Hi,
Today I got the chance to drive a highly unique vehicle on invitation by the R&D President of Mitsubishi, the iMiEV. A short review of my first electrical drive, which is hopefully not my last!
For those of you unknown to this vehicle, the iMiEV is to be the first production EV(Electrical Vehicle). It is in a very advanced state of development compared to other vehicles at the moment. This EV is based upon the Mitsubishi I, a model sold exclusively in Japan. It is a typical Kei car, with full aluminium body like certain Audi's. The regular model has the small engine in the back, with RWD.
This iMiEV has a full electric drivetrain, powered by a battery pack under your feet and a electric engine in the back. It can be charged regularly(6-8 hours) or by quick charging (until 78.7% SOC) in approx. 30 minutes. Mitsubishi is in the testing phase now and it plans to put it on the domestic market in late 2009 (RHD) and in 2010 on the European market (LHD).
So let's get on to my driving experiences. First of all it was a perfect fit for me and within 10 seconds I had a excellent seat. First thing I noticed was the very nice interior and offcourse the RHD that I am not used to. The car has a automatic gearbox it looks, but with a twist. Apart from the usual you have Eco and Brk options on the gear lever. Eco mode is for feeding less power to the engines and save power. The Brk mode means it regenerates extra electricity upon releasing the throttle, by reversing the electric engine for it to become a generator.
Furthermore the "regular" speedometer is replaced by a digital display with the speed in the middle of the gauges box. In the normal location of the speedometer is a SOC(State of charge) indicator. It shows how much power you are using and/or how much you regenerate.
So the Japanese engineer gave me the keys and explained every system of the vehicle. Starting is very odd, you turn the key and nothing happens except the radio starting to play. I turned it for 2 or 3 times, like most of us, i was expecting to hear something instinctively. This feeling remained for the rest of the drive.
As we took off it amazed me by the smoothness of operation. In almost every car I drive I need a few minutes to get used to the feel it has. I took off straight away in this one. The steering and operating feel of a vehicle like this is exactly the same as in a regular car. With one huge difference though. In every normal car you hear and feel the engine gaining speed and making revs, following it's own characteristic power diagram. The acceleration in a car like this is fully lineair.
Because of this property you quickly break the speed limits as you dont have to gain momentum for example when you floor it when you want to overtake, the power is right there, not even a 0.x second delay. Accelation is perfectly seemless, you do not notice a single thing except that the landscape moves by faster.
When you let go off the throttle you can see the meter of the SOC-indicator flying left, regeneration mode, you see a fairly big decrease in speed as well. It is hardly noticeable, but it is larger than I felt in any "normal" vehicle without braking.
I did a total of 30 minutes and around 40 km in this vehicle. The batteries seemed to be coping fine and were around 25% depleted after this short drive. The promised range of 160km could be true in these conditions.
This seems all I can think of at the moment. If you have any questions feel free to ask. If I don't have the answer myself, I will forward them to the Japanese contacts I have now
Reply With Quote