Find Reviews by Make:
Mitsubishi has announced Japanese market pricing for its MiEV electric car, and it’s a staggering ¥4.38 million, or $45,660 according to Automotive News [sub]. And what does that buy you? 100 miles of lithium-ion powered range, 4 doors, a 14 hour charge time on 100-volt power (seven hours on 200 volts and 30 minutes on a high-output quick charger) and LED headlights. Unlike Subaru’s $40K+ Stella, however, the MiEV is headed stateside. Eventually. Hopefully the staggering price-point will have come down a bit by then.
13 Comments on “Overpriced EV of the Day: Mitsubishi MiEV...”
Read all comments
At least the i MiEV isn’t vaporeware – that’s about $30+K for the battery and drivetrain.
Makes one wonder if the Tesla S is going to come in anywhere close to $57.4K. BP CEO Agassi is hoping for MSRP $20K + battery lease.
If this thing really makes it over here, and is available for retail sale, it beats all other EVs. Hands down. All the talk about Teslas, Volts, Fiskers, and so on is just talk. Show me a car that can be purchased by an average person.
Current exchange rates may be playing a part in this conversion, because if it’s anywhere this high when it gets here, the MiEV will be…overpriced.
Early adopters tech is always overpriced, so wheres the surprise ? Its the first retail-selling EV from a major automaker in modern times, after all.
Besides, this was quoted _before_ subsidies, in Tokyo it’ll be more like $30K with subsidies. In London, when you take congestion charge per year into account, it’ll be more like $20K …
Mitsubishi can charge whatever they want, as long as they dont have any competition ( which will be a good two years or so ) and they’ll still move every unit they can produce. Thats just good business sense.
I’ve driven this car. It’s very much like a roofed golf cart, but there is plenty of room for adult Americans front and rear. Can’t imagine it being the answer for anyone in this country, but I felt the same way about Nancy Pelosi.
Build a couple of million and watch what happens to the price.
How Volt-like.
@Canucknucklehead: You can’t build a couple million without buyers. At $45k, no subsidy will make this affordable, and the vehicle will be relegated to purely novelty.
Besides, Mitsubishi can’t get traction in the US anyway, so introducing a car like this won’t help their credibility.
I thought cars cost more in Japan. We really need to know its price as a percentage of a Prius.
gslippy, no it’ not Volt like. This is real.
The first generation of Prius (in North America) was simply a curiosity and I personally called it a science-project-mobile.
By the time the 2004 cars came out, I wanted one… and got one in 2005 (then replaced it in 2008 with another one).
Perhaps by the time I retire (11 more years), I’ll be able to get my 2nd iMiev?
Mitsubishi will be needing a lot more dealers in the USA, within the next couple of years. The market is moving in Mitsubishi’s direction…
I hear there are lot of disgruntled dealers ready to sign-on, Mitsubishi… may as well take advantage.
Here’s how I see the future breaking out over the next few years; state-mandated misfuelling of vehicles with E20 will ruin millions of engines; huge increases in ethanol production will drain the already strained major underground water tables in the USA (it takes up to 142 gallons of water plus some natural gas to produce a gallon of ethanol for E10 or E20 or E85, from corn); food prices will skyrocket; oil imports won’t go down appreciably (how could they when ethanol is essentially ‘invisible’ to many cars and is simply run through the car and wasted due to reduced MPG? – not forgetting that diesel oil is required to transport ethanol in tanker trucks since it can’t be transported via pipeline as can petroleum products).
Then we have our decrepid electrical grid and an administration which has declared coal to be something he’d like to put out of biz (despite the fact that coal is American fuel), and you have the foundations of an energy disaster once people start finally moving to electric cars from internal combustion cars…
Dead ringer for a Tata Nano. At 20x the price.
i would hazard a guess the tata nano would end up costing you less to run any which way you cut it
the price shown is pretty much means nothing to me without showing what other cars are for sale at that price in Japan. does a camry cost that much? is it 3-series money? 5-series money? etc etc
@Canucknucklehead: You can’t build a couple million without buyers.
If this car were the same price as as say, a Yaris, I would snap one up in a minute. That is not going to happen until the economy of scale kicks in. If Toyota, for example, sold only 1,000 Corollas a year, each would cost $50k.
Electrics make perfect sense in Asia and Europe where most drives are very short. I rarely drive more than 40km a day so it would also be ideal for me.