Does anyone know what the Mpg of the new P400e PHEV is when the battery is used up (after about 30 miles) and one is just relying on the 2ltr petrol engine? My driving is a mix of 20 mile daily commutes, and then anything between 200 and 500 motorway miles most weekends. I had thought the PHEV could make sense, but am now concerned that the battery won’t have warmed up enough to work on my daily commutes......and the small petrol engine will be underpowered and thirsty when doing longish runs out of town. Worst, rather than best, of both worlds!!!

What Car? and Autocar magazines have both recently road tested both L405 and RRS PHEVS and found in their hands that they struggled to get 25mpg in petrol only mode. Pretty poor really in this day and age and worse when they headlined the fuel economy at 101mpg..........
When I was in a dealership recently the salesman went to great lengths to stress that the 2ltr engine produces more more power and torque than the old 2.7TDv6 engine AND it still has less weight to push around than the old RRS even when you take the battery weight (170kgs) as well as the other weight savings made in L494 over L320........ to me that makes it even worse that it performs so poorly in petrol only mode. But then does that really matter when the car is aimed at stop start commuter and city driving and not at the long distance traveller who is better advised to buy the Diesel engined cars. 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW

That's exactly what put me off the PHEV (both RRS and the Volvo T8 I looked at previously)

Most of days my commute is 30 miles round trip, it's an dual carriage way with low traffic and lots of roundabouts so terrible for fuel economy. I was hoping the PHEV would be great for this but the long distance trips I also make worried me. That was before I knew about the battery temp limitations.

I am sure that in time a PHEV would be perfect but I couldn't get the ROI to work vs the SDv6 I was looking at initially.

That said I think they are primarily aimed at company car users especially ones that live in cities with even shorter commutes and easily accessible charging infrastructure.

Managed to find some info from the brochure that might help. MPG of up to 26mpg manufacture figures doesn't paint a great picture for your weekend mileage!

Click image to enlarge

And the electric range is hugely weather dependent too so you would need the petrol engine even more once the cooler days come back. I don’t use a car for commuting, I fly.......... however I do drive into town every other day when I am in the UK and that is 16 miles each way. Here in Scotland I have registered with the government EV charging scheme ChargePlace Scotland for their £20 pa RFID card that gives me “free” charging in most park and ride car parks and many multi-storey carparks in Scotland, I also have a large solar array at home that will easily charge the car in 3hours without stopping me from exporting electricity to the national grid and I am considering putting in a couple of extra panels on the garage roof that will purely charge the car’s batteries as I cannot have any bigger system than I have now to qualify for the full feed in tariff allowance on the house. Being now over 60 I also have a bus pass so Park and Ride costs me nothing as well........... so having a PHEV works for me even without additional solar panels and as I don’t get any company car allowances etc BIK rebates don’t affect me. What I want to do is drive down my motoring costs - £10pa VED also helps and the £2500 rebate from the Westminster Govt on buying a low emissions car is also helpful as that will pay for a lot of motoring even in petrol only mode. Interestingly when I asked about insuring an RRS PHEV to compare with my current RRS the premiums 3 weeks ago were quotes at £105pa less too for some odd reason (possibly due to the car having lower output in petrol mode than my SDv6). As far as I can see the big issue for running costs of EV’s and PHEV’s is depreciation for private owners - after 3 years of owning a Renault ZOE EV one of my neighbours has decided that it’s 50 miles range on a warm day and a lot less in winter is too restricting for him and he has sold his Zoe back to Renault - cost him £19000 3 years ago............ and he paid £70pm for battery maintaining, he got £4500 back from Renault and has gone back to a Honda Jazz 1.4VTEC that gets around 60mpg with much larger range and lower overheads.......... we do live in a small village with 16 miles to one town and 18 to the other big city.
Another benefit for me is that the nearest shop’s, bank, post office and doctor’s surgery are 4.5miles away in the next village - RRS is hardly warmed through before I get there whereas in the Mini I have on order, so long as it is fully charged I can get there and back with zero tailpipe emissions and in total silence even if I do want to run the climate control or open the opening pano roof. 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW

Last edited by Tim in Scotland on Mon May 28 2018 3:05pm. Edited 1 time in total

If you want to do decent length commutes on electric power alone, you're going to need an electric or ranger extender electric. The iPace would be a good alternative to the RRS if you want the size/comfort of the RRS.

The RRS PHEV isn't designed to do be used as an electric-only vehicle (although it will do a bit of that, it's not the reason the electric is there). PHEVs are about utilising regen braking to maximise fuel usage, not about doing several dozen miles on the battery.

Any long distance stuff will be mostly fuel-based, especially constant speed stuff e.g. motorways, where the PHEV isn't really in its element.

For your commute of 15 miles each way, the PHEV would be good if you can plug it in when at home and at work. Then you'd be able to maximise battery usage and probably use no fuel during the week. This would nicely offset any possible thirsty long runs at weekends. It's about looking at the total fuel usage, not picking one or other facet and saying "that bit isn't so great so the whole thing is rubbish". 2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed

The people who would really benefit from having one are those retirees who only go to the local golf course and local driving and who don’t do any longer trips, people like my parents, most of my neighbours and soon to be me (only I cannot stand golf!). My mother is really going some if she even does 15 miles driving in a week and my dad does less yet both have their own cars - one an ancient Honda Civic and the other an 8 year old Honda Jazz but at approaching 90 years old neither sees buying a new car as something they will be doing again in their lifetime........ 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW

Last edited by Tim in Scotland on Mon May 28 2018 3:12pm. Edited 1 time in total

Salmon&permit wrote:

but am now concerned that the battery won’t have warmed up enough to work on my daily commutes.....

I'd be interested to see how well the regen braking works when towing a decent trailer. A PHEV ought to give better returns than a fuel-only vehicle because at least you get some of the energy back for when you have to lug the trailer back up to speed. 2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed

Many PHEVs cannot tow much.......... I cannot even fit a towbar to the Mini Countryman when it arrives but I will still have the Defender for heavier duties like runs to the dump.
I have been warned that you re-learn driving techniques with regenerative braking and one big problem for many EV and PHEV owners is that they use that so much that come annual service / MOT the normal brakes are seized solid..... One thing i am looking forward to using the very clever satnav in the Mini - BMW’s system can decide which energy mode the car should use and when to charge the batteries on the move from the route that you input - as well as all the normal info from a satnav BMW’s system also has road gradients programmed into it so it can work this out to ensure that when you arrive at a town you have a full battery to enable EV only running. I couldn’t figure it all out in the 96 hour demo drive I had so full time ownership in two weeks time should give me a huge amount of bedtime reading in the owner’s manual! 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW

RRS PHEV will tow 2500kg which is still a decent horse trailer (ours is plated at a few KG over 2500kg and will carry two big horses) and more than enough for a tin tent.

It would be nice to think that the PHEV knows when its towing and works the regen harder to get more back in to the battery. 2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed

Tim in Scotland wrote:

One thing i am looking forward to using the very clever satnav in the Mini - BMW’s system can decide which energy mode the car should use and when to charge the batteries on the move from the route that you input - as well as all the normal info from a satnav BMW’s system also has road gradients programmed into it so it can work this out to ensure that when you arrive at a town you have a full battery to enable EV only running.

Clever stuff and good to see some intelligent use of technology.  2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed

I’ve just found the on-line owner’s manual for the Mini PHEV ( I never thought to look before) and see that in addition to being able to set pre-heating of the battery and cabin, the battery and cabin can also be pre-cooled when plugged into a charging point - useful on hot days like today - it is 26c in my garden this afternoon!) when you might not want to get into a baking hot car and use up all the charge running the cold setting of the aircon before driving off. 2020 Pangea Green 1st Edition D240 New Defender 110 is here and loving it
2018 Melting Silver Mini Countryman PHEV - soon to be replaced
2015MY Corris Grey SDv6 HSE Dynamic, the best car I have ever owned, totally reliable only a cou0le of rattles in 3 years, now no longer in my care
Also in my garage is a 1996 TDi300 Defender 90 County HT made into a fake CSW

Thank you for responses. A conundrum. My commute and daily driving takes me through the London CC zone....but I rack up miles over the weekends and on trips to all corners of the U.K. on business and pleasure. Quite why they couldn’t have linked the whole PHEV system to the 3l petrol V6.....or even the diesel V6 is beyond me. Other than in quick acceleration blasts when the electric motors kick in, the 2l petrol engine seems way under what is required to waft the car along big A roads and motorways.....which is the whole point of the RRS. I genuinely use my current RRS hybrid as a virtual limo, family wagon, motorway munching p, fun on the A roads off-road beast. To date, I have had zero issues over 70,000 miles......but fear this new PHEV isn’t going to do any of these especially well.

Sounds like you need to arrange a decent long test drive. A quick 20 minutes around the block won't do for a PHEV as you need to see what it's like in realistic driving and that takes time. I wonder if you can get a 24 hour drive in one? 2012 SDV6 - it's missing a couple of cylinders
2008 TDV8 - it was a labour of love and is much missed