Why You Are Better Of Doing Your Own Electric Car Conversion Than Buying The Mitsubishi i-MiEV Electric Car
Here is a transcript of my latest video about the Mitsubishi i-MiEV and its launch in New Zealand.
Hey, this is Al Bunzel also known as Crazy Al from ElectricCarConversionBlog.com
I just read an article from the July-August 2011 edition of The Automotive Engineer regarding the Mitsubishi i-MiEV Electric Car. Got a brochure from Mitsubishi regarding the i-MiEV Electric Car. A bit of a mouthful, i-M i E V. Well, anyway, that’s the front cover of it. Interesting how they only show a power plug there [on the front cover]. The actual car a picture of the car, that’s what the car looks like. Heres’ another shot of what the car looks like and an0ther shot of what the car looks like according to the Mitsubishi brochure. Apparently, it’s going to be available in July, that’s this month in New Zealand. They reckon it costs around $5 to charge, that’s according to what I read in The Automotive Engineer magazine and around 7 hours to fully charge it and it can travel up to 150km which is just under 94 miles on a fully charged battery. By the way, if you have a look at the brochure, don’t know if you can see, [holding the brochure to the camera], well you can just see it around, …around there, it says “with up to 160km of range from a single charge“. That’s around a hundred miles. So, we got the brochure saying a hundred and sixty km which is around 100 miles and we have The Automotive Engineer saying a hundred and fifty km which is just under 94 miles. A bit of a discrepancy.
Anyway, on facebook someone mentioned that his 2000 Ford Ranger EV can do better than this i-MiEV Electric Car in terms of range. So, it is set to sell for NZ$59,990. That’s around US$50,000. So, we’ve been told that this car [showing picture of i-MiEV] is going to sell for approximately US$50,000, when it goes on sale in New Zealand. What a joke! Like, what a joke! What does Mitsubishi think? This is over 3 times the cost of the i-Car in which the i-MiEV is based on. 3 times! So, who’s going to buy an i-MiEV at that price? Probably a few government departments, banks, insurance companies, some big businesses, but what about ordinary people? What about? What about people like you and I? The way I see this is that in my opinion, Mitsubishi does not want to see their Electric Car or this i-MiEV Electric Car succeed OR they want to make a big killing out of it. Come on!! At NZ$59,990 which is around US$50,000, you’d hope it comes with leather seats and a whole bunch of other luxury features.
Let’s have a look at the brochure again to see what you get. OK, looking at the brochure what do we see in terms of luxury features? [Looking through the brochure]. I’m having troubles finding… oh, you get ABS brakes and you get active traction control according to this brochure from Mitsubishi … and what else do you get? Maybe, you might… I hope, I hope, I hope they put the… [showing picture of power chord] I hope it comes with the power chord in it. You need one of them. You get … Looks like you get an air bag for the driver’s side and the passenger’s side and it looks like you get electric windows. I think you get air conditioning and if you look at the seats, [showing brochure to camera], they don’t look like leather seats to me. So, nah, I don’t think you get leather seats, otherwise they would have said that. What a shame!
Well, I wrote a comment on Gavin Shoebridge’s blog, who is famously known for doing an Electric Car Conversion on a Mitsibishi Tredia, a car bigger than the i-MiEV Electric Car. You can see our dialog on his blog which is GavinShoebridge.com, in the comments section of his blog entry titled “The oil’s running out. What shall we do?“ The summary of his response is that you’re better off doing your own Electric Car Conversion and save yourself $30,000. I agree with Gavin. With a number of people doing their own Electric Car Conversions, as you can see on sites like EVAlbum.com and diyelectriccar.com, why would anyone bother buying an i-MiEV Electric Car? You are better off doing your own Electric Car Conversion as it is not as complex as the car makers make it out to be.
So in summary, I’m personally not going to bother with the Mitsubishi i-MiEV Electric Car as it is too expensive. You are better off looking at EVAlbum.com or/and diyelectriccar.com and look at what others have done with their Electric Car Conversions. Have a look and see what motors they are using, what controllers they are using and what batteries they are using. A lot of the people who have their cars listed on evalbum.com or diyelectriccar.com have actually used parts which You can buy of the shelf. So that ordinary people like you and I can do our own Electric Car Conversions.
So on ElectricCarConversionBlog.com, that’s this site here, I’m going to be posting more information on components in the next few weeks so bookmark this site, tell your friends about it and please visit it regularly.
This is Crazy Al signing off.
P.S. When you do your own Electric Car Conversion, check out Electric Conversion Made Easy by Gavin Shoebridge.
As much as I love electric cars, the issue I have with them is that what would happen to them if they get flooded? I think the tropical climate is not suited for the electric car
Your main issue with Ev’s is what would happen if they get flooded??? What would happen to you if you were in a car that was being flooded who cares if it’s gas or electric? What a silly reason not to consider owning an EV.
Great work on your site, I will be back.
Hi Mike,
Good question.
With high voltages, an earth leakage switch should be installed so that if dangerous situations like high voltages going to ground, insulation breaks or the electric car is in a flood, then the earth leakage switch should shut down the high voltage battery supply.
I realize not everyone installs an earth leakage switch in, but they are a good idea to have.
Regards
Al