While the Think City may work well for short commutes, its price is prohibitive for a two-seater — higher than the $32,000 Nissan Leaf, a fully-featured electric car with room for five.
Mitsubishi i-MiEV
After my less than satisfying experiences driving the first two small E.V.’s, I might have abandoned any notion that cities of the future would buzz with right-size cars powered by electricity.
But two events occurred after I started my experiment: the one-year anniversary of the Gulf oil spill and the return of $4 gas nationwide. In that context, the Mitsubishi arrived. My test car was labeled an i-MiEV, but a revised version will be sold as the Mitsubishi i.
In many respects, the i-MiEV offered more of the same. The interior screams “cheap.” The bubblelike design is goofy. The doors close with a meek ping. The upright seating forces tall drivers to get creative with their knees.
But the car has four doors and a legitimate back seat for two passengers. My Euro-spec test model was about a foot longer than the Think City and two feet longer than the Smart ED, and by the time the American version arrives late this year, it will have grown another 11 inches longer and 5 inches wider.
The motor of the United States version will also grow to 49 kilowatts, from 47, and the tuning will be “Americanized.” I’m hoping Mitsubishi doesn’t fix what isn’t broken.
The i-MiEV is already perfectly tuned to my tastes — quick, but not jumpy like the Think. Put your foot into the pedal and it eases forward without lurching; keep your foot moving, and around 10 m.p.h. the acceleration really picks up. The driving engagement is there, along with smooth and silent torque.
That’s in D mode. Put it in B, for braking, and the regenerative system, which turns the electric motor into a generator and puts energy back in the batteries, increases its grab, forcefully decelerating the car. The i-MiEV had the most aggressive regen of the cars.
For reference, the Nissan Leaf has an 80-kilowatt motor and the Chevrolet Volt carries a 111-kilowatt motor, but electric cars are as much about digital calibration as pure power. In my view, Mitsubishi’s engineers got the drivetrain just right, mapping the power delivery to the needs of a local commuter.
Combine that with an actual back seat, air-conditioning that worked well, an adequate stereo, heated seats and a battery pack capable of about 60 miles, and you have a nice package.
The price, while not cheap, is also closer to being realistic for a minicar. The base model starts at $28,810, including shipping, which after a $7,500 federal tax credit and a $5,000 rebate in California means a net cost of $16,310 — a reasonable value proposition.
An upgrade package includes something I consider crucial: a quick-charge port capable of taking the 16 kilowatt-hour battery pack from depletion to 90 percent charged in about 20 minutes, adding 50 miles of range in the time it takes to pick up a latte.
There’s now only one DC fast charger in Northern California, in the bedroom community of Vacaville, a little more than halfway to Sacramento from San Francisco. It had been set up last year as a Pacific Gas and Electric demo unit, but was later shut down. The utility offered to fire it up for me, so I took the 45-mile journey to check it out.
The fast charger, roughly the size of a gas pump, injected 10 kilowatt hours of electric fuel (about 40 miles worth) into the Mitsubishi in 15 minutes. Twenty of these chargers will be installed throughout the Bay Area in the next year, and more will surely follow, in addition to thousands of 240-volt chargers at homes, offices and shopping malls.
Batteries full, my trip home was free of concern about range. By the time I approached the bay, Interstate 80 had become a slow-moving parking lot of mostly solo drivers surrounded by two tons of metal. My Mitsubishi crept along at 10 m.p.h. like every other vehicle, except it was the only car not spewing emissions, not making a sound and not using a drop of gasoline. My cost per mile, about 3 cents, was a fraction of the expense for my fellow commuters (about 12 cents a mile for a gasoline car getting 30 m.p.g.).
Given their oversize price tags, the E.V.’s I evaluated — except perhaps the Mitsubishi — have little hope for market success. Their prospects were made tougher by the arrival of the Volt and Leaf, which not only offer more horsepower, passenger space and cargo capacity, but also the latest entertainment, telematics and luxury features.
Automotive history is littered with failed attempts at true innovation, products that came to market too early or too late but still signaled a direction for the evolution of the car. Decades in the future, when cities are filled with small commuter E.V.’s networked into a grid of electrified urban mobility, we may look back at the Think City, Smart ED and Mitsubishi i-MiEV as small but important steps toward shaping vehicles to truly match transportation needs. ( nytimes.com ) => Back =>
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