Saying Farewell to my 2009 i-MiEV...

In my other posts, I talked about my very early 2009 i-MiEV with its highly degraded battery (SoH below 50%).
Unfortunately due to its reduced range and slow DC charging I had to say goodbye, but in its place I managed to find a worthy replacement with a much healthier battery - a 2015 i-MiEV!

I did consider the i-MiEV successor, the eK X EV, but in addition to being fairly over-budget I was disappointed in its relatively slow DC charging speed for the battery size - only up to 30 kW, approx. 40 mins to 80%.

The 2009 seems to have a few things different from the later models/US/European models, namely:

- Charging cable with no control box
- Regen not linked to the brake pedal
- Smaller side mirrors

The 2015 model i-MiEV includes a number of features that I think others here may be interested to hear about:

- Heat pump
- Break lights engage when speed is reduced to a certain threshold using regen
- Regarding LEV50/LEV50N cells, it is most likely they changed not in 2012, but in late 2013 here in Japan where the model number changed from HA3W to HA4W.

Temperatures are rising again so I haven't needed to use the heater yet, but taking a look at how the RR gauge reacts it is definitely much more efficient than the PTC heater. I found it reduced my RR by only around 10%, so about the same as the air conditioner.

miggols99 said:

The 2015 model i-MiEV includes a number of features that I think others here may be interested to hear about:

- Heat pump
- Break lights engage when speed is reduced to a certain threshold using regen

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Congratulations, curious, is yours an M type or do all later JDM models have above modifications?

As per LEV50/50N saga I gather production was switched to the later cells in the second half of 2012 but it took a while for these to become available, e.g. mine was built 13 moths before it was sold (although shipping it half way around the world might explain that delay)

miggols99, thank you so much for your update! Delighted that you're staying with the i-MiEV and I'm somewhat envious that you have the opportunity to buy newer models (they're quite rare around here).

Interesting about the heat pump, as that is considered quite a high-end product for electric cars and our i-MiEV's small battery can certainly benefit from this.

Blending brakes with regen has been quite well done by Mitsubishi, and I wonder if perhaps they subsequently increased the regen level such that they now exceed the UN standard for when the brake lights should turn on. Hmmm, I see there's been some recent discussion on this -
https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/doc/2020/wp29grva/GRVA-07-48e.pdf

Anyway, wishing you many happy kilometers with your 'new' car.

Congratulations, curious, is yours an M type or do all later JDM models have above modifications?

Click to expand...

I actually went with the 16 kWh version. I did take a look at the lithium titanate "M" version but later versions with the heat pump are especially rare, and I think the actual range is only around 80~90 km without going into the "turtle" zone (below 15%). With the one I found, the dealer was not very knowledgeable so I didn't feel confident buying from them...

I tend to do a lot of top-up AC charges rather than DC as DC is a fair bit more expensive, so I figured the 16 kWh, even if it does degrade after how many years will still give me more range than the 10.5 kWh version.

It does seem like these modifications apply to all of the later models, but I have heard that the "M" doesn't cool the battery during DC charging, which can result in the current being throttled on hot days and/or repeated DC charges much like the LEAF. I'm not sure if this was addressed in the later versions or if this only applies to earlier models though.


I did consider a 30 kWh LEAF as I was able to find some at a similar price to the i-MiEV, but it did seem a bit overkill for my use case, i.e. local shopping/commuting only short distances. There's also the additional tax breaks with the i-MiEV as it is classified as a K-car.

Hoping I will be able to branch out to doing longer trips though!