Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hybrid EV (PHEV) Paris 2012 debut

A production version of the Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV) will debut at the Paris Motor Show in September.

Mitsubishi has already had a couple of stabs at a plug-in hybrid Outlander EV, with the PX-MiEV at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2009 and then again with the imaginatively named PX-MiEV II at last year’s Tokyo Show. But now we’re about to get the production version.

The Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hybrid EV (or PHEV, as it will be dubbed) will launch at the Paris Motor Show in September and will be a plug-in hybrid version of the new Mitsubishi Outlander which debuted at the Geneva Motor Show this year ( and which was previewed by the PX-MiEV II, just to complete the circle).

Mitsubishi say the Outlander PHEV is the first car from a mainstream manufacturer envisaged as both an ICE and PHEV powertrain and will be an EV-based car with permanent 4WD – an electric motor on each axle – supplemented by a petrol engine.

There will be three modes of travel in the PHEV, Pure gives 4WD EV from the electric motors, Series gives gets support from the engine and Parallel which is the ICE engine supported by the two electric motors. Overall range will be up to 500 miles with official emissions at 50g/km (which means official economy of a barking mad 135mpg).

The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV will hit showrooms in 2013, following on from the new Outlander ICE which will arrive in autumn 2012. So far no prices for the Outlander PHEV have been revealed, but it will be a chunk more than the ICE version.