The majority of you are going to wait and wait and wait for the VOLT.

Mitsubishi has a set production date and the Volt doesn’t even have a mule working yet.

I am an EV customer. Give me a pure EV. Low maintenance costs. No ICE motor to service. No oil changes.

40 miles is great for 70% of all people (Volt fans) but 100 miles is way to short. I don’t want to use an ICE peroid.

Just my thoughts.

Just to confirm: yes its RWD, as its based on its already shipping gasoline RWD “I” counterpart, reportedly very popular in England.

There are plenty of videos on YouTube up on it as well, query on MiEV.

I also stumbled upon an article which gave pretty good technical details on motors, inverter and batteries used, along with photos of them on display.

And the picture Lyle has above is of a different concept car. The one heading for the Japanese market in 2009 is well past that if they are giving test rides and looks nothing like the concept.

And no pricing info, cycle and/or shelf life of the battery, etc was in that article.

80mph max also may be tough for those of us with a lead foot

More info from http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1352 which also includes a small video clip of the editor of that site getting a test ride in the i-MiEV, and 6 more pictures.

It’s only a 4 seater (not 5 like the Volt), though is a 4 door.

Destined for the Japanese market in 2009, and maybe England. Doesn’t look like any plans to put it into the US market.

Has a 47kw permanent magnet synchronous electric motor mounted in the rear (I assume this means it’s rear wheel drive?)

Has a lithium-ion battery pack consisting of 22 large format modules developed by GS Yuasa Corporation in Japan. The 330-volt system has an energy capacity is 16kWh

it weighs 1,080kg (2380 lbs) and has a top speed of 130km/h (80 mph)

The car can be recharged using normal household current at 100 volts (taking approximately 14 hours to recharge), 200 volts (7 hr recharge time) and 3-phase 200 volt. In the latter case, it would take only 30 minutes to recharge the vehicle to 80 percent SOC (state-of-charge) using a Quick-charge system. The charger is built into the vehicle

And obviously no range extender.

And the picture Lyle has above is

Plus if another plug-in RxEV, which both the Volt and this one is, beats the Volt to market by 2 years, those needing to replace their cars in that time frame can’t wait, and it would be silly to buy a new conventional internal combustion vehicle to hold you over for the Volt.

Of course even if this one comes in priced at $25k in the USA, it also comes down to what volume they plan to have with that 2 year lead… it may be relatively small volume that won’t meet the demand, so the mass market is going to have to wait anyways for someone like GM and the Volt planning to produce 60,000 in the 1st year alone, and from the sounds of it, only going up from there.

You are free to buy this car if you think it works for you. The majority of us are going to wait for the Volt.

And why bother charging leasee’s for scratches on their EV1’s when they were taken back if they had no choice but to crush them?

Speaking of which, there are some recent youtube videos of Rav4-EV owners stating they are still getting 100 miles on a charge, even after 5+ years and 71,000 miles, on the original NiMH batteries.

From a legal and liability standpoint crushing the EV-1 was the only option for GM. If you have to blame somebody, blame trial lawyers.