Buying a Used i-MiEV

I'm a signature away from purchasing a used 2012 i-MiEV, 600 miles, $11,108.50 shipped to my front door. I went and shopped a new one but without the knowledge necessary to make an informed purchased (ie the $7500 federal credit, $2500 Illinois credit) I decided used was the way to go. I after having driven a 2014 ES with a few bells and whistles, I settled on a 2012 SE Premium with Nav, backup camera, key-less entry, audio controls, heated front seats, 15" alloys, fog lights and CHAMEDO L3 charge port and one of my favorite color, white.

Used has its risk but considering the warranty is transferable and intact, I didn't have much to worry about. I do believe I'll be fine but just as a safe measure will be taking the car to a Mitsubishi dealership for a full inspection (including the battery pack).

Before wanting an i-MiEV, I was set on a 2015 Mirage ES 5 SMT for its low cost, low operating cost, 10yr/100k warranty, and overall package (2000lbs, 5 door hatchback, 3 cylinder 1.2L, low coefficient of drag, excellent financing options). Realizing my commute to work is online 10 miles each way, and my other local errands do not exceed 10 additional miles, the i-MiEV's 62 EPA mile range is more than enough to get around in a low operating cost EV.

I would work on the price on that 2012. You can get a new 2014 ES for 16K new not including federal and state incentives. I had a dealer down to 8K for a 2012 ES (6k miles) but am going with new for $8,500 after my federal credit.

MatimalND said:

I would work on the price on that 2012. You can get a new 2014 ES for 16K new not including federal and state incentives. I had a dealer down to 8K for a 2012 ES (6k miles) but am going with new for $8,500 after my federal credit.

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Wait, Where?
I have seen it down to $18k but not $16k . Curious minds want to know

(edit because I obviously like the ! button and not the 1 button :lol: )

MatimalND said:

I would work on the price on that 2012. You can get a new 2014 ES for 16K new not including federal and state incentives. I had a dealer down to 8K for a 2012 ES (6k miles) but am going with new for $8,500 after my federal credit.

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The Illinois alternative fuels rebate (the state will mail me a rebate check, it has nothing to do with taxes) for electric cars program is currently suspended. Also, with the Federal tax credit, I may not even have sufficient tax liability to make use of the full $7500 credit (do I get a check in the mail from the IRS or uncle Sam or is this simply to reduce the amount of tax I may owe if any?).

For these two obvious reasons I am "forced" to buy used. I tried to get them to go lower but the dealer would not budge. My credit just took a blow from all these hard inquiries so its either buy now or wait another year.

"reduce the amount of tax I may owe if any" this for your taxes.

Maybe a Lease would be better. The Lease company takes the Fed Credit and that gets passed to you in the form of cheaper payments.

But I too would work on a smaller amount on the Used, since a new can be had for $10,500 on just the fed credit.

From everything I've gather the $7500 isn't refunded to you as a check or rebate (please correct me if you have first hand experience with this). Its not like the fed will cut me a $7500 check I can use to pay off a brand new i-MiEV, at least that's how I've come to the conclusion. Even the salesmen at Mitsubishi cannot seem to understand or explain how you get an $18,000 car "down to $10,500."

Who here has actually bought a brand new EV and claimed the $7500 credit? What happened? Because from what I do understand it is a credit used towards repaying or reducing TAXES OWED and if I owe ZERO taxes I get zero credits, pretty much useless and the car remains a "$18,000 car". I am a little confused and hence why I'd much rather go used as its almost a guarantee a new car will be more expensive than a used one. I don't understand how you guys are getting at "might as well buy new for less than $10,000 bla bla bla..."

I'm sorry if I repeated myself, I will stop now.

The credit only applies to new cars (never been titled). A used car means no credit. Credit based on amount of taxes owed. My 2012 tax return showed a tax liability on Line 44 of tax return 1040 of $7,384. When credit applied, my tax liability reduced to zero and no extra ($116) in refund.

BillThompsonMIEV said:

The credit only applies to new cars (never been titled). A used car means no credit. Credit based on amount of taxes owed. My 2012 tax return showed a tax liability on Line 44 of tax return 1040 of $7,384. When credit applied, my tax liability reduced to zero and no extra ($116) in refund.

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Bill,

I filed a 2014 1040a, where would I find my tax liability?

Thank you sir

Line 28.

davidricardo86 said:

Who here has actually bought a brand new EV and claimed the $7500 credit? What happened? Because from what I do understand it is a credit used towards repaying or reducing TAXES OWED and if I owe ZERO taxes I get zero credits, pretty much useless and the car remains a "$18,000 car". I am a little confused and hence why I'd much rather go used as its almost a guarantee a new car will be more expensive than a used one.

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You have it *exactly* correct - Unless you actually pay $7500 to the fed in taxes, you're not going to get $7500 off the price of your new car. If line 28 on your tax form is zero, you're not going to get a dime. It is a tax credit (a reduction of taxes you owe) and not a rebate of any kind - People who don't pay much in taxes won't get much off the car, so for them, a used one for $10K or so would be a much better deal than buying a new one and getting no (or very little) federal tax credit

Don

David, I sent you a long pm about all of that. Did you get it ?

I think I may have to have the Blue 2014 i from Illinois shipped to me. As the guy in my state is not going to lower his price.
Will let you know what shipping is from Ill to Boston

tigger19687 said:

David, I sent you a long pm about all of that. Did you get it ?

I think I may have to have the Blue 2014 i from Illinois shipped to me. As the guy in my state is not going to lower his price.
Will let you know what shipping is from Ill to Boston

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Yes I received it but I was a bit confused and had to do some research for the past few days. The blue ones are not as common as the white, silver or black ones! I've seen some other light blue (not Aqua Marine Blue color) but it could've been the silver one under some odd lighting if I'm not mistaken. I say if you like it, can afford it and is less to you than used, get it before someone else does! :mrgreen:

Don concisely and clearly confirmed my findings. Thank you to Don as that reinforces my choice of going used, versus new.

Inasmuch as I started this thread s.t. hopefully it would become a resource for newcomers seeking advice in purchasing a used i-MiEV, I thought I'd add the recent lessons-learned regarding battery health, some of it extracted from other posts so sorry if it's repetitive.

As some of us have discovered, an outright failure of a cell within the battery pack will manifest itself as the inability to fully charge, with a commensurately-low Range Remaining display. The symptom is that the car stops charging before the 'fuel' gauge fills up all sixteen bars; however, do not confuse this with a 'timeout' whereby the car stops charging for 6-20 minutes before resuming charging again - this is normal and part of its self-test routine.

Unless it's a really high-mileage car, I would not expect any significant battery degradation. Unlike a Nissan Leaf where there is an actual display which shows the degraded battery capacity, Mitsubishi's approach appears to be to decrease the amount of the invisible 'reserve' capacity at the bottom end - all this does is reduce how far the vehicle can go in 'Turtle' mode. It's also been noted that the battery capacity gets recalibrated resulting in the fuel gauge still reflecting the State of Charge of the battery pack but, with a degraded-capacity battery, this means fewer miles can be driven and thus shown on the RR display.

Current indications are that battery life is shortened by prolonged exposure to really serious temperature extremes. The car's Battery Management System keeps us from doing dumb things to the car, although it cannot control the way we charge the car: fully charging the battery and then leaving the car fully charged in a high-temperature environment is definitely unhealthy for the battery.

In the USA the battery is covered by an extended warranty ( 8years?) and an outright failure of a single cell within the 88-cell battery pack so far has resulted in Mitsubishi replacing the entire pack under warranty.

If I were to go for a test drive, I would contact the owner beforehand and make an appointment and ask the owner to be sure to plug the car in so it is fully charged by the time you get there. If the fuel gauge goes all the way to the top, that's a good indicator that the pack does not have a faulty cell within it. At that point the Range Remaining display (based on how the car was driven the preceding 15 miles) will give you an inkling as to its potential range. The Range Remaining (RR) number is one of the screens on the right-side gauge - the pushbutton toggles through a whole bunch of different displays and RR one is the one with the left-arrow underneath the number; however, I wouldn't put too much stock into this as during 'demonstrations' people tend to be leadfooted and the RR number could easily be artificially low.

If you get to the car and it isn't fully charged, be sure to note the Range Remaining number as well as the number of bars on the fuel gauge (there are 16 bars maximum) as that is also a rough indicator of capacity. For example, I would normally expect to see a RR=32 miles for a fuel-gauge display of half-charge (eight bars). One other associated item - you might check the tires and tire pressures, as the RR is also affected if the OEM Dunlop Enasave tires are not used.

JoeS,

As you know I recently purchased a second i-Miev for my daughter. I bought it sight unseen, over the phone, from a dealer that was 800 miles from me. I read the carfax reports on the car, and checked the VIN with Mitsubishi's website to see what service had been performed. I was not concerned with battery health, because of what you just said in your post, which is basically that any significant battery issues will be taken care of by full-pack replacement under warranty from Mitsubishi.

I got a fantastic price of $6432 on a loaded 2012 SE premium on a car with a little over 7500 miles

Following recommendations from this forum I asked the salesman to charge it to only halfway in preparation for shipment. As it turns out when it arrived, it has performed flawlessly and my daughter loves it! (A lot more than I think she thought was possible!) It's battery range and performance has been almost identical to our other 2012 ES.

iwatson said:

Following recommendations from this forum I asked the salesman to charge it to only halfway in preparation for shipment. As it turns out when it arrived, it has performed flawlessly and my daughter loves it! (A lot more than I think she thought was possible!) It's battery range and performance has been almost identical to our other 2012 ES.

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I'm delighted (and not too surprised) that your second i-MiEV is working out so well for your daughter. I suspect she'll now be looking askance at ICE vehicles. Having the car at half-charge for shipment was spot on!

In my own situation, I can't tell the difference in range amongst my three i-MiEVs: Mitsi with 40K miles on original pack (carefully nurtured), Mitti with 5K miles on the new pack, and Moto with 18K miles on original pack. I didn't even bother checking the pack with CaniOn when I bought the recent Moto, for just the reason you described.

I wrote the piece about battery assessment because I am invariably asked that question by people interested in buying a used i-MiEV. Although in the US it is still a non-issue as the cars are too new, elsewhere, as we've seen, those questions do come up also.