it's fascinating and quite entertaining to see the dashboard display that illustrates the electric/gas/both usage and how flawlessly and seamlessly the different aspects work together (though don't look too long lest you run into something!).

The Outlander PHEV is no sports vehicle, but it mostly punched above its weight on our mountain road trip. The weakest links are its power – which would be more than adequate if you weren't climbing BIG HILLS – and a suspension which, while it soaks up bumps and road peculiarities very nicely, tends to wallow a tad (a bit more than a tad, actually) in the twisty bits. I attribute some of this to the winter tires it wore, so I can't blame the suspension for it all.

From Abbottsford, we crossed the Canada/USA border at Sumas and there were no issues or hassles moving from the True North formerly Strong and Free to the Home of the Brave. We even saw some Trump signs on properties between the border and Bellingham (by which time they seemed to have disappeared or, since Bellingham is decidedly left-leaning, been torn down or banned).

Bellingham is a city of about 100,000 hippies (plus my son and his wife) and it's quite lovely. It also gave us the perfect opportunity to test out the Outlander's PHEV capabilities, because the hotel at which we stayed had a charging station. It was included in the room price, too, which was nice – though it didn't let us know how much it actually cost to rejuice the vehicle.

It was a bizarre setup where you'd park the vehicle in their single EV charger spot, then go to the front desk and ask them to activate it. The procedure worked fine, but it was a pain having to visit the front desk because our room was nearer the charger than the desk. But what can you do?

The real downside to the system was that it was first come, first served, and on the second of our three days in Bellingham someone who had actually bought (I assume) an EV beat us to the charger. We did okay, though, getting to use the charger two out of our three nights there. I imagine there'd be more competition for the charger were we in high tourist season.

But this is where the PHEV shines! We could drive around Bellingham and area on electrical power alone, not using any gasoline at all. We visited very pretty places like Whatcom Falls and Lake Whatcom, as well as "the fleshpots of Bellingham", inside the city, such as a farmer's market) It was very cool.

Charging overnight gave us an indicated 50 miles of range, which is undoubtedly all that most people who only drive in the city would need between charges. It worked great for us, anyway.

Driving modes include Eco mode, which focuses on electric power, but I usually let the system default to "normal" and it worked fine. I still preferred "power" mode, especially on the large hills, because it made the Mitsubishi act a lot more spry than it did in the more "Gaia-friendly" modes.

From Bellingham, we returned to the pending 51st State, taking the ferry from the Tsawwassen terminal and driving down to Victoria.

My brother has owned a PHEV for a few years now and has been extremely happy with it. He has a charger where he parks, which certainly helps with the ownership experience, and he told me that when they're just driving around the city, he only has to buy gas about four times a year. And he has the gas engine to exploit for backup when they travel.

That's a pretty compelling reason to think PHEV!

Since I was curious to see how the PHEV concept worked in someone else's hands, we only took the Outlander on one trip in Victoria, to Butchart Gardens, where they absolutely freaked out when I had the audacity to try taking a picture of the Outlander in front of their sign.

Screw them; there'll be no Butchart Gardens pictures accompanying this piece.

From Victoria, we drove "up island" to my wife's cousin's strata home on the mountainside above Qualicum Beach. Again, the drive was mostly using hybrid mode because we had neither the time nor the inclination to find, and then sit at, a charger when we could merely sally forth on our own time.

This section of the trip is where we had a major argument with the navigation system. We were hungry for Harvey's burgers and programmed the nav system to find us a franchise nearby. The nav system guided us along the highway to Nanaimo, then – once we left the main highway – it became obvious that it was taking us to the ferry terminal because the closest Harvey's wasn't on the island at all!

Okay, that one was on us. But repeatedly on this trip, the navigation system would get us close to where we were going and then either cut us loose shortly before we got there or try to take us in a completely different direction. It was weird and annoying and we found ourselves increasingly ignoring its advice in favour of my phone's map app, which turned out to be not much better.

A trip to Qualicum wouldn't be complete without heading over to Tofino. I love the road to get there; it takes one right across Vancouver Island and is full of delightful curves and hills and challenges which, I'm surprised but pleased to report, they didn't screw up when they did some redesign work a few years back.

Tofino is very pretty and sports-oriented, which makes me understand why it seems to be "Justin's Favourite Hangout". We didn't see him there, though, which meant there was no damage done to the Mitsubishi's rather handsome grille.

The Outlander did a fine job on that wonderful highway, though its soft handling meant I had to work hard to keep the thing pointed down the road when things got tight and twisty.

Middle row passengers complained about being tossed around in the twisty bits, of which there are plenty. To see if it was them, my driving style, or the vehicle design that caused them to be thrown about, I sat in the middle row for a bit while my wife drove. She doesn't drive nearly as aggressively as me, but despite that I did get thrown around quite a bit. So it wasn't all me!

I think this is a common thing for rear or middle row passengers in many vehicles, though, and not a specifically Mitsubishi thing.

We used nearly a full tank of gas on that day trip, which beat having the Outlander PHEV die by the side of the road, bereft of electricity and nowhere near a charger.

The trip home to Calgary, with an overnight stop at a Kamloops hotel that seemed to have never heard the term "EV charger", was unremarkable other than endless construction and detours on the Trans Canada Highway. And you can't blame Mitsubishi for that!

But before we reached Kamloops we had to handle the Coquihalla highway, which is very high, very steep, and (thanks to its lovely and civilized 120 km/h speed limit) very fast. This was where the Mitsubishi faced its biggest challenge, because some of the uphill grades were so steep it was all the Outlander PHEV could do to maintain the speed limit. In fact, twice (on particularly challenging upgrades) it threw its little automotive hands up in the air and practically gave up.

It didn't die or leave us on the side of the road or anything, but it suddenly lost power and a warning appeared on the instrument panel that we were experiencing limited power. And it was all I could do to keep the Mits' speed equal to the other traffic around us.

Fortunately, both instances were short-lived and once we were onto more normal grades, or over the summit and heading downhill again, the Outlander leapt happily back into full action and all was well.

Moral of the story? Stay off the Coquihalla unless you have abundant horsepower!

Overall, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV did a fine job on our road trip, and we drove it harder than most people probably would (all in the interest of science!). It was comfortable and pleasant for all-day driving.

We had a few quibbles and it had a few weird things, though.

For example, the seat belt display on the instrument panel indicates whether or not the second-row seats are occupied and strapped in, but the virtual car on the dashboard display is upside down – so it looks like the belts are for those occupying a front bench seat. Strange, and weird, but hardly a deal breaker.

We had a few electrical issues, too. I sometimes would have to start the vehicle twice before it actually fired up, and sometimes it made me bring the key close to the start button before it would obey. Both of these issues seemed be for no apparent reason.

The boxy style of the Outlander (and many other SUV's…) led to it being prone to cross winds, of which there were many, but it wasn't a huge deal.

I couldn't get the driver's seat low enough for my stubby legs to be comfortable, either. The seat was fine, but I wanted it lower at the front. On the other hand, there are built-in massagers for both front seats, and they offered a nice and gentle (depending on how you set it) set of magic fingers that were really welcome during our many hours in the Outlander.

Speaking of seats, I was all set to try the third row but when I moved the second row forward to access it, I realized there was no way in Creation that my short, fat and old body was going to fit. It appears to be for emergency use only.

The Outlander also features a very good Bose audio system, and I must thank the folks at Mitsubishi for activating satellite radio for the trip; it came in very handy in the mountains, where terrestrial radio (which usually sucks anyway) was blocked by those large rocky and forested natural phenomena. Heck, in some places the mountains were so tight that satellite radio didn't work, either.

And as with other vehicles these days, the Outlander PHEV can offer you "advanced connectivity to control and monitor your vehicle. You can easily check battery level, schedule charging, pre-heat or pre-cool your vehicle or even locate it in a parking lot – all from your smartphone."

Yeah. I tried this before we set off. You have to sign up and enter personal information I was reluctant to give them, especially for just a temporary loan. Still, I started doing it, but as part of the process it insisted I scan the VIN code from inside the door, which my phone refused to do and I didn't feel like punching in manually. So, I bailed on that feature and didn't miss it a whit.

A very close friend of mine has such a system with his SUV, however, and he likes it. It ain't free, though.

Speaking of which, pricing for the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV starts at $48,698. My test sample , the top-of-the-line Noir trim level, starts at $60,598.

It was very cool driving the Mitsubishi Outlander Noir PHEV through the mountains and I want to thank Mitsubishi for giving me the opportunity. It isn't my type of vehicle (heck, I wouldn't even have an SUV if my wife didn't want one) and our route and my driving style weren't the best ways to exploit the technology.

But I have a feeling that the customers at which Mitsubishi aims this vehicle will be quite satisfied with its combination of electrification, features, comfort and efficiency.

It's a nice vehicle for this market niche.