2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV: Shrek Has Good News
July 09, 2012
I finally found the time needed to try our 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV on my long commute. Time is the operative word here because the Mitsu will need much more than a 12-hour overnight charge to replenish its battery on the 120V shore power I have at home. Mitsubishi says it takes a full 22 hours to refill an empty i MiEV battery at that voltage, in fact.
But I did arrive home to some good news: I only used about 2/3rds of the battery in getting here despite a couple of short sides trips that upped my trip distance to 57.8 miles. At this point it may take "only" 15 hours to refill the thing.
In pure range terms, the DTE meter (Distance to Empty) claims I can travel a further 26 miles if I continue at the less than torrid traffic-dampened freeway pace that brought me here. Add this figure to the trip meter and you get a theoretical ultimate range of 83.8 miles on a day that featured 45-50 mph freeway speeds and zero use of air conditioning.
I fully expect that number to shrink with clear traffic (and the A/C on, as it will be later this week.)
The MiEV acquitted itself well today -- much better than I expected -- but I still think it's not ideally suited to someone that lives 45 miles from work, as I do. It can't make the 90-mile round trip on a single charge, and at this early stage of EV infrastructure development I think that EV wannabees need to assume that one charge per day -- at home, overnight on 240V -- is all they'll have to work with.
Dan Edmunds, Director of Vehicle Testing @ 1,375 miles
