http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/i-bought-a-used-electric-vehicle-got-a-plug-we-can-use-column I Bought a Used Electric Vehicle—Here's How It's Worked Out So Far [Oct 2 2015] By AARON ROBINSON
[image http://media.caranddriver.com/images/media/51/aaron-robinson-mitsubishi-i-miev-photo-662198-s-original.jpg Our odd experiment in EV cheapness. Welcome, insect! ] Got a plug I can use? My wife, Tina, watched the new owner of her old Volkswagen Golf reverse down our driveway and putter off. Then she went into the house and lay down on the floor and cried. In an effort to comfort her, I fanned her with the stack of fresh $100 bills, a stack that was even bigger than I had dared hope when I put up the Craigslist ad with its highly optimistic price. But it was no use. That Golf was a steel box of memories. She bought it new after graduate school and always planned to keep it until the wheels fell off. After 104,000 miles, only the little “VW” wheel badges had fallen off, parting company for the gutter somewhere along the line. The Golf had been a good car, a dependable car, her car, but it had grown old and a little infirm, and she agreed the time had come for a fresh face. A seat heater and Bluetooth were required. A half-hour later, the shiva apparently over, I watched her drive off in her new car, which was silent but for a silly, transporter-beam hum from behind a front wheel. The noise always reminds me that I still have to get behind that wheel and, per some instructions I read on a forum, unplug the wire to the speaker making the sound. Yes, there’s a forum for the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. “The what?” That’s what everybody says when you tell them you bought a Mitsubishi i-MiEV, which is variously pronounced “Eye-Me-Evv” or “Eye-Meev” but never as Mitsubishi intended it, which is “Eye-My-Eee-Vee.” Hardly anybody we’ve met has ever heard of this little electric orb or seen one in person, which makes it like a lot of cars we’ve owned over the years, from the World War II ambulance to the Mazda Bongo Friendee. As you’ve probably guessed, buying the Eye-My-Eee-Vee was my idea. Tina likes compact hatchbacks, but I wanted the Mitsubishi. The main reason is that I like the car, having previously driven both it and its predecessor, the Japanese home-market Mitsubishi i, a K-class minicar with a turbocharged 659-cc gasoline three-cylinder engine under the rear floor. It looks like the future—not exactly the car of David Starr, Space Ranger, perhaps, but the one his housekeeper drives—and its packaging is brilliant. With the 66-hp motor in back and the 16-kWh battery in the floor, the i-MiEV carries a lot of its 2600 pounds in the keel, meaning the car is anything but tipsy, even on its 145/65 front tires. I’m not here to proselytize, but no way, no how can you beat the i-MiEV for cheap motoring. The Chicago used-car dealership where I found it online wanted $8500 for this loaded 2012-model SE with the Premium navigation/Bluetooth package and 2616 miles. Plum purple wasn’t my first color choice, but it was what they had. True, our monthly electric bill has jumped by more than 50 percent since the i-MiEV arrived. Last month it was $74, meaning we drove more than a thousand miles at a cost of about $26 in juice. Its range is between 50 and 70 miles, depending on how you drive it. Obviously, if you’re driving more than 70 miles every day, you need a different car. Or, better yet, a different life. Meanwhile, we’ve driven the i-MiEV all over Los Angeles and have yet to be stranded. It is definitely not all the car we need in every situation, but we’ve found it enough of a car to work just fine about 95 percent of the time. An EV isn’t for everyone. It forces its driver to confront the ravenous energy appetite of even the smallest automobile. Switch on the Mitsu’s air conditioning, for example, and the car’s indicated range drops by five miles. The A/C in conventional cars also sucks energy, but we don’t notice because hydrocarbon fuel is plentiful and relatively cheap. Driving an electric car is a constant exercise in energy management, sometimes presenting us with the choice of being cool on a hot day or running short of watts in Watts. A recent study by some economists determined that EVs, rather than getting tax breaks, should be taxed at higher rates in the coal-dependent East and Midwest for the indirect air pollution they cause. Out here in La-La Land, though, our grid is more diversified with wind, solar, hydroelectric, and natural-gas generation. The Union of Concerned Scientists produced a study in 2012 saying that the i-MiEV on California electricity produces the same greenhouse-gas emissions as a car with an 88-mpg combined fuel-economy rating. In coal-heavy Michigan, however, the i-MiEV is only a 43-mpg car. We didn’t buy it as much to be green as to be cheap, though zero emissions is a wonderful side benefit of not cold-starting an engine or idling it at lights during the mostly short trips my wife takes. And, as it occurred to me recently as I lugged all 17 sticky, sloshing quarts of used motor oil to the recycler following a routine service to my Lamborghini Espada, there are no oil changes on an EV or much of anything else to service. California regulators like the i-MiEV, going so far as to grant all EVs free access to the carpool lanes. But does Tina like it? “It’s definitely quirky,” was about all I could get out of her. Well, give it time. 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