Depending on how you use it, you may never see ten years - The battery warranty is 8 years, not ten and that may prove optimistic. Lithium ion cells lose some capacity as they age - They also wear out . . . . ever had to replace a cell phone or laptop battery? One day, you'll be replacing an iMiEV battery too . . . . unless you sell of destroy the car first
It's a pretty well established fact that our battery pack life should be somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 full cycles, but it's also pretty well known that if you keep your SOC numbers between closer limits, that number could be 10,000 cycles or even more. Between what numbers? Hard to say for sure, but if you never discharged any lower than about 40% and never recharged above about 70%, you could very well see those kinds of numbers . . . . but then, you're limiting yourself to only about 30% of your normal range
Mitsu recharges the pack to 3.95 volts instead of the 4.2 which is possible and by doing so they give up a few percentage points of range for a much better battery life. It stands to reason that if you don't need the maximum range that 3.95 gives you, you could further enhance battery life by charging to an even lower number. Is it worth your time and effort to do this? I guess that depends on the person, how long you intend to own the car, how bad the bite a new battery would put on your pocketbook
Once you've had the car awhile, you'll come to know that it was designed to mimic an ICE as closely as possible, so of course you'll never see anything about special precautions to make the battery pack last longer when you read the owners manual - You wouldn't find anything like that in the manual for an ICE and Mitsu wants you to think owning this car is just as carefree a proposition as any ordinary car and no doubt it will be for the first 3, or 4 or 5 years . . . . which is about as long as the average person keeps a car anyway
If your daily commute doesn't require a full recharge, why start with the pack full, especially once you figure out that short charging could be saving you lots on the other end?
Don
