Britain’s Autocar magazine says Mitsubishi may use the "Concept PX-MiEV" 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.
Car & Driver says the PX is good for 117 mpg.
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 the current Evo.
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.
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