Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV an ideal inner city electric car
Friday, August 27th, 2010
Just had my first spin of a Mitsubishi i-MiEV today and quite enjoyed it. I’ve driven the plug-in Prius (retrofitted by Hymotion), the Tesla Roadster and a ways back a $1-million fuel cell Ford Focus, and have to say that being a person who lives in a big city and lives in a two-car household, the i-MiEV so far is the best fit for me. It helps that I’ll soon be able to ditch my kids’ car seats. The car has a 100 km to 120 km range, depending on how many passengers you have and how much you use radio/aircon/heating. I now work from home and maybe twice a week do the 15 to 20 minute drive downtown. With my lifestyle, and keeping in mind this is a second car, a single weekend charge-up of the i-MiEV would cover my entire week most times. I’d love to test drive the car for a month in the dead of winter to get a real feel for it.
The car goes on sale in Canada in the fall of 2011. The price will range from $30,000 to $40,000, and that’s relying only on the standard 120-volt charger. The upper range is too expensive for me, considering what the Nissan Leaf is likely to cost, but if Mitsubishi can come in with a pre-incentive cost of $30,000, and if I could get a $5,000 subsidy from the government, then at $25,000 it looks more doable. Will be interesting to see if Mitsubishi can match the GM and Nissan 10-year warranties, and offer good lease terms. Currently, as somebody who will be in the market for an electric car in 2012, it’s a competition between the i-MiEV and the Leaf.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
