First 6 months of Mitsubishi electric car
12th June 2010 - We have now completed first 6 months of Mitsubishi Electric trial, but are we still happy with it?
We took delivery of our i MiEV on a UK trial, 12th December 2009 at a hand over event in Birmingham. Since then we have completed 4000 miles, which is an average of 22 miles per day. This means that over the period of a year we would estimate a total of 8000 miles.
Our petrol car has completed nearly 2000 miles during this period, which includes 1500 miles of either long distance driving or towing the caravan for holidays. The only other times we use our petrol MG is if we both need to use a car.
The car has completed all sorts of trips from short journeys to the local shop to round trips of 100 miles with charging at our destination. The main journeys we complete are the school run, days out, shopping and some commuting. Where ever we go we get asked questions about the car, we have even taken people for a short demonstration drive. The main questions we get asked are about range, speed and where we can charge.
Mitsubishi i MiEV at the Birmingham launch
on the CABLED project
We have had a few problems, but nothing that has caused us any major problems. In the early days we had a few charging issues, we would plug the car in, but it would not charge up. We were supplied with a new cable and this seems to have cured the problem. We also had a brake down with a failure on a 12volt auxiliary battery, this proved interesting as it meant we could not move the car.
The range of the car is now very good. When we first got the car we estimated that in the cold conditions we could only achieve a maximum of 40 miles, this has now doubled to around 80 miles with careful driving and the right temperature conditions.
The overall performance of the Mitsubishi is very good. Acceleration is fast from a standstill and also good at faster speeds. It grips the road very well even in ice and snow conditions. The ride is fairly hard, but you do not get the normal vibrations from a petrol or diesel
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The 2011 Electric Car Guide
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