Mitsubishi Motors is celebrating as they see their Outlander Plug-in Hybrid being a big hit in Europe and Japan. Mitsubishi just announced that they have sold over 33,000 copies of the PHEV around the world.
The breakdown is that Mitsubishi has delivered 15,000 units in Japan and 18,000 in Europe. Fuminori Kojima, Mitsubishi Motors North America’s senior manager of incentives, said that the country with the highest sales rate in Europe is Holland, with about 6,000 units sold that thanks in part to generous incentives for plug-in hybrids there. The Outlander PHEV comes with a 2.0-liter petrol engine with an electric motor and has an all-electric range of 55 kilometers or 32 miles.
Mitsubishi ran into problems with the Outlander PHEV in spring 2013 after a battery melted at a Japan dealership, causing the company to halt production on the model. The company later discovered that some of the batteries were short-circuiting due to a flaw in the screening process. Once those issues were solved, Mitsubishi Motors doubled its production rate last year to make up for lost time.
