Benjamin Nead
Well-known member
Hi all . . .
I purposely waited to post this message until the car was actually sitting in my Tucson driveway, but the month-plus-long odyssey of finding a used i-MiEV online in Anaheim, California, and having it flat-bedded home has been completed. I spent most of yesterday driving it around town. If I actually drank Champagne it would be time to pop the cork.
I’m now the happy owners of a 2012 white ES with the optional CHAdeMO port. I’ve known for quite some time that I’ve wanted one of these cars for myself, as I had borrowed a friend’s i-MiEV for a couple of weeks, two years ago, and unexpectedly bonded with it then. Finances finally came together this fall and that conveniently coincided with a surplus of clean used examples coming off 3 year leases and filling up the dealer lots in late 2015.
There’s just under 18K miles on the odometer and the base price was just shy of $7K for this one . . . an unbelievable bargain, in my opinion. I haven’t made a point-by-point tally yet but my expenses in traveling out there for a day to give it a test drive, having it shipped home and getting it registered/insured in Arizona adds about another $1K all told.
According to the CarFax report, this car was built August 6, 2012 and was initially leased out of the Normal, Illinois, area for a couple years before being sold via auction to Anaheim Mitsubishi in April of this year. Either they or the Normal dealership put on a new set of tires and gave it a 4 corner wheel alignment. That seems to be the only real service to have been done to it. The included 120V EVSE appears to be a brand new one (in bubble wrap and without a scratch on it) and the little expensive-to-replace remote thingy is also present, apparently in functioning order.
My experience with Anaheim Mitsubishi was mostly a very positive one and the salesperson I dealt with throughout the purchasing process, in particular, a young fellow named Juan, was a pleasure to work with. He made no claims to be an EV expert, but it was obvious that he knows far more about these cars than many of the salespeople I’ve heard about who couldn’t - or wouldn’t - sell one. He correctly qualified me in our first email exchange, quick to advise me that an i-MiEV is a limited range vehicle and wondering if I didn’t already know this. After I let him know I was up to speed on that aspect and knew what electric cars were all about in general, we immediately got down to business. Perhaps because of his age and the fact that he’s already working as an auto retailer in the largest California market area, he’s aware that EVs are here to stay and something he going to sell more of as the years roll by.
Thanks to the My i-MiEV Forum, I’ve already accumulated a lot of useful information on the car and I’m sure I’ll be wanting more, possibly also contributing some to the knowledge base here myself one day as I get more hands-on experience by now finally owning one. Knowing all summer that I would have a used i-MiEV by the end of the calendar year, I purchased the official shop manual on CD-ROM a few months back, as well as a Nexus 7 Android tablet loaded with the caniOn app and an OBDLink LX CANbus reader.
Since the nearest Mitsubishi dealership is about 100 miles away in the Phoenix area, i-MiEVs are a rare sight down here in Tucson. The rough estimate I come up with is that mine makes about 6 in the entire metro area all told. I know I’m on the airbag recall list and a service visit to Mark Mitsubishi in Scottsdale is imminent . . . and, yes, I’m going to make the drive up there on my own when that day comes (ie: not flat-bedded,) as both L-2 and L-3 infrastructure is in place along the Tucson/Phoenix I-10 corridor.
More soon . . .
I purposely waited to post this message until the car was actually sitting in my Tucson driveway, but the month-plus-long odyssey of finding a used i-MiEV online in Anaheim, California, and having it flat-bedded home has been completed. I spent most of yesterday driving it around town. If I actually drank Champagne it would be time to pop the cork.
I’m now the happy owners of a 2012 white ES with the optional CHAdeMO port. I’ve known for quite some time that I’ve wanted one of these cars for myself, as I had borrowed a friend’s i-MiEV for a couple of weeks, two years ago, and unexpectedly bonded with it then. Finances finally came together this fall and that conveniently coincided with a surplus of clean used examples coming off 3 year leases and filling up the dealer lots in late 2015.
There’s just under 18K miles on the odometer and the base price was just shy of $7K for this one . . . an unbelievable bargain, in my opinion. I haven’t made a point-by-point tally yet but my expenses in traveling out there for a day to give it a test drive, having it shipped home and getting it registered/insured in Arizona adds about another $1K all told.
According to the CarFax report, this car was built August 6, 2012 and was initially leased out of the Normal, Illinois, area for a couple years before being sold via auction to Anaheim Mitsubishi in April of this year. Either they or the Normal dealership put on a new set of tires and gave it a 4 corner wheel alignment. That seems to be the only real service to have been done to it. The included 120V EVSE appears to be a brand new one (in bubble wrap and without a scratch on it) and the little expensive-to-replace remote thingy is also present, apparently in functioning order.
My experience with Anaheim Mitsubishi was mostly a very positive one and the salesperson I dealt with throughout the purchasing process, in particular, a young fellow named Juan, was a pleasure to work with. He made no claims to be an EV expert, but it was obvious that he knows far more about these cars than many of the salespeople I’ve heard about who couldn’t - or wouldn’t - sell one. He correctly qualified me in our first email exchange, quick to advise me that an i-MiEV is a limited range vehicle and wondering if I didn’t already know this. After I let him know I was up to speed on that aspect and knew what electric cars were all about in general, we immediately got down to business. Perhaps because of his age and the fact that he’s already working as an auto retailer in the largest California market area, he’s aware that EVs are here to stay and something he going to sell more of as the years roll by.
Thanks to the My i-MiEV Forum, I’ve already accumulated a lot of useful information on the car and I’m sure I’ll be wanting more, possibly also contributing some to the knowledge base here myself one day as I get more hands-on experience by now finally owning one. Knowing all summer that I would have a used i-MiEV by the end of the calendar year, I purchased the official shop manual on CD-ROM a few months back, as well as a Nexus 7 Android tablet loaded with the caniOn app and an OBDLink LX CANbus reader.
Since the nearest Mitsubishi dealership is about 100 miles away in the Phoenix area, i-MiEVs are a rare sight down here in Tucson. The rough estimate I come up with is that mine makes about 6 in the entire metro area all told. I know I’m on the airbag recall list and a service visit to Mark Mitsubishi in Scottsdale is imminent . . . and, yes, I’m going to make the drive up there on my own when that day comes (ie: not flat-bedded,) as both L-2 and L-3 infrastructure is in place along the Tucson/Phoenix I-10 corridor.
More soon . . .
