It’s important to hear about the ownership experiences of green car drivers to see what glitches and fixes need to be made before these cars ramp up in production capacity.. BMW has done this through its Mini E, where early adopters have had a lot of driving experience and have provided BMW with a lot of useful feedback. Mitsubishi i electric car owners (less than a thousand in the U.S.) have been providing feedback on their ownership experiences on online owner forums, which Green Car Reports has tapped into recently. Here’s a few of the findings:
• Range anxiety goes away pretty quickly. Some owners are driving over 70 miles on a charge. There’s been coverage of the car only getting 60 miles, or under, in certain driving conditions, but it’s not a big deal for owners.
• Some of its EV competitors have stronger range, but it does sit at the top of the EPA’s fuel efficiency rating with 112 miles per gallon equivalent. Owners are testing it out under various conditions while studying the dashboard gauges and energy meter. Typical city driving, with a lot of rolling on fairly flat terrain, is getting very strong range, which alleviates some of their concerns.
• Dealers are offering sales discounts to buyers, and plenty of them are signing the deal for $1,000 or more under MSRP. The downside is that it’s sometimes difficult for consumers to gain access to their car – there’s not a lot of them on dealer lots.
• Calling it the i car in the US is not really clicking in. Several of the owners call it the i-MiEV, which is what it’s called in Asia and Europe and was referred to in the US for a long time before it was launched here.
