Gadgetory

this little golf cart on steroids is the 2012 Mitsubishi I - mie V Mitsubishi's electric car let's take a look and check the tech I - yeah my Eevee is based on a car that Mitsubishi sells in Japan originally it's a gas engine car with a very small 660 CC gas engine in back now it's been converted to electricity for the mi - Evi version but it's part of japan's classes they call it the kei car class which means it's very small it's really just designed for cities you can see like these wheels they're only 15 inches and they're tiny they do have low rolling resistance which will work well for an electric car they'll get make it get better range you also have four doors - which in this case it's really just intended for four people you put too much weight and it's gonna put a lot of stress on the electric motor now as the I - mie V is rear-wheel drive the electric motor is back under here we can actually lift up this compartment and lift up this panel here and take a look at what they call the motor room well we don't really see an electric motor here the 49 kilowatt electric motor is buried under these control electronics buried further back in there is the lithium-ion battery pack 16 kilowatt hours supposed to get you 63 miles according to the EPA estimates now this is the port where you recharge the I - mie V just pop open the hatch open the plug port and plug in the adapter that Mitsubishi provides for you and you can leave it charging overnight on a 110 it'll take about twenty two and a half hours to give this car a full charge from a dead battery now you can also recharge it off a 240 volt outlet that'll only take seven and a half hours so that's more like an overnight charge right there now in our version of the I - mi TV we've got the three thousand dollar premium package which includes this head unit here now this head unit is pretty standard aftermarket stuff and you see this in some other Mitsubishi cards but the funny thing is this isn't really tailored for an electric car for example I've got the navigation system here if the menu hit the points of interest and there's my list of gas stations not very useful for this car and there's no list of electric charging stations either which would be helpful the maps are pretty good looking on this system they're actually stored on a hard drive which also means you get space for music on the system as well and there's iPod integration you also have phone integration here and this navigation system also shows traffic now this head unit also has a CD player but you won't see a slot anywhere along here you have to push that button and we get this great kind of thing where the whole panel opens up and there's a slot back here to get your range and things like that you've got to go to the instrument cluster now this is a pretty cool looking instrument cluster and you know you've got a digital readout for the speed right in the middle here you also have just the one gauge which flips over and shows you when you're using power and when you're recharging but to see your range and how many miles you've driven and all that good trip information this one little gauge over here on the right now Mitsubishi put the tweeters on the dashboard here both one on the left one on the right facing back into the cars cabin lot of cars will have them on the a-pillars here facing across which isn't a great placement for creating a good sound field putting them in front of the cabin is much better now of course here we have our old friend the shifter but a being electric car doesn't go to any kind of transmission and of course we can put it in reverse neutral Drive then we have an eco mode and then B mode to be of course engine braking which will maximize the regeneration we'll try that out on the road later one of the key things about this car the different drive modes so right now I got it Indy which is just standard Drive and you get pretty good acceleration then if you put it in the Eco mode it really takes a lot of the edge off that throttle and it's really hard to get speed built up quickly that'll save you a lot of juice in the battery and it also instigates a lot more braking regeneration too so as soon as I let off it really starts to slow drastically and the needle on the gauge here goes right into the blue zone which indicates that the recharging the battery now the other mode the last mode we have here is the be braking mode and that is best for if you're going downhill that'll maximize the regeneration from the brakes to the battery and it actually doesn't be tuned the throttle at all which is nice especially if you're on hills or going in hill situations but as soon as I lift off it just immediately goes to maximum recharge it's pulling as much electricity as possible from the wheels into the battery this car looks kind of like a golf cart on the outside and it drives kind of like a golf cart - it's got the electric drivetrain so it's an immediate it's a very linear acceleration very quiet driving experience but with the small tires and the really city design car doesn't feel particularly stable when you get the high speeds on the freeway it really feels a little scary especially if you have wind and things like that they're gonna pull it all over the place at speeds below 40 miles per hour it's fine so it'll work great and you know a city or a suburban environment with its range of 63 miles the 2012 Mitsubishi I - mi Evy is really only good as a city car for the suburbs it goes on sale later this year for a base price of thirty one thousand one hundred and twenty five dollars our car here is optioned up to thirty four thousand two hundred fifteen dollars and with a federal tax credit of $7,500 various state credits you can probably find depending on where you live you can get this car into the low 20s which is a pretty good price for a modern electric car