The all-electric car—is Mitsubishi’s “green” city car worth the cash?

Since the 1880s, the automobile and the internal combustion engine have shared a linked fate. The very earliest horseless carriages relied on other methods (obviously) for generating power, but once Karl Benz put a four stroke gasoline engine into a four wheel chassis, the template for the next 130+ years was set.

Henry Ford put his Model T into mass production in 1908 and suddenly the automobile was no longer the preserve of the Edwardian one percent. The adoption of the car by all sectors of society, first in the US and then across the world, has had a profound impact on our way of life. Much of it is overwhelmingly positive, but it hasn’t all been good. Our dependence on hydrocarbon fuels in particular may well be our undoing, as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are skyrocketing, profoundly altering our climate.

As a result, car manufacturers have been looking at alternatives to the traditional way of doing things. We’ve seen various alternatives appear on the roads in recent years—most commonly hybrid powertrains that couple internal combustion engines with electric motors. But hybrids still emit carbon dioxide from their exhausts, so some argue that purely electric cars are the truly responsible route to 21st century motoring.

Examples of this breed are becoming slightly more common on the road. After General Motors’ misstep with the EV-1, Tesla came along and made electric cars sexy with its Lotus-based Roadster. Now companies like Mitsubishi and Nissan offer electric cars for the rest of us.

Mitsubishi’s contender is the i-MiEV, an electric car based on the Mitsubishi i (which is a “kei car” sold in the UK, Asia, and other right-hand drive markets that buy Japanese sub-subcompacts). Being nice people, the Mitsubishi folks kindly lent me one for a few days. So what’s it like? And could it replace your current commute vehicle?

The aesthetics

The i-MiEV looks unlike almost anything else on the roads. A distinctive “one-box” shape with a wheel at each corner, it’s like a mini people carrier. The i-MiEV is a little longer and little wider than the i sold abroad—perhaps to better suit a nation with a bit of a weight problem.

Inside, you sit quite high up, with the car’s batteries below the floor. This provides a couple of advantages: the car has a very low center of gravity (CoG) and a it boasts a commanding SUV-like view out over traffic. A particularly nice touch is the window underneath the A pillar, which comes in very handy when parking.

It’s not all gravy on the inside, though. The i-MiEV’s roots are a cheap and cheerful city car. If it came with a three cylinder petrol engine, you wouldn’t expect to pay more than $10,000 for it. Consequently, the fit and fittings really are quite basic. The model we tested was the SE spec, so it came with a hard drive-based navigation system, reversing camera, USB port, and Bluetooth, as well as a leather steering wheel and shift lever. Otherwise the cabin is rather spartan, the plastics are hard and shiny, and the seats are rather basic. You might be paying most of the sticker price for the electric motor and batteries under the floor, but you can buy a Chevy Volt for not much more. (Having spent some time in both, I know where I’d rather idle away my commute.) The cargo space in the rear isn’t vast either—slightly more than a Miata, a bit less than Volt.

Still, your hands will spend most of their time with the leather wheel, and that feels good at hand. It has nicely placed controls for the hi-fi and phone, and generally good ergonomics. The dash is centered around a large dial, above and to the left is the battery gauge and transmission display, with the mileage to the right.

In a conventional car, you’d expect the dial to be the rev counter or speedometer. Here, it’s separated into three segments: charge, eco, and power. When the needle is in “charge,” the i-MiEV is recovering energy through the motor, either because you’re braking or coasting (remember, an electric motor in reverse is a generator). When “eco” is showing, you’re being most sympathetic to your battery and maximizing range. “Power” should be fairly obvious.

About that powertrain: the i-MiEV has a 66 bhp motor driving the rear wheels. It doesn’t sound high—especially considering that it weighs around 3,300 lbs in SE trim—but, like a diesel, the more important figure is the torque output. Torque is pretty good at 145 lb-ft, and almost all of that is available straight away. Electric motors, unlike internal combustion engines, make almost all of their torque even at very low revs.

The shifter has the look of a conventional automatic but, this being an electric car, there’s no need for gears as such. Instead, there are three different modes of forward propulsion. Drive is the most straightforward and delivers the most power. Eco softens throttle response and increases energy regeneration, and Braking maximizes energy recovery. As such, D is for going up hills, merging onto freeways, and general hooning. Eco is for everyday driving; B is best left for going downhill.

The driving experience

Turn the key and the dash lights up, coupled with an audio chime; you’re ready to go. It’s a little disconcerting not to hear any sort of noise from an engine, something that the occasional surprised pedestrian would probably agree with.

Even in Eco, the i-MiEV is relatively peppy off the line, with good traction from the rear wheels. Handling isn’t bad, courtesy of that low CoG, but the special low rolling resistance tires don’t have a huge amount of grip. You’ll want to take those sweeping on-ramps with a degree of respect for them, rather than flat out.

Then again, driving the i-MiEV flat out sort of defeats the point. It’s based on a city car, and it’s at home driving around town, not carving canyons or clipping cones at an autocross. And of course, the harder you drive, the shorter your range.

No, with the i-MiEV it makes more sense to leave it in Eco and to drive around sedately, keeping the needle pegged in the Eco zone. In this regard it’s quite similar to the Volt, which also encourages the driver to put economy ahead of speed by gamifying the driving experience. Despite being a bit of a speed demon normally, I found myself feeling quite guilty when the needle edged into the “power” band. The driving position was a bit of a hindrance in this regard, as I found it hard to keep an eye on the road and see the dial in my peripherals at the same time. Taller drivers probably wouldn’t have that issue, though.

Recharging

The i-MiEV draws power from an 88 cell, 330V, 16 kWh Li-ion battery. Mitsubishi says it should have a range of 70+ miles, but this cuts almost in half if you run the air conditioning (and in July in Washington, DC, you most certainly have to do that) or the heater. Driving at night with both AC and headlights seemed to deplete the battery even faster, but in two days and 30-odd miles I still only used two-thirds of a charge. Recharging can take as long as 22 hours with a standard 120V outlet, or as short as an hour with one of the public fast charging DC (current, not location) stations starting to pop up. I’ll have to take Mitsubishi’s word on that; in the brief time I had with the i-MiEV, I neither needed, nor had a chance, to try it out.

That also meant I didn’t get a chance to check out the innovative remote control key fob, either. When the car is plugged in, you can use the remote control to check how charged the battery is and even start the AC to pre-cool the car for your arrival. Obviously, you can’t do that if the car isn’t drawing external power, which is for the best if you plan on being able to drive it anywhere!

Living in the city with only street parking, recharging overnight with standard power wasn’t going to be an option anyway. This highlights one of the problems I have with EVs, and even with plug-in hybrids; the drivers who would probably benefit most from such vehicles (those with short commutes or journeys) are least likely to be able to charge them up when needed. That’s a shame. As I found, the i-MiEV is perfectly suited for short trips and errands. It would probably also handle my 10-minute commute. But since it can’t make traffic disappear, I’m not sure it would succeed in luring me away from the metro.

The relevant numbers

Trying to get a miles-per-gallon figure for a pure EV is a bit torturous, but the EPA has something called MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent). The figure is based on a gallon of gasoline equaling 115k BTUs, which also equals 33.7 kWh. A little bit of arithmetic later, the number you should care about is 112 MPGe, which would cost $360 over 10,000 miles. Mitsubishi is clearly proud of this figure, as it beats every other vehicle currently on sale in the US. That’s less than half as much as you’d shell out over an equivalent distance with something small and frugal that made 40 miles per gallon (assuming current gas prices). Whether or not that translates to significantly reduced carbon emissions probably depends on where you live. Sadly, so much of the country’s energy comes from coal that even driving an i-MiEV means you’re still part of the problem. Ugh.

Let’s talk cash. The base ES spec i-MiEV has an MSRP of $29,125. It’s a lot for this car, even with the amount you’d save each year on gas. The SE we drove has an MSRP of $31,125. Both are subject to a federal tax credit of $7500 (as are other EVs and plug-in hybrids, but not Prius-type hybrids), which brings the price down to a much more sane $21,625 for the ES and $23,625 for the SE. It should be noted that you might not be able to count on Congress maintaining that tax credit indefinitely, but the earliest it would probably disappear is sometime in 2013.

The option list for both is pretty short. The SE comes with the fast-charging DC port, but on the ES it’s an extra $770. The navigation/music server/hi-fi is an eye-watering $2790. I’m not really a huge fan of integrated navigation on cars other than Audi’s Google Maps based system. The i-MiEV’s was confusing to use and a $200 Garmin works far better in my opinion.

The USB port was able to connect to my iPhone quite easily, although it took a very long time to load my music library (on one occasion I got bored of waiting after 20 minutes). In contrast, it was unable to load any music off my wife’s Galaxy Nexus. On the other hand, she was able to easily connect her phone via Bluetooth, something I was never able to do with my iPhone. Swings and roundabouts.

The verdict

One thing that surprised me was the reaction the i-MiEV got from other people. Bystanders would point and stare, drivers rolled down their windows at stop lights to ask questions. I even spent a few minutes talking about the car after parking at the grocery store, something that’s never happened in any other car I’ve driven.