The U.S. launch of the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV will be delayed until 2015 because of a bottleneck in battery production.
Originally planned to be introduced for the U.S. market next year, the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV will be delayed by a year as the company tries to ramp up battery production. Up until this fall, Mitsubishi was only receiving 2,000 battery packs a month from Lithium Energy Japan, but in September, LEJ shifted production of its EV batteries to a separate plant in order to increase capacity for the Outlander’s plug-in hybrid battery.
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Currently, Mitsubishi is getting about 4,000 plug-in battery packs a month and hopes to increase that number to 5,000 by April 2014. The standard gasoline Outlander went on sale earlier this year in July.
So far this year, Mitsubishi has sold 8,100 units of its plug-in hybrid variant of the Outlander in Japan while 3,200 units have been sold in Europe. The gasoline Outlander on the other hand has seen 74,400 units sold worldwide.
GALLERY: 2014 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV
[Source: Automotive News]
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