Is Your i-MiEV the Primary or Secondary Car in Your Family?

[JoeS]

This post was prompted by a couple of things, the first being:

Mitsubishi provides a nice list of talking points on page 3 of their original i-MiEV sales training document.
http://www.imiev411.com/sites/default/files/pdf/iMiev_Certification_Training.pdf...

Talking Point Number Four:
4. Intended as a second or even third car to the household garage. The i is the ultimate eco-car and is a solution to customer concerns such as air-pollution, global warming, and energy security

The second thing that prompted this post was my having to fill out my insurance company's mileage questionnaire.

I guess we first need to define Primary Car.
Is it the car which, over the course of a year, accumulates the highest -

- Distance driven?
- Number of individual trips?
- Time spent in car?

In my family (of two), the three i-MiEVs racked up a little under 20Kmiles (32Kkm) - it was a lower-distance BEV year for us as we were gone for a manth and then I was laid up for a while. The long-distance Gen1 Honda Insight put on a little under 6,000 miles (9600km), virtually all Interstate and used almost exclusively by my wife driving to and from Medford, Oregon. The Corbin Sparrow EVs, having previously been my daily drivers, have now been relegated to toy status (<300 miles) ever since we got the second i-MiEV. The Isuzu Trooper (<500mi) I only used to move the big boat around the front yard and to get it smogged (inspection), but had been borrowed by friends for their moving needs. My wife's 1983 Toyota Corolla was not used at all by us (except for the smog inspection), but by various houseguests to visit distant California tourist destinations and somehow racked up 4000 miles (6400km) - otherwise, houseguests used and loved the i-MiEVs for all their local driving.

Thus, for us and looking at each of the three criteria, the i-MiEV is undisputedly the Primary Car in the family!

 

[PV1]

The i-MiEV (well, two i-MiEVs) is the only car I own :lol: , so I would say that it is the primary car. Better than 90% of my miles driven are in Bear, the rest being either a company car or my ebike. Except for a dirtbike and an ATV (which doesn't run anymore and is too small for me), I don't own any equipment that runs on gasoline. My fleet consists of:

44-panel solar array (11.8 kW) to power everything.
iZip E3 Compact folding electric bicycle with solar trailer
Craftsman 36 volt electric lawn mower with 20" cut
Craftsman 19.2 volt electric string trimmer (weedwhacker if you're familiar with that term)
2012 i-MiEV ES (1 silver, 1 white)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i17bwztph5ucslf/IMG_20150927_131853.jpg?dl=0

As for the household, the i-MiEV is very close mileage-wise to being the primary. My parents' C-Max Hybrid is nearly tied with Bear for total miles. Their F-150 hardly gets driven anymore (it actually needed jump-started before the trip to buy Koorz, and it's a 2010 model).

 

[Don]

I guess we first need to define Primary Car.
Is it the car which, over the course of a year, accumulates the highest -

- Distance driven?
- Number of individual trips?
- Time spent in car?

Based on any of those, the iMiEV's are our primary cars - The gasser only gets started to use for something the iMiEV can't do . . . . which isn't much, so it sees very little use

Don

 

[databeestje]

Well, it's my primary car and I drive it to work and back for 40 miles a day, and my wife uses it when I'm at home and she goes grocery shopping, or in the weekends.

She has the Suzuki Swift ICE for when I'm to work, she makes less miles, but still quite some.

We try to make the most miles electric, but that's purely a financial situation. Since petrol is $5,75 per gallon (1,40 euro per liter) here the balance is a bit different. On the other hand, electricity is also 20 euro cents per kWh, and the public chargers are 30 cents per kWh. There is some electricity offset from the 3200 Watts east-west installation which is good for about 2100kWh a year. That's about what the car or the house uses, but not both. Still, it shaves off half the electricity cost. I can still add 3 panels for another 400kWh a year.

This really is the cheapest car to drive, I've calculated it to about a 1000 euros a year to drive, compared to 2000 for a Toyota Aygo or 3000 for the Peugeot 206 Diesel I had before. That's without maintenance btw, the bare minimum in insurance, petrol/diesel/electricty and road taxes.

 

[Aerowhatt]

This is a tough one. By the standard given it's a toss up. My mileage in the 'i' is highly variable since I'm self employed. My wife commutes in an ICE so some weeks it drives more miles some weeks not. I haven't had the 'i' long enough to know which averages more miles per year yet.

What I can say for certain anytime we go someplace together or either of us have an errand where the 'i' is available for it, it gets driven. So in my mind that makes it the primary transportation in the household. IMO whichever vehicle is the family "default" vehicle is the primary vehicle. Even if it is a horserace for mileage totals.

Aerowhatt

 

[sandange]

We use the Miev as our primary car.
Last year we drove it almost
25,000 miles (40,000 km) between the two of us.

We also own a Mitsubishi spyder convertible for the occasional longer leisure trip
in the summer, but we didn't even put 3,000 miles (4,700 km) on it last year.

 

[jray3]

Yep, MR BEAN is by far the primary car, and he'll roll over 50,000 miles sometime in the next few days.

The family van gets used every week for my wife's short errands during the workday and family trips beyond the Puget Sound region. This thread reminds me to do the year's mileage tally. We used to do double-dip commutes where I'd get home from a 33+ mile day and hand it off to her for a 52 mile night, but a schedule change has made that impractical.

Last year my truck did under a dozen 'heavy haul' trips for landscaping, construction, and car racing EVents.