Sign in / up

back to article Exclusive: Mitsubishi's iMiEV UK launch revealed

The Mitsubishi iMiEV will go on sale in the UK this November, Register Hardware can reveal. iMiEV_001 Mitsubishi's iMiEV: 50 of the £20k motors will arrive in November Mitsubishi told us this morning that 50 of the five-door runabouts will arrive in the first batch, with a further 150 of the cars allocated to Blighty for …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    The comparison is inevitable...

    So that's £20-25k for the electric vs £9.5k for the petrol. (HFM?!)

    Or the Cit C1/Pug 107/Toyota Aygo at £7.5k+ compared to the Electric Car Company C1 Ev'ie for £17k.

    Bearing in mind ECC buy complete petrol C1s, dismantle 'em, then retro-fit 'em to milk-float-spec, why are Mitsu taking the piss on the built-from-scratch sparky version of their laughable egg so badly?

    (And, given that today's got another laptop battery pack conflagration recall, will it come with a fire extinguisher as standard?)

    0 0
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Why put the shit one into production?

    The iMiEV Sport Air is the only one I would ever look at.

    If I wanted a smart car, I would buy a smart car.

    And if I wanted to be eco friendly, I would buy a 5 year old diesel one.

    0 0
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Cost?

    Well done Mitsubishi, I totally support electric vehicles and think there are some exciting times ahead for the e-car industry. Save the dolphins, finger to OPEC etc..

    That said, the costs are not adding up at the moment. With the petrol equivalent model at £9000 even heavy users won't see any financial benefit for several years.

    Manufacturers will see sales skyrocket when the purchase price of e-car models is no more than 50% greater than their fossil fuel alternatives (not 100%+ plus more!).

    0 0
  4. g e

    Bewildering

    Why would anyone spend 20-25k (with 5k back from the gov for being 'green'?) on that?

    There really must be people who are so desperate to be seen to be 'green' that they'll part with their money like fuckwits.

    I spose they'll save 1k every 5 years on road tax so the car might pay for itself over 20 years....

    I can get a DB7 for 25k or a new RX8-S or four used mondeo's. Or three brand new Aygo's ...

    0 1
  5. Elmer Phud
    Stop

    give me the old days . . .

    . . . when it wasn't bloody ' i ' with everything.

    What happend to 'lazer' with everything? Ah, those were the days.

    0 0
  6. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
    Go

    @AC

    It's yer whole-life costs, innit?

    Rough back-of-an-envelope scratchings give 100,000 miles of motoring as costing roughly the same in the electric or petrol variants, with electric being a bit more expensive outside London, but a lot less in London.

    Given the much smaller market and the development costs for the electric version, the likely spread of London-style motoring charges to other cities, and the warm glow of smug middle-class satisfaction that comes with owning one, that doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

    Remember, we are at the beginning of the development of electric vehicles, petrol has a 150 year head start. Give it time.

    0 0
  7. Frank Bough
    Unhappy

    Wow.

    That's a LOT more expensive than either the press or Mitsubishi dealers had expected. It's an important car, but £25K is absurd. Don't forget that this car is already on sale in petrol form for a mere £9Kish.

    0 0
  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    High Prices and Suckers

    The two go hand in hand. How many new gadgets launch for stupidly high prices only for those prices to be slashed once the supply of suckers has dried up?

    They'll get takers at that price, people will be willing to pay that to be among the first to own one. And the few dozen morons who do cough the full £25K (minus the £5K rebate) will be furious when the price is 50% lower a year later. However they won't learn from the experience and will be right at the top of the waiting list to trade in their iMEV (at a massive loss) for the next bit of overpriced sucker bait to hit the market.

    There's a woman in our village who goes through two or three new cars a year, while her hubby has been driving the same Merc for about a dozen years. I bet she'll get one.

    0 0
  9. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Geoff

    At the beginning of dev of electric vehicles? Hardly. They held the land speed record a century ago.

    The cost difference between two different cars in central London - with the congestion charge artificially affecting that (both Cit C1 and Mitsu i petrol versions would have been cc-free under the CO2-related proposals, whilst a 5.0 v8 Lexus is currently free...) - isn't hugely relevant, since central London has excellent public transport, so only a complete div would consider driving there regularly. B'sides, the parking costs would HUGELY outweigh any running costs.

    0 0
  10. ian

    Costs?

    Does the iMiev require regular servicing like petrol burners? I suspect not, so there's a savings right there. Prorated over my lifetime, one of these will likely still be more expensive than typical iron. But then there's the satisfaction in telling the various ancient despot isms to sod off.

    0 0
  11. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    wake me up when the price will be half of that

    meanwhile I'm having fun with my Impreza... :)

    0 0
  12. Peter Bond
    Thumb Up

    Price

    didn't Mitsubishi say back in 2008 that the iMiEV would cost about 4 million yen when it was released in Japan? That's about £27k, so its actually a little cheaper than expected in the UK. OK, iys still a lot for a small EV but if we Brits will be able to get hold of them for £20k, knock off the £5k Govt electric car rebate then that's a £15k purchase. You could claw that 5 grand back from reduced fuel and maintenance costs in a couple of years making it actually a more cost effective buy than the the regular petrol version.

    0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.