The last weekend I was entirely propelled by electricity.
No I have not taken drugs and I'm not into electric bicycles, this weekend I had a chance to test a brand new Mitsubishi i-Miev, one of few all electric cars.
Having read a lot about these cars, and seeing Top Gear (the Peugeot Ion is the same car as the Mitsu, just rebadged)has made me skeptical. Just 100 kms range, and you have to wait forever to charge it, and even then the car wasn't all that good. For the purpose of this test I decided to see for myself if it was all that bad.
I did a "real world" test for me, involving a 30 km commute, a couple of trips to the shops, a visit of a relative and a sunday afternoon drive with my son. All in all around 120 kms (including overnight charging at home, obviously), giving me plenty of time to test various things out.
There were 2 things I wanted to really test :
1) are electric cars a viable alternative for me, where I live, doing the kind of things I do...If you regularly take 50 km trips or longer or don't know in advance how long you'll have to drive, look elsewhere.
2) can I really live with a smaller car for my day to day needs. The i-Miev is deceptively tiny, despite its weird shape it only takes up half my garage. since the next car I'll buy will almost surely be roughly the same size, it'd be a good test.
Having already driven a hybrid, I was used to the utter utter silence, but was amazed that even when flooring it, there was no engine rumble. Weird, but fun. Acceleration was good all round, Top Gear say 0-60 in around 16 seconds but mine was much quicker, I counted 12 seconds, which is plenty quick.
Having all the torque available from 1 rpm until forever was fun too.
Topspeed was around 135 kph, just about enough for overtaking on the highway, but it's not a place where this car sits happy, due to its narrow tyres and high roofline it's too sensitive to wind. But that's just the design of the car, nothing to do with the electric motor.
First the interior. It has a weird sort of dial that all these cars have, extreme left is when you're charging using the regenerative brakes, the middle ("eco") is where you'll spend most of the time and to the far right it only goes when you're flooring it.
It does feel a bit flimsy and is filled with nasty hard plastics, but hey, this is a small car, and such things keep cost and more importantly weight down. I was a bit disappointed at how spartan it was, no radio (well an afermarket one that costs extra), no cruise control, no electric seats, no bluetooth, no satnav....felt a lot like the bog standard Citroen C1 I tested a few months ago, with the exception that this car was 6 times (!!!) the price (36k? vs 6k?)
The seats themselves were pretty good and all the plastics you use (buttons, steering wheel, gearknob) were quite good.
The gears themselves required me to read the manual to use correctly. I know what P, R, N and D are for, but what the crap is B or C?
After some reading I learned that B stood for brake, and C for comfort. Not to be confused with expensive fast cars that have adaptive suspension, this just sets the strenght of the regen braking. In D it was just noticable, in B it was a bit firmer like when you're going downhill and want use it for enginebraking. Technically there is no engine, but you know what I mean. C is the setting for when you're in the city, it uses less regen braking, making the whole ride less jerky.
To be fair, the difference between C, D and B was so little that I had it in B most of the time. You just coast a bit longer instead of braking, since it charges the battery. Pretty pointless to have the other two.
It has quite good cubbyholes and what I think is a cupholder. It is to the far left, but since the car is so narrow, you can reach it from the driver seat.
It is a genuine 4 seater, and it has a boot of sorts, but nothing to write home about. I must mention that both rear passengers have to be children, or people with no legs. But hey, they do fit.
They were even relaxed enough by the silence of it all that they both went to sleep quite easily. Another plus. Bonus points for my oldest one (on the left) for naming the i-Miev the "funny car" and thereby giving it its true name.
Exterior I thought looked pretty cool. It looks very futuristic and people turned their heads as it went by.
Thankfully though it did not have any "look at me I'm electric" stickers.
Tiny wheels and tyres mean low energy consumption, but still give a good ride
Driving it was fine really, it's just like a car, but near silent. Ride was good, unless you're slamming across big bumps at speed. Contrary to what you may think this is not a car that wants you to go all eco all the time, for my purposes, the range was adequate, and I was never in doubt of not making it home. With 13 virtual kms to go, I chickened out and went home, charged the car up and went to bed. Cheapest "tank of petrol" I've ever bought at just 3? for 100 kms.
The car comes with a powercord, and these lights, just like any battery charger, if the lights go out the car is full. For some reason it only took 5,5 hrs as opposed to the 8 the manual told me, and my range according to the computer was 88 kms, not 100.
And now we come to my real gripe with this car : the "range left" meter is just too inaccurate. Turning on the aircon loses you 10 kms, turning it off gains them back. Driving home from work (30 km trip, starting with 100 to go so I should have 70 left) gave me 91 to go.
A quick trip to the shops which was only 10 kms cost me 25 "virtual" kms... make up your mind dammit!
It also has the same thing many cellphone batteries have, it takes ages for them to lose the forst 50%, but the last half goes instantly. This means it overestimates its range when full, and underestimates it when almost empty. Not a huge problem, but since this is all you have (aside from a battery meter which just tells you how many bars you have), it's all you got to figure out how long you can go.
Aside from this the only real problem for me is the price. We don't get any nice government incentives (only companies do, in the for of a massive tax deductability of 120%), and are stuck with the 36k pricetag. That is just way too much for a small car, especially since it isn't at all equipped and drives like any other car (aside from the batteries of course)
To answer my own questions :
1) yes, this is a really viable alternative. I'd prefer this to a hybrid, it's not a half assed solution either.
You just need to live in the right area and have the right kind of driver profile. I was quite surprised at this
2) yes again, I can live with such a small car. There was never a time when I didn't have enough space to put stuff, and since I'm alone most of the time anyway, there's always space to spare. Nonetheless, even with wife + 2 kids + shopping the car was never loaded to the roofline with stuff.
In conclusion, if you live in a densely populated area where you don't have to do big trips, this is a real alternative. Since this is one of the very first all electric cars there are of course some problems (range is a bit short, computer predicted range is inaccurate, price is astronomical), but as these cars get more popular, the prices will drop and the faults will go away. I was really looking to destroy this car, saying it was super impractical, too small and too much of a comprimise, but it isn't. If you can spend the money and don't need the range, I'd say go for it.