Day 3 Eco-Run: Final Ride
Today, the AJAC Eco-Run was brief. Each writer was assigned a final car to drive, which we took 30 km into Montreal from northern Laval. My ride?
Mitsubishi i-MiEV
   Mitsubishi i-MiEV – AJAC Eco-Run. Click image to enlarge |
What I like: 1) After sleek rides from Lexus and Mazda sexying up the green experience, it was refreshing to be in something unabashedly goofy looking. 2) The long wheelbase means room for four in a car that looks like it may not survive a fight with a Bixi Bike. 3) Those distanced wheels, positioned on the corners of the car like that, also provide a very stable experience in turns and on sudden u-turns (of which we stole two when the directions weren’t clear and the clock was ticking). 3) The u-turns were only possible courtesy of the miniscule turning circle. 4) There’s not much horsepower but plenty of torque. We were on Montreal’s never-dull Autoroute Décarie and fit in wherever we needed to, whenever we needed to — even in the sluggish Eco mode, something necessary for Green Jersey contention. 5) The name is a ballsy acronym, standing for Mitsubishi innovative Electric Vehicle.
 Mitsubishi i-MiEV – AJAC Eco-Run. Click image to enlarge |
Complaints: 1) I felt the bumps. This is built for city streets and can do over 120 km/h, but it doesn’t love city potholes at that speed. 2) There’s no cruise control; of course you’ll never take this out on the highway for serious distances and nobody uses those on trips to the grocery store — but there’s no other way to win the vaunted Green Jersey. 3) The mirrors were hard to adjust to. I doubt that I’m the first to find that, given that it comes with a reverse-view camera when you could almost reach out behind and feel the obstacles there.
What’s most interesting: The designers were able to adapt the i-MiEV from an existing gasoline-powered car that had already proven its mettle on the city streets of Japan. So the car was partially complete before they’d even started. That’s partially how (and how quickly) they were able to produce Canada’s least expensive four-seat EV.
