Just bought a 2012 Mitsubishi I-MiEV ES

[allsmiles277]

I have been pleasantly surprised with my 2012 Mitsubishi I-MiEV ES. I got some new Dunlop Enasave tires to replace the Bridgestone Blizzaks the dealership had on the car. I also got a nice surprise today when I was trying to find the latch to open the hood. I hit a latch under the driver's seat and it opened the back lefthand port for where the CHAdeMO is supposed to go aka Level 3 attachment. To my surprise it was already installed and I thought I was going to have to pay 700-1000 dollars to get it. That made my day. I wish EPA would rate electric cars by miles per charge instead of the MPGe. I personally think the MPGe is very deceiving to the general public when purchasing an electric vehicle. Common sense should say to EPA that miles per charge is a much easier term to understand for most people. If any body can give me any pointers about the I-MiEV I would appreciate any input. Thank you.

 

[Don]

Welcome to the forum!!

It's good that your ChaDeMo port was already installed - I seriously doubt you could have it added for $1K. I'm not aware of anyone who has ever successfully added the port to a car that did not come with it from the factory

Miles per charge would be the same thing as miles per fill-up for gas or diesel vehicles - Essentially meaningless. An F-350 with a pair of 36 gallon tanks might go 1,000 miles on a fill-up and comparing that to a 50 mpg Prius which only goes half that far would be . . . . meaningless

An iMiEV with a 32 KW battery pack might go 110 miles while you and I can only go 65 miles - What does that prove? Same as with the gas car . . . . one of them just has a bigger 'tank'. A Tesla goes 275 miles and we go 1/4th that far - How would you compare the efficiency of two cars if not for MPGe?

Don

 

[allsmiles277]

The term miles per charge makes more sense to me but I am a simple person.

 

[wmcbrine]

"Miles per charge" doesn't make sense unless the cars have equivalent capacity, which they don't.

Miles per killowatt-hour, however, is a sensible unit of comparison that is sometimes used. You can multiply that by the capacity of the batteries to get the range.

 

[sandange]

Welcome to the forum

Congratulations on your move to the i Miev,
The smiles grow with the miles

 

[PV1]

Congratulations. Just as I was reminded this morning, you will continue to find new things about the i-MiEV to like even after a few years of ownership.

As for the range/efficiency ratings, the window sticker on the car tells you both. In the top right section of the window sticker shown below, the main number is MPGe. This tells you how energy efficient the car is. The miles per kWh are converted into MPGe to easily compare against conventional fuel vehicles. This figure simply compares energy usage, not range. However, below that is the actual range, or miles per charge, rating.

So, for the i-MiEV, fuel economy is 126 MPGe in the city, 99 MPGe on the highway, which makes for a combined 112 MPGe overall. Beside and below the MPGe ratings, you will find that the i-MiEV uses 30 kWh per 100 miles (a much more useful statistic, IMO) and can travel roughly 62 miles on a charge.

For comparison, these ratings are similar to how a car like a Ford Focus will achieve 40 MPG and can carry 10 gallons of gasoline. Actually, more recently, the window sticker for a conventional gas car also states an estimated driving range. These stats would net a range of 400 miles (40 X 10 = 400 miles) on a tank of gas.

(this is not my window sticker, simply one I found doing a web search.)

 

[tigger19687]

CONGRATS. I am guessing that the dealer didn't know about the QC charger either ?
If you paid for a NON-Chademo plug, and then found out you had it, you got lucky !!

 

[genec]

I love the mpge. I love saying i get 112 mpg, for all intents and purposes. It blows people away, as it should.
Then when I tell them I fuel up by plugging into my solar roof it's priceless!

 

[allsmiles277]

I still think miles per charge is all I need to know and MPGe is meaningless to me. I just want to know how many miles my car will get per charge. That is the only comparison I need to make a good decision on future purchases. I hope to own a good used Tesla in the future if it is worth investing in and the battery pack still has several years left under the warranty. The Model 3 by Tesla seems too good to be true. I hope the EV's will get better and better as the years go by.

 

[Don]

I still think miles per charge is all I need to know and MPGe is meaningless to me.

What you're saying is 'efficiency is a meaningless term to you' which means (as you said) you indeed are a simple person

Did you buy your last ICE based on how far it would go on a tank of gas . . . . or were you more interested in how much it costs to operate?

30 MPG (or better) was always the 'magic number' for me as I wasn't interested in owning anything which couldn't get at least that number on the highway. If the car came with a 10 gallon tank, that's 300 miles, if it held 15 gallons, that's 450 miles and if you were lucky enough to find one with a 20 gallon tank, you could go 600 miles - Still, the 'magic number' was 30 mpg because I'm not interested in paying to fuel up a gas guzzler no matter how far it goes on a single tank

The 'miles per tank' number is meaningless . . . . until you divide that by the size of the tank to see what sort of mileage the car could achieve and how much it's going to cost you to get it refueled

If you buy a Tesla, you're going to find it uses lots more juice than your iMiEV, however it will go farther because the battery is five times bigger - It's also nearly twice as heavy which is why it's MPGe numbers are worse. You're paying a lot for that bigger 'tank' - Both when you buy the car and then the inefficiency of hauling around that bigger 'tank' all the time even when you don't need it

Don

 

[phb10186]

I love the mpge. I love saying i get 112 mpg, for all intents and purposes. It blows people away, as it should.
Then when I tell them I fuel up by plugging into my solar roof it's priceless!

An imperial gallon is 4.54 litres, while a US gallon is 3.9. So my MPGe is actually higher.

Based on the actual cost of an imperial UK gallon ( which is crazy as we can only buy fuel by the litre, though still use the MPG standard)... I calculated the UK MPGE as 170 for the amount of electricity that equals that cist of 4.54 litres.

 

[pmaupin]

I still think miles per charge is all I need to know and MPGe is meaningless to me.

What you're saying is 'efficiency is a meaningless term to you' which means (as you said) you indeed are a simple person

Did you buy your last ICE based on how far it would go on a tank of gas . . . . or were you more interested in how much it costs to operate?
Don

I can't speak for allsmiles277, but (a) I only put 4.5K miles/year on my i, and (b) I do 98% of my charging at an all-you-can-eat electric buffet provided by the city of Austin for $25 every 6 months (a buck a week, including taxes, with two free weeks thrown in every year). (The remainder of my charging happens at a friend's house at an occasional poker game.)

So electricity currently costs me 1.1 cents per mile. I'm pretty sure tires are going to cost more than that.

Now allsmiles277 may be overstating his case a wee bit, but MPGe (besides being based on a fairly stupid constant pulled out of the EPA's nether regions) is going to be a secondary consideration for most people -- wider adoption of EVs is only going to come about based on an increase in miles per charge. And based on that particular metric, there's a good chance I'll be replacing my wife's car (an ICE) with the EV Bolt when it comes out.

 

[JoeS]

Interesting apples and oranges discussion, with 'economy' taking a back seat.

Up until electric cars came along, the "How far can you go on a tank?" question was usually posed in the context of vehicles used for towing or hauling loads longer distances, as it was rare for car owners to worry about this.

Now, with BEVs, the first question invariably asked is "How far can you go on a charge?", as though that was a meaningful metric in everyday driving; nevertheless, it is a metric perceived as important by the public, with a "bigger is better" mindset.

Just last week I was reminded that this metric does, indeed, matter: my neighbor had given his 2011 Leaf to his daughter (and he now primarily drives his i-MiEV). She started a summer internship and has to drive 40 miles one way to get there, which makes the Leaf highly desirable for the HOV lane access. Whoops, round trip on one charge not easily doable, so she needed to find a way to charge. For starters she's using an nrgEVgo DCQC station on the way home until she can figure out if she can plug into a 120vac socket at her 'work'. This is a great example whereby a longer-range vehicle would be much more suitable and avoid the PIA hassle of either charging at work or along the way. Notice though, that in this instance just a slightly-better range would solve this problem without resorting to the '200-mile' vehicle. I'll be waiting for the explosion when my neighbor gets his EVgo bill.

pmaupin, I take it that it's not feasible for you to charge at home? Have you had problems accessing the Austin charging stations?

 

[pmaupin]

Interesting apples and oranges discussion, with 'economy' taking a back seat.

There are different kinds of economy. If I drive the i at 75 MPH on the highway, the energy costs twice as much as driving at 30 on city streets (in my particular instance, 2*0==0 ). But in general, when choosing a driving speed, the economy of driving the car is in perfect alignment with the question of how far a tank of electrons will take you -- drive slower, and it costs less and you can go farther between charges.

But I can't be the only i-MiEV driver who sometimes exceeds 30 MPH because doing so improves my own overall economy, can I?

pmaupin, I take it that it's not feasible for you to charge at home?

It's eminently feasible for me to charge at home. I can easily use the plug-in charger, and (very) occasionally do, for example, when there is an extended stretch of inclement weather.

I could also quite easily install a permanent charger, but why would I do that when the city is subsidizing my limited exercise program by encouraging me to walk to the Austin Energy charger that is 0.4 miles from my house? :?

Once I pay the city for the peace of mind of the ChargePoint card, the marginal cost of electricity is obviously zero. But I make that card pay for itself -- I just passed 2 years of operation, so that's $100 to the city for the card. In that time, I've filled up with 2100 KWh from Austin Energy, so that costs less than half what it would to charge at home.

Have you had problems accessing the Austin charging stations?

There are some that are always busy, and some that are often ICEd, but I've figured out a set that I can use fairly consistently.

 

[pmaupin]

Just last week I was reminded that this metric does, indeed, matter... Notice though, that in this instance just a slightly-better range would solve this problem without resorting to the '200-mile' vehicle.

Sure. But there are a lot of people who won't, or in some cases truly can't, plan out their days, and 200 miles is probably pretty close to the magical number that will be good enough for most of them. In my case, it would mean I could visit my daughter in San Antonio (160 mile round-trip) without resorting to the ICE.

Anyway, in further defense of the stance taken by allsmiles277, let me construct a hypothetical. Somebody shows you three or four different types of EVs, lets you sit in them, look at them, check out the storage space, maybe even drive them around the block. Two of them look like vehicles that would fit your needs and style. Now they offer to give you one to drive for a year (like Kryten), but there's a catch: you only get to ask one question before you decide which kind of vehicle you get.

What's the question?