Mitsubishi i MiEV Car Review

Facts At A Glance
Car: Mitsubishi I MiEV
Prices: £28,990 inc VAT (£23,990 inc £5,000 government grant)
Insurance Group: 2 [est]
Emissions: Zero
Performance: 0-60mph 13s / Max Speed 87mph
Fuel Consumption: 80-100m range from a six-hour charge.
Safety: twin airbags, ABS with EBD, ISOFIX child seat mountings
Dimensions: length/width/heightmm 3475/1475/1610

BATTERIES ARE INCLUDED

Our Rating: 7.3 / 10

Mitsubishi is convinced the electric car has a big future. Steve Walker checks out the i MiEV.

Electric cars are no longer the futuristic pipe dreams they were just a few years ago. Today, if the fancy takes us, we can stride down to a showroom and put down a deposit on a viable vehicle that lacks an internal combustion engine. There might be a bit of a waiting list but before long, we’d be sampling a motoring experience once alien to anyone outside the milk delivery and golfing communities. Mitsubishi has set itself up as one of the pioneers in the electric car field and it’s i MiEV city car is one of the few electric vehicles that sensible people might want to own.

Mitsubishi caused quite a stir when it launched its i car. Many thought there’d been a mix-up and the Japanese marque had pulled the covers from some flight of fancy concept car rather than its new urban runabout. With its front wheels ahead of its headlights and looking narrow enough to park inside your front door, the i is unconventional in the extreme but it also contains some very clever design. In i MiEV form, it’s cleverer still because the 660cc petrol engine has been replaced by an electric motor and where the fuel tank was is a very big battery pack.

The performance figures for the i MiEV wouldn’t be unusual if they applied to a rather sluggish supermini but that serves as a ringing endorsement of the car’s groundbreaking powertrain. The electric motor produces 63bhp and that can get the car from naught to 60mph in 13 seconds before eventually reaching a motorway-friendly 87mph top speed. Less orthodox is the torque of 182Nm which is readily available thanks to the electric motor’s on/off operation. That’s about what you might expect from a 1.6-litre petrol engine and it means that the i MiEV should be more than capable tackling steep inclines and travelling fully loaded.

The gear lever allows the iMiEV to be slotted into Drive or ECO modes. The former gives access to all of the performance on offer and the latter is set-up for economical city driving. It reduces the available power and activates a battery recharging function that replenishes power reserves every time your foot is taken off the accelerator. Get over these little idiosyncrasies and the i will feel much like a conventional car.

The i car makes great use of the available space but there isn’t very much of that within the confines of this diminutive vehicle. Four adults can fit in for typical city journeys and there’s even a usable boot, although the i isn’t really cut out as a family car. The rear seat back splits to allow larger objects to be carried. With the battery occupying the fuel tank’s under floor position and the electric motor taking the place of the engine under the back seats, there are no interior space differences between the conventional i car and the electric i MiEV model.

The egg-shaped profile and wheel-at-each-corner stance of the i MiEV makes it stand out on the road. That’s likely to suit buyers who want to drive an environmentally-friendly vehicle and would also like everyone else to know that they’re driving one. General build quality is reasonably tough but the plastics don’t feel very expensive and the interior is less attractive in its design and the outside.

Initially, the i MiEV will be available to lease from Mitsubishi dealers and the manufacturer expects that most of the 200-strong allocation will be taken up by businesses and public sector organisations. The cost is rather expensive at around £28,000 including the government grant (which could get you quite a lot of Audi A4 or Mercedes C-Class) but the appeal of the i MiEV will come from its green credentials. Companies wanting to project the right image might see running a fleet of these as a useful promotional tool.

So we come to the nuts and bolts of whether the i MiEV is a viable