Review: 2010 Mitsubishi i-MiEV (JDM)

Filed under: Hatchback, Mitsubishi, Reviews, Electric

A Bubbly EV For The Road Ahead

2010 Mitsubishi i-MiEV (JDM) – Click above for high-res image gallery

There’s an interesting realization that occurs when you drive an electric car. After all, EVs act just like normal vehicles powered by an internal combustion engine, they’re just a bit quieter and you can’t drive for great distances at a time. But as you travel along in an EV, you pass by gas station after gas station and it finally sets in – your car has rendered the fuel pump obsolete. Gas stations to EV owners are nothing more than places to buy cheap coffee and cigarettes.

As we work to further saturate our automotive landscape with efficient, eco-friendly misers, a few automakers think they’ve found the answer for how to best disguise the EV setup in a car that won’t stick out like a sore thumb. The Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf take on the shapes of a sedan and a hatchback with very minor touches to let other drivers know that something special lies under the hood. Mitsubishi and its forthcoming i-MiEV, however, blows that all out of the water. Driving this car on the road is like parking a Bugatti Veyron on a used car lot – it gets a lot of attention.

The i-MiEV, which is based on the Mitsubishi i kei car (we still aren’t very fond of the name), has been sold in Japan since mid-2009 and Europe is slated to get the bubbly EV later this year. As for North America, it’s expected that we’ll get the i-MiEV in the Fall of 2011, though it will be slightly updated from the Japanese-spec model you see here. We recently had the opportunity to spend a week with a JDM-spec i-MiEV to see what daily life with the EV is like. Is Mitsubishi’s pint-sized electric car ready for the United States?

Gallery: 2010 Mitsubishi i-MiEV (JDM): Review