Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car - front - December 2008

Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car - front - December 2008

Adding to our coverage of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, there is news today that the company intends to lower the price to 2 million yen. In case you didn’t have your currency exchange rate calculations handy, 2 million yen is about $22,000 dollars, give or take a few bucks. The price reduction is really phase two of Mitsubishi’s future plan for the i-MiEV in the next three years.

i-MiEV Police Vehicle

i-MiEV Police Vehicle

As we reported earlier, Mitsubishi announced Monday that they will be providing a fleet of 50 i-MiEV vehicles to a project being conducted in a suburb of Montreal, Canada. Raising the profile of the i-MiEV seems to be the first phase of Mitsubishi’s future plan for their fairly popular electric minicar. The second step could be considered to be the real world data that will be taken from projects like the one in Canada. Then, The Mainichi News is reporting that the production targets for 2010 will be raised from the expected 5,000 units to a more significant 8,500 units. That is a seventy percent increase in production for the year 2010.

Mitsubishi isn’t stopping there; news is also circulating that they will be increasing 2012 production projections to 30,000 units in 2012. 30,000 units was actually previously reported as being the expected target for 2013, so we can see the company is taking an aggressive plan of action for the future. According to our partners over at AllCarsElectric.com, A Mitsubishi official told the Mainichi News, " Following the production hike, we want to reduce the price of the car to around 2 million yen in several years, which is about the same as gasoline vehicles."

Bottom line—Mitsubishi may be creeping into the lead in the minicar EV space with their current success with the i-MiEV and the significant amount of attention it has been getting lately. We personally can’t wait to see what the real world testing yields in terms of reliability and performance data.

 

Be sure to check out the further coverage of the i-MiEV production increase and price reduction over at AllCarsElectric.com. Then check out our past coverage on Mitsubishi and the i-MiEV over the last year.