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Normally spending as little money as possible on something is a bad idea, but the 2022 Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross PHEV is the exception to the rule! Paul Maric checks out one of the most affordable plug-in hybrid EVs on the market.

Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE

Read the full review: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-reviews/2022-mitsubishi-eclipse-cross-plug-in-hybrid-review

Book a Test Drive: https://www.mitsubishi-motors.com.au/buying-tools/book-a-test-drive.html/?cid=au%3Aecp%3AECPHEVMY22%3Apr%3Acex%3Antv%3ACarExpert_EclipseCros_Connect_BookATestDrive%3A1085151124
Find a Dealer: https://www.mitsubishi-motors.com.au/buying-tools/locate-a-dealer/call-back-form.html/?cid=au%3Aecp%3AECPHEVMY22%3Apr%3Acex%3Antv%3ACarExpert_EclipseCros_Connect_RequestACall%3A1085167128

More Mitsubishi content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi
More Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi/eclipse-cross

Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 1:05
Interior 4:09
Infotainment 5:36
Safety Tech 6:55
Practicality 7:25
On the road 11:39
0-100km/h 16:23
Verdict 18:26

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#mitsubishi #eclipsecross #review #electric #phev
Transcript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul.
00:01 So if you're not quite ready yet for a fuller EV, I know there's a few of you out there,
00:06 but you also don't like the concept of a standard internal combustion car and you want a little
00:09 bit of electric stuff, there's this.
00:12 It is the Eclipse Cross PHEV.
00:15 It's a plug-in hybrid.
00:16 It means you get the benefit of a hybrid with the ability to charge it at home as well to
00:20 do your zero emissions driving.
00:23 This is normally the part where I tell you what this competes with, but this doesn't
00:26 really have any competitors.
00:27 And in terms of price, this one that you see here, the Aspire model, it's midway through
00:31 the spec range and it's just under $50,000.
00:33 If that's a little bit too much, the whole range kicks off at just over $45,000.
00:38 So it is pretty cheap when you consider that PHEVs are generally a whole lot more expensive
00:43 than their sort of standard internal combustion cousins.
00:46 So the Eclipse Cross, today we're going to do a detailed review of it.
00:49 If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of the review, you can use those timecodes
00:52 on the screen, or if you're on YouTube, scroll down and use the chapters below.
00:56 And if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel, press the bell icon, that'll
01:00 tell you every single time we do a review of a very white car.
01:05 Let's talk exterior.
01:06 You've got seven external colours to pick from.
01:09 All but white is an additional $740, and then you've got another two colours on top of that
01:13 that are just under $1,000.
01:16 What about the design?
01:18 This is interesting.
01:19 So they've sort of gone with that dual-tiered headlight setup.
01:22 This is similar to what we've seen with Hyundai before, where you've got LEDs up the top
01:26 here, and then down the bottom you have a segment of full LED headlights.
01:31 The grille, I don't know, the whole package just kind of looks nice.
01:34 It's a bit futuristic.
01:35 I don't know how well it'll date, but for me it's quite an appealing looking car.
01:39 It looks sporty, and it doesn't look cheap and cheerful.
01:41 I think they've gone with a really stylish design here.
01:44 So you've got Piano Black on the top edge of that grille there, big Mitsubishi logo,
01:48 air intakes here, and down the bottom, then you've got this chrome element just here.
01:52 This is a bit of a family face.
01:54 We've seen something similar on the Pajero Sport and the Triton as well.
01:57 So it's something I think that they're quite fond of.
02:01 Over on the side here we have a set of 18-inch alloy wheels.
02:05 The wheel design is pretty sort of standard.
02:07 You've got a chrome element on the outside, and then a Piano Black finish inside.
02:11 And then of course, because it's an SUV, you've got these plastic wheel arch protectors.
02:16 Over here you've got a plug-in hybrid badge.
02:18 Indicator built into the wing mirror.
02:20 There's a camera on the side there.
02:22 That chrome element runs all the way along the top there.
02:24 You've got these matte black roof rails, privacy glass, and we'll take a stop over here.
02:29 This is where you charge the car.
02:31 You've got two different plug types.
02:32 You've got a Type 2 plug, which is standard for Australia.
02:36 Then you also have a Chateaumeau plug, which is the Japanese standard.
02:40 The Type 2 plug is just for AC charging at a rate of up to 3.7 kW, while your Chateaumeau
02:45 plug will do DC charging at a rate of up to 22 kW.
02:49 But the cool thing here is that this can actually be used as V2H.
02:53 That means you can use this plug to power a home or some other device.
02:56 And then when the car runs out of battery, because this can be run as a series hybrid,
03:00 and I'll explain what that means later on, you can actually use the engine as a generator
03:04 to make electricity and charge the batteries, which can then come out here and power your
03:08 home.
03:09 It means that if you do have an extended power outage or something like that, your car could
03:12 in theory operate your home while you wait for the power to come back online.
03:16 So really cool functionality, not something you'd expect in an entry-level PHEV.
03:21 Come around to the back.
03:23 So they've gone with like a sort of shooting brake design.
03:26 You can see it cuts down here, it's got a fairly sort of sleek rear end to it.
03:30 You've got a shark fin antenna up the top there, this roof-mounted spoiler with the
03:33 brake light built in.
03:34 You'll remember the last Eclipse Cross had this like dual section sort of tailgate on
03:39 it.
03:40 Made it a little hard to see out the back of, so this single glass element should mean
03:43 that it's easier to actually drive with.
03:46 Eclipse Cross lettering here.
03:47 You know how some kids steal badges off cars?
03:50 I think they're going to be here a long time stealing every single one of those, so there's
03:54 quite a lot going on there.
03:55 And then of course another PHEV badge down there with Aspire being this particular spec
04:02 of vehicle.
04:03 So let me know what you think about the design.
04:05 Do you like the look of the Eclipse Cross?
04:06 Do you think it could be improved?
04:08 Let me know what you think down there.
04:09 So we are inside the Eclipse Cross PHEV.
04:12 We'll start off with the key.
04:13 You have lock and unlock and a blank down the bottom.
04:17 Over on the side here you have a button that cancels the charging timer, so if it is plugged
04:21 up and the charging timer is active you can hit that and it will stop that from happening.
04:25 On the back there you just have the Mitsubishi logo.
04:27 It's a proximity sensing key, so in your pocket and then once you're inside you have a push
04:31 button start up the top there.
04:34 So the design.
04:35 Look, it is pretty bland and I've got to say Mitsubishi is getting better.
04:39 Like the new Outlander looks pretty cool but I think this is definitely starting to feel
04:44 old and dated and look some people may like the design but I think it could do with a
04:48 bit of an improvement.
04:49 This stuff along the top there is soft to the touch which is nice but there is loads
04:53 of piano black along the centre there down this centre tunnel as well.
04:57 What you will notice that's different to a standard Eclipse Cross is this control mechanism
05:02 here for driving, so we'll run through that when we go for a drive but for the most part
05:05 the rest of it looks pretty similar which is good news.
05:08 What about your touch points?
05:09 Well this feels nice and soft and that feels soft as well.
05:14 How soft are they?
05:15 Well we've got our durometer, we've tested the main surfaces in this cabin.
05:18 If you want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before have a look
05:22 at the link in the description.
05:23 About build quality, it's a little bit loose but for the most part that feels okay and
05:28 our door sound, let's have a listen.
05:33 That feels good, sounds nice and sturdy.
05:36 Let's talk about infotainment.
05:38 This is probably one of the poorest infotainment systems on the market today.
05:43 It's just a big step backward from the last generation of this infotainment system and
05:47 hopefully there is something better coming but it does the job, I'll walk you through
05:52 it.
05:53 So 8 inch infotainment system, it sits up the top there, you've got some shortcut buttons
05:56 down the bottom and then two knobs as well, one for volume and one for tuning.
05:59 In terms of radio you have AM, FM and DAB+ digital radio and that's played through an
06:05 8 speaker sound system.
06:08 Smartphone mirroring comes with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, both of those are wired.
06:14 Again it's just, look at this, it's laggy and yeah, I don't know, it's okay once you
06:19 get a couple of swipes in but you know it's not the most responsive system in the world
06:24 but you can do voice recognition both through the native infotainment system and through
06:29 your paired smartphone.
06:30 It's also Android Auto, same story, it takes up the full screen but it is a little bit
06:35 laggy and could be a little bit better.
06:37 And finally you have this screen here which is for your P-HEV and also just the standard
06:42 info.
06:43 I quite like here that you can see energy flows, the range that you have left and exactly
06:48 what the car is doing.
06:49 We'll have a closer look at this when we do go for a drive and see exactly how it interacts
06:53 with the car when we are on the move.
06:55 Moving on to safety technology, so you have autonomous emergency braking that works at
06:59 low and high speed, you have this auto dimming rear vision mirror, you have a lane keeping
07:04 warning, you've got blind spot monitoring built into the wing mirror, radar cruise control,
07:10 you also have front and rear parking sensors and a surround view camera.
07:14 I'll show you what that looks like.
07:16 There it is, so look the quality isn't amazing, it's fairly sort of grainy and then the top
07:20 down view as well, not amazing either, it's sort of hard to tell exactly what there is
07:24 around the car there.
07:25 Now what about practicality and we'll start with your charging points.
07:28 So you've got two USB charging points down the front here and a 12 volt outlet.
07:32 In terms of storing your phone, it can live down the front here, it doesn't quite fit
07:37 big phones though, they sort of sit a little bit wonky so for that you can just pop your
07:40 phone in the cup holders, there's no wireless phone charging.
07:44 In terms of bottle storage, we'll start off with our coffee cup, that fits in there and
07:50 doesn't get too lost in that so it's easy to still retrieve without spilling it everywhere.
07:55 Our bottle easily fits into there, you've got teeth as well to hold it in.
07:59 It fits inside the door without any drama, we'll try a big bottle inside the door as
08:03 well.
08:04 Excellent, that fits too so very versatile.
08:08 Centre console, a little coin tray there and then a deep generous centre console.
08:14 Let's have a look at the glove box, pretty decent size so the manual does take up a fair
08:20 bit of that but you've got a couple of tiers of storage there as well.
08:24 Now what about comfort, you have dual zone automatic climate control.
08:28 The cool news is here there is an electric heater as well which means you don't actually
08:32 have to run the engine to run the heater which is good news.
08:35 You've got heated seats for the front row with two settings.
08:39 The seats themselves, so they've got this faux leather material with this sort of suede-y
08:44 type stuff in the centre.
08:46 They actually look pretty cool, it sort of feels a bit more premium than just like a
08:49 cloth setup and then if you go to the top spec you get full leather.
08:53 They hug you in nicely, there is a bit of room on either side but for the most part
08:56 they're good.
08:57 The seat can go forwards, backwards and the backrest can go forwards and backwards, you
09:02 can lift the base as well.
09:03 So the driver's seat is electrically adjustable, the passenger's seat is manually adjustable.
09:09 Steering wheel, so leather wrapped, you've got these giant paddle shifters, they're static
09:13 and they help you with regen, we'll talk about those when we go for a drive.
09:16 And then your steering can be adjusted up and down and in and out.
09:20 And our reach test, you've got to lean forward to get the volume control and some of those
09:24 shortcut buttons but all of this stuff is easy to reach from the driver's seat.
09:28 OK, second row of the Eclipse Cross.
09:32 Not a huge amount of legroom here, so my knees are sort of inside the seat there.
09:36 My seat is pretty far back but this sort of gives you an idea of how much room I have.
09:40 Toe room is reasonable, headroom is OK as well.
09:44 One matte pocket on the back of the passenger side, you don't get any air vents which is
09:49 a little bit annoying and you only get one outlet down the bottom here which is a 12
09:53 volt, there's no actual USB charging sockets.
09:56 You have a centre armrest here with two cup holders so your bottle can fit in there and
10:01 then you've got storage inside the door as well for your bottle.
10:05 And then finally you have two ISOFIX points on the outboard seats.
10:09 Yeah, it's an interesting space, I think they could have really done with air vents here
10:14 because this is going to get hot and stuffy on a really hot day.
10:17 Being a plug-in hybrid, it's going to rob you of some boot space but how much?
10:22 So manual, tailgate.
10:24 Now in here you have a little over 350 litres of cargo space in its standard trim.
10:29 That is about 50 litres less than the non-PHEV Eclipse Cross and that's because of the batteries.
10:36 There's also, I don't know, I like the way they've laid it out because it gives you storage
10:40 for your cable.
10:41 I think that's one thing that I find with my Tesla that I can just drop the cable in
10:44 and I don't have to think about it, it doesn't have to sit on top of the boot.
10:47 It actually reminds me, very silly side story, but it reminds me of like the Ford Falcon
10:52 that used to have the spare tyre on the boot and you just couldn't do anything with it.
10:57 So I like this setup.
10:58 So beneath that cargo floor you have a space for your cable down there, plus you've got
11:03 a tyre repair kit and then also the 12-volt battery.
11:07 Then off to the sides you have a little bit of storage space down there and your cargo
11:10 blind.
11:11 If you do want to increase the space, I'll show you how to do that in just a sec.
11:14 Pop our bags in, move that out of the way.
11:20 It's actually not a bad space, it's easy to load stuff in there.
11:26 And if you do drop the second row, put that all the way down, that expands the space to
11:36 a little over 600 litres, not quite flat though.
11:41 So we've hit the road in the Eclipse Cross PHEV.
11:45 There's a fair bit to get through here, so I'll step through each of the, I guess, drivetrain
11:49 components of the Eclipse Cross and try and make it as simple as I can.
11:53 So you have an internal combustion engine that is a 2.4-litre naturally aspirated four-cylinder
11:59 petrol engine.
12:00 It alone produces 94 kilowatts of power and 199 newton metres of torque, and that is mated
12:07 to a continuously variable transmission.
12:10 And this is technically an all-wheel drive, but the configuration is internal combustion
12:14 engine at the front, plus an electric motor, then servicing the rear axle is another electric
12:20 motor.
12:21 So there is no physical driveline that runs between the front and the rear, and that means
12:25 you are saving weight.
12:26 It's a similar setup to the Toyota RAV4 hybrid that runs a set of electric motors on the
12:30 front and then one on the rear as well.
12:32 Your front electric motor produces 60 kilowatts of power and 137 newton metres of torque,
12:37 so that is the smaller of the two.
12:39 While on the rear axle it produces 70 kilowatts of power and 195 newton metres of torque.
12:45 And the good news here is you can drive this car in a number of different ways.
12:48 You can drive it as a full EV just by hitting the EV button, and in that mode right now
12:53 I can basically press the throttle all the way down to the floorboard, and it's not until
12:59 I hit the kickdown switch that we get the internal combustion engine coming on to assist
13:04 as well.
13:05 And I think that's a really good setup because traditionally in previous PHEVs that we've
13:10 driven the internal combustion engine just constantly keeps coming on if you give it
13:13 too much throttle, whereas this is just keen to drive on its own without any dramas at
13:18 all.
13:19 You then also have the ability to save charge, so by hitting that it turns the internal combustion
13:23 engine on and retains the amount of charge that we have right now.
13:27 And then you have another button here that charges it, and what that does is it uses
13:31 your internal combustion engine as a generator, and it's basically then pumping energy back
13:36 into the batteries.
13:37 It's kind of an efficient way to do it because you don't have the fluctuating power loads,
13:41 it's able to use up to 80 kilowatts of that engine to act as a generator and then charge
13:45 the batteries for later use.
13:47 Now in addition to that you do have a set of drive modes, so you have tarmac, gravel,
13:52 normal, snow, eco, there's a whole stack there to choose from.
13:57 And finally you also have the ability to adjust your regen mode, so using the paddle shifters
14:00 here or just using the gear stick, you can go all the way down to B5, which as you can
14:05 see on that gauge on the left there, it increases the amount of charge you have as you roll
14:08 out of the throttle.
14:10 So there is a lot there, but I think the package itself is really impressive, and I love the
14:16 way that it's just easy to use.
14:17 It really doesn't need a degree to figure out how all of this stuff works.
14:21 Let's talk economy and range.
14:23 So there's a claimed range of 55 kilometres, but you won't be achieving that.
14:26 I think that's under absolutely perfect conditions.
14:28 Realistically you'll probably get about 45 k's out of that 14 kilowatt hour battery.
14:34 And that all leads to a combined fuel economy of 1.9 litres per 100 k's.
14:38 Let's have a look at what we're sitting on.
14:41 So we're currently sitting on 7.2.
14:44 I will point out a few caveats here.
14:46 So basically we've been driving the car a fair bit, so it depleted its battery pack
14:51 fairly early on in the piece, and then it's been out here doing some filming, we haven't
14:55 had the chance to charge it.
14:56 So realistically if you did own this car you would probably charge it at home and not have
15:00 to do what we've done.
15:01 We've actually had to use the internal combustion engine to fill the battery, which of course
15:05 will lead to high fuel economy.
15:07 So what's it like if you want to have a bit of fun?
15:08 This is sort of a sporty Mitsubishi.
15:10 We'll pop it down onto, actually I don't even know what, maybe tarmac is our sports
15:15 setting.
15:16 And because it has all-wheel drive we can...
15:19 Hey this is actually pretty good.
15:24 Look, it does have a fair bit of body roll, but with the all-wheel drive system you're
15:28 able to just literally stay in the throttle out of these corners, and it picks up pace
15:34 and just starts going.
15:35 It isn't an Evo 7, but it is pretty fun when you consider that it is just a naturally aspirated
15:42 engine up the front there with a battery pack helping things along.
15:46 It's actually quite engaging to drive.
15:49 You can flick through the menus here as well to give yourself a view of the all-wheel drive
15:53 system, the super all-wheel control, so you can figure out exactly what it's doing.
15:59 You'll notice here as we come into this corner, I'll tip in, roll onto the throttle and it's
16:05 sending more torque to the rear as well.
16:07 So look, it is actually pretty engaging to drive, which has surprised me for what should
16:13 be an efficient car.
16:18 Mitsubishi doesn't have an official 0-100 time for the Eclipse Cross FEV, but we've
16:22 put it up against our stopwatch and this is how it went.
16:39 Now what about the rest of it?
16:40 Let's pop us back into normal mode.
16:42 What's it like just when you're driving along?
16:44 Look, it's quiet because it is a plug-in hybrid and when it is in EV mode you don't really
16:49 hear anything happening, but you do get a fair bit of tyre noise coming into the cabin.
16:53 It really doesn't have a great deal of insulation.
16:55 Here on country roads you can hear it sort of piping into the cabin and it sort of makes
16:59 a bit of a racket.
17:00 In terms of the ride, the ride is interesting.
17:02 It's fairly softly sprung and we've got our continuous undulations here.
17:06 We'll just dial up a little bit of speed and we'll see how it fares over those.
17:11 Here we are, they're coming up now.
17:14 Look, it's interesting, it is soft but it doesn't sort of leave the road and make you
17:20 feel uneasy.
17:22 When we drove the Haval H6 here, it was way too soft and it was basically bottoming out
17:27 and it just had a complete lack of body control.
17:29 This is soft but still has the body control at the top end of that limit, so it still
17:34 is quite fun to drive without feeling unsafe behind the wheel.
17:37 In and around the town, I mean, this is where this car excels.
17:41 You can do speed humps and even with those 18-inch alloy wheels, you really don't notice
17:45 things like cobblestones and potholes.
17:47 It is quite a sort of rounded ride and it just leaves you feeling happy regardless of
17:52 the surface that you're on.
17:54 And what about visibility?
17:55 So out the front, it's great.
17:56 I can see the sort of edges of the bonnet there.
17:58 The wing mirrors are huge, so I can clearly see down the side of the car and we've got
18:02 our blind spot monitor built into those.
18:04 Visibility out the rear is good as well.
18:06 The window envelope isn't super narrow but it's not super big either.
18:10 It's about sort of where it needs to be and it is easy to park with your front and rear
18:14 parking sensors and that surround view camera.
18:16 Now, if you do want to tow, you've got 1,500 kilograms worth of brake towing capacity and
18:21 finally your turning circle is 10.9 metres.
18:30 So the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross PHEV, I've got to be honest with you, sometimes I go
18:35 into reviewing some cars and I know ahead of reviewing it that I'm not going to like
18:39 it.
18:40 I know it's going to be in that boat but I was actually surprised.
18:43 This has surprised me because I was expecting it to be a bit dull and dreary but the way
18:48 they've configured this plug-in hybrid package is excellent.
18:52 You've got the ability to do V2H, you've got DC charging ability so you can charge it quickly
18:56 if you need to, you've got two sets of electric motors and a pretty hearty internal combustion
19:01 engine as well that really has all bases covered and then it drives properly just on EV.
19:06 We reviewed the Sorento PHEV just recently and that thing is just, I don't know, it doesn't
19:11 know whether it's coming or going, there's no real way to drive it just on EV because
19:15 you get the internal combustion engine kicking on all the time.
19:17 I think Mitsubishi has heritage and they know exactly what they're doing in this segment.
19:22 So from that point of view it's really good.
19:23 It's priced sharply as well, it's still far enough away from something like an entry-level
19:28 Tesla Model 3 to go, you know, full EV and it's not overly cheap so it sits in the middle
19:33 there and you get enough features inside as well.
19:35 So I think that some of the interior fit and finish and the design is fairly dated but
19:40 if you are in need of a PHEV, you don't want to spend outrageous amounts of money and you
19:44 want one that's good, this has your name all over it.
19:47 So let me know down in the comments, what do you reckon?
19:49 Did you buy one of these?
19:50 Did you own the previous gen Outlander PHEV?
19:52 Are you waiting for the new Outlander PHEV?
19:54 Let me know what you reckon down there, I'm always keen for your feedback.
19:58 If you enjoyed this video please make sure you like it and share it with your mates and
20:00 if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel but until next time, take it

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