i-MiEV with in-wheel motors

[Benjamin Nead]

Hi all . . .

While looking over i-MiEV news on the web today (December and early January was chocked full of embarrassingly false "The i-MiEV is dead" articles,) I came across a Japanese language item that describes and shows an i-MiEV with fancy paint and even fancier in-wheel motors in the rear. Here's the original Japanese text article . . .

http://response.jp/article/2016/01/12/267637.html

. . . and a fairly readable English translation, courtesy of the Google Translate program . . .

https://translate.google.com/transl...cle/2016/01/12/267637.html&edit-text=&act=url

Have fun looking and contemplating . . .

Benjamin Nead

Secretary: Tucson Electric Vehicle Association

http://www.tucsonelectricvehicle.org/index.html

Owner: 2012 white SE w/ CHAdeMO (purchased used: Nov. 2015)

 

[Phximiev]

The links didn't work?

 

[Benjamin Nead]

Hmmm . . . that's interesting. I'm at work (lots of computers here) and the links opened up on 2 Windows machines and an i-Mac without fail. Anyone else having similar trouble?

 

[wmcbrine]

The link worked for me, but I have to disagree on the "fairly readable" part.

 

[Benjamin Nead]

Well, that's good regarding the links. Hopefully Phxmiev can download an updated patch for his computer (Flash or Shockwave, perhaps?) and take a look later as well.

And, yes, the whole "fairly readable" thing has to be put in perspective. Japanese to English is probably one of the more difficult ones to deal with on these translation programs. It only seemed like a few years ago that things like Google Translate were science fiction. Or, later on, you had to manually copy/paste hunks of text, sentences and paragraphs at a time, into the program. That you can now simply paste a URL into such a program and come up with at least a broken English translation on an HTML page that's laid out like the original is, I think, truly remarkable.

But, yeah . . . in wheel motors on an i-MiEV! This appears to be a collaborative experiment put together by Mitsubishi and the Okayama Next Generation Automotive Research & Development Center (OVEC.) It doesn't appear to be a third party affair with some unaffiliated group who randomly picked an i-MiEV to hot rod.

 

[Benjamin Nead]

. . . and here's another Japanese site covering the same subject (more new photos) where the translation program output seems to be more coherent . . .

http://car.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/20160112_738412.html

 

[Mart]

MiEVs were originally "Mitsubishi In-wheel motor Electric Vehicle" from the days of the Colt MiEV project. Mitsu was having control issues with the hub motors, so went back to a more traditional layout and changed the name. PML Flightlink had a similar attampt with the MINI Cooper, before they went bankrupt. There was also a Dutch company e-Motion(?) that had an in-wheel motor they were putting on busses about the same time.