Friday 16 July 2010

Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric, coming late 2011, about $30,000 before gov't incentives

By H. Darr Beiser, USAT
Mitsubishi says it, too, will have a pure-battery car in the U.S. before long -- well, fall of next year. Called i-MiEV (innovative Mitsubishi Electric Vehicle), it'll be more than a year behind the Nissan Leaf's planned U.S. launch late this year.
Even so, it'll be among the first wave of true electrics aimed at showroom shoppers rather than fleet operators. Mitsu forecasts a price of about $30,000 before any government clean-car incentives are applied. Nissan's Leaf is $32,780 before the federal $7,500 tax credit. Nissan notes that at least three states -- California, Georgia and Oregon -- offer their own tax credits.
GM says it'll have the Chevy Volt electric sedan out this December, roughly same time as Leaf. Volt runs entirely on electricity, but unlike the others it carries a small gasoline engine that kicks in to run a generator for power when the batteries get low. Leaf and i-MiEV both claim about 100 miles on a charge. Volt is 40 miles, then the gas engine takes over.

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