The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution has long been a sweet ride, and now comes word from Japan that the tarmac terror may soon come with a cord.
Mitsubishi is rolling into the Tokyo Auto Show -- always a showcase of the purposefully weird and wonderful -- with an attractive plug-in hybrid based on the Outlander called the Concept PX-MiEV. Yeah, yeah, we know. Another SUV with batteries and an electric motor, kinda like the hybrid Escalade.
But it you look a little deeper and read the tea leaves, you can glimpse the Evo's plug-in future.
Britain's Autocar magazine says Mitsubishi may use the drivetrain in the upcoming Lancer Evo XI. This will be great news for the tuner crowd, a group that has long adored the Evo series.
The drivetrain in the Concept PX features a pair of 81-horsepower electric motors driving the front and rear wheels. A conventional 1.6-liter gasoline engine producing 114 horsepower provides additional power to the front wheels, and it also serves as a generator for the lithium-ion battery. Tuning the system to boost performance could be as easy as flipping a switch since the AWD system is fully electric.
Autocar says the PX is good for 140 mpg, but as a commenter noted below (and we've updated here), Britain uses the Imperial gallon. *Car & Driver *puts the figure at 117 mpg on this side of the pond.
There's another reason to believe we'll see such a system in the next-gen Evo: the electric motors in the Concept PX uses Mitsubishi’s Super All Wheel Control (S-AWC) active yaw control all-wheel drive system. It's an off-the-shelf unit taken directly from, you guessed it, the current Evo (shown in the main pic).
Autocar says Mitsubishi hopes to have the plug-in technology on the market by 2013 and cites unnamed "company insiders" saying it could be directed at the next-gen Evo. Should such a car appear, it would go a long way toward making eco-friendlier cars that are a blast to drive. Building hybrids that are as fun as they are efficient is a sure way to make them popular with consumers.
*Photo and image: *Mitsubishi
