Owners more then 100 miles from there dealer

I just wanted to get a feel of how many owners out there that don't have dealer close to maintain there vehicle. Also do you plan on maintaining it yourself or flatbed your car to the dealer.

MatimaND, your post prompted me to pull out the owner's manual and try to find what exactly the required maintenance schedule for the iMiEV is… after all, I have almost 14,000miles on mine and maybe there's something I should have been doing?

Funny, I couldn't find anything … maybe someone can point me to the schedule itself as Chapter 7 merely discusses the various fluids needing to be checked (coolant, window washer, brake) and tire pressure, which we all do routinely anyway (don't we?), and also tells us where the fuses are located and how to replace a lightbulb. Hmm, maybe I should examine those windshield wiper blades with a magnifying glass, and I really should clean/replace that cabin air filter one of these days…

MatimaND, perhaps this is one of the reasons dealerships are not too keen on selling electric vehicles: there's no post-sale money in it for them. Maybe if there are enough recall notices then you might need to combine them for a trip to the dealer - but in that case you might give yourself some time and make the trip to the dealer a mini-adventure: get some appropriate adapters and a transportable L2 EVSE and plan on stopping at a campground along the way (they have 240v) to recharge (if there are no public EVSEs along the way).

If you do the math you'll find that 200 miles/day is easily achievable with opportunity charging, but that's another thread...

I wouldn't have purchased the Miev if it was out of range of a dealer. Luckily, we have at least three dealers within range in San Diego.

My criteria for buying a car includes easy access to service....

It may not matter when it is new, but it will inevitably will - tires, brakes, and an incomprehensible electric system.

Since I always drive my car in "B" mode, I have little doubt the brakes will last the life of the car. Tires? Yes, they'll have to be replaced eventually, but Discount Tire, not the Mitsubishi dealership, is where I will go.

I think after 20'000 km (~14000 mile) we need to have the batteries checked. But I read somewhere on the forum that after a recent software update there is no more need for that battery checkup either.

Probably software updates are the most important reasons for going to the dealer than actual mechanical maintenance work.

Wonder if one day, Mitsu will allow us to make those updates ourselves or through a wifi connection...

psyflyjohn said:

I wouldn't have purchased the Miev if it was out of range of a dealer. Luckily, we have at least three dealers within range in San Diego.

My criteria for buying a car includes easy access to service....

Click to expand...

I'm on the other side of the fence - Even if I desperately needed 'service' the dealership is the very last place I would take any car, so how far I am from them is of little to no importance to me. For more than 40 years, I've always done 99% of it myself. Now that I'm old enough to not enjoy getting greasy, I have a local mechanic less than a mile from my house who does pretty much anything I need and for just $25 per hour. Brakes, timing belts, transmissions or head-gaskets, he does it all

Like Joe, I really don't see any reason for taking this car back to the dealer . . . . other than for software upgrades and so long as you have access to a trailer to get the car there, even 250 or 300 miles would be close enough for me

Don

We are about 120 miles from the dealer through some mountainous terrain. We just recently had the car trailered down to the dealer for the first annual service, along with doing the two recalls on the car. Service cost us nothing under warranty, but the round trip shipping was $500. The dealer was NOT prepared with the recall parts in stock (despite our making the appointment 10 days in advance and specifying the two recalls), so had to order them. And Mitsu, instead of shipping the parts next day air as requested by the dealer, shipped by ground. Argh. We were prepared to be without the car for three days, but suddenly it looked like it would be a week or more. I got a tad ugly with the dealer and they took the parts off an in-stock car to repair ours. Net: 4 days away from us.