Energy Matters Forums

This thread will document my experience as a new owner of a Mitsubishi I-miev all electric lithium battery powered car.

Considering there was only 45 of them sold in QLD. Information & local real world reviews from owners is a little thin online. Especially from anyone charging off grid. So I will do my best to share as much info as I can .

Below is what the car looks like. We will pick up ours next Monday.



Kurt

Well done Kurt

I notice it has a huge front glass area, which might mean a fair bit of AC use in summer.
Are you planning on letting the charging system do its own thing, or will you add some extra monitoring gear youself?

Yes although vision out the front is Very good for a small car there is a lot of glass and potential heat. Although a larger than normal strip at the top of the front window is factory tinted very very dark almost black. The side windows are also factory tinted quite dark - darker than a typical factory in glass tint. This along with a white painted exterior there isn't much more I could do. So will have to see how I go.

Apparently the electric Air conditioner /climate control is very effective on the I-miev (Mitsubishi electric make some of the most energy efficient home AC units if that's anything to go by) So hopefully its a good one. Though I cant see it consuming anything less than say 800w or 1kwh or so over a 1hr trip.

The heater on the other hand is a let down . Some people call it the kettle. Its a 5000w element that heats a tank of water (although thermostatically controlled ) Its just like a conventional car so it then gets pumped into a heater core. They have included in seat electric warmers that apparently only use 70w or so and do a good job of keeping you warm if you don't want to use the hungry cabin heater.

If I find the heater to be an Issue with consumption. I will have a reverse cycle valve installed into the AC unit. As it might be worth the trouble (though In QLD cooling is more common than heating)

As for instrumentation the factory dashboard layout is basic but quite logical for everyday use.

You basically have a big analog amp meter in the middle of the dash. When the car is off the needle is in the center. As you accelerate or use power the needle moves to the right and the range of movement its divided up into 3 sections 16kW,32kW,48kW (the motors max consumption is 48kw) When you regenerate power Amp meter needle can swing to the left from the zero point in the center to 16kw!! (yes it has very powerful Regen ability) I like this analog guage as you can just try and keep your consumption in the green as neer to zero center line as you can . It makes a quick calculation of your real time Kw consumption easy while driving.They make it look smart and stylish but its basically just an Amp meter

The SOC gauge is a digital bar cut into 16 segments (the battery is 16kwh capacity) each segment represents 1kwh. If you use all the power the car puts its self into turtle mode and gives you 10km of range at slow speed to get to a charger.

I would like to gain access to the CAN bus and from what I have read you can get access to individual cells to monitor health.People are working on a plug in divice to read all this info. I have asked Mitsubishi to provide me with a cell report and capacity test from there Canbus reader and pack tester.

To start with I will just use the on board AC-DC charger it has a max output of 3300w but it gets a signal from a little box on the external charger cord to tell it what rate to charge at . The AU version has been set to 9.4A around 2200w. There is a modification to the charge cord box that you can do to make it adjustable from 1A - 13A in 1A increments. I like this modification as I can charge slowly if I like or if I don't have much PV power to spare.

The direct DC fixed charging stations that plug into the other side of the car (two fuel flaps) can charge the pack in 20mins to 80% they must be pumping 30kw or so into the battery

Another member of a Ev forum showed me a pic today of his emergency E-jerry can It consists of 4 x160Ah LiFePO4 cells for 12v = 2.048kW and some huge Anderson plugs and thick cables connected a asian no name pure sine way inverter 5000w. It works fine on the factory 2200w charger and even a modified factory charge lead at 3300w .Runs the lithium's down at 200A just over 1c This adds an extra 15km- 20km or so to the tank.

I might look into the range extension options in the future. If the trip from Brisbane to Sunshine coast hinterland become to taxing on the battery's SOC. The factory charger works fine down to 90v and its constant current so at 120v it will just output 1100w and around 750w at 90v. Not sure if I can use that to any advantage off grid.

My wife asked me If we needed to fit a duel battery to the I-miev. We have dual battery system in both our old cars to run a 32lt Engle car compressor fridge/freezer . Used to transport fresh food from Brisbane to sunshine coast house. I first thought about it then just laughed. I can simply plug the fridge into the cigaret lighter plug and the 12v of the I-miev is powered by a on board DC/DC converter from the 16kwh pack. My reply to my wife was no dual battery and it will run the little 36w fridge for a very very long time



Kurt

This is what the analog amp meter for the dash looks like .You can see the three white lines on the meter to the right that indicate a consumption of 16kW,32kW,48kW. the aim is to try and keep the needle below 16kw once moving for max range.

Speed is a digital display in the center and you can see the 16 bar SOC (fuel gauge to the left) On the right hand side is the trip meter and also a (range remaining number) This range remaining number is calculated based on your last 25km of driving history but is always updating. The longest trip I have read about was one owner doing 190km on the one charge , country roads most likely 80kph or so. Typical range with some AC and motorway driving is 110km and worst (Canada - 20C heater on night driving) 75 - 80km. I typically drive under 50 km return trips with the odd 80 -100km trip so should be fine.



This is what the motor looks like .Two moving parts (two bearings) Its liquid cooled to .


Lifting the trunk cover this is what you see (motor controller on the right and onboard 3.3kw charge on the left. Vacuum pump very right and coolant for motor and controller on the very left.


Single fixed 1 speed gearbox (only servicing needing it 750ml of auto transition oil in the gearbox at 115,000km


underside view of the car. Battery's are in A box under the floor . you can see the motor and gearbox in the rear that sit under the charger and controller. All very short cable runs being RWD and mid mount battery


This is what the lithium cells look like 50AH each and there is 88 of them for 326v. at 50ah or 16.3kwh. They are a different chemistry than lifpo4 and have a nominal voltage of 3.7v. They are charged to a conservative 3.95V max is 4.2v from memory


The cells are then grouped into banks of 4 like below


Basic layout


Kurt

The question was asked in another thread about public charging points.

Below is a link to a web page listing most of them. Along with a iphone app to help you find one near you on the road.

http://www.chargepoint.com.au/


My wife wants to visit the the dual free charging station at our local Natural Food Store at Forest Glen on the sunshine coast. She wanted to visit the shop anyhow.

I will also check out the free charging station in the King George Square in Brisbane.Roma Street exit of Brisbane City Council’s King George Square car park. I can park on the 1st floor just neer the entrance (usualy reserved parks) and the parking ticket is 1/2 price while I charge for free and do my shopping:D

A correction on my comment about only 48 I-mievs in QLD its a lot less than that. The facts are that there is 2,469,255 registered cars in QLD, only 48 are electric in total.!!!

Kurt

Thanks for the link.

One thing I noticed is that most of the stations are at or to do with Nissan dealers in Queensland, which I thought was unusual that Mitsubishi didn't have any dealers with chargepoints.

In the whole of Queensland, there were 4 in Townsville, 3 on the Sunshine Coast, 3 in and around Brisbane, and just 1 only on the Gold Coast. Certainly not looking good for anyone wanting to get around S E Qld in a electric car.

I would've thought that if Nissan bothered, I would have thought Mitsubishi and Holden (Volt) would have made a similar effort to sell their electric vehicles too.

The thing is Most people inducing myself wont charge when out. Most of my charging will be done overnight (city house) On off peek rates and while I sleep . Wake up next day and tank is ful for another 100km + driving. What people forget is the average car spends most likely 95% of its life sitting there doing nothing . in the garage and that's when you charge it.

Yes Nissan have few charge points and its free for anyone with a EV to use them .No matter what brand of car you have you can use them for free. You get a little swipe card and you can use it day or nite public has easy access to them.

Part of the reason why there is so few charge stations is there just isn't enough EV's on the roads to support the need for more. As mentioned above there is only 48 registered electric cars in QLD and over 2million registered conventional cars in QLD. So you wont exactly be fighting anyone for a charge space.

Remember most people who have a EV will use it as there everyday run around car . to drive to work or drop kids at school, errands. Try resetting your trip meter on your car every day and make a note of the km you travel each day. If its under 100km (most people travel this or less) Then your fine just charge at night.If its over 100km then you have to look if there is a charging opportunity during the day or perhaps a EV isn't for you.

Kurt

I was really surprised that there weren't any other dealerships that set up chargepoints, other than the Nissan dealers, and there appeared to be large gaps.

I guess it all goes back to what came first, the chicken or the egg, and do dealers put in chargepoints to sell more electric cars, or do they wait until they sell more of them ? .... with only 48 registered electric cars in Qld, chances are there won't be too many added too soon.

I think they need to build charge stations in some of these shopping centres, rather than at dealerships that are often a 'million miles' away from where the owners want to be waiting around at the time. Might be a good marketing opportunity for the Westfield's to put in chargepoints in their centres and promoting their 'green credentials' with it too. Charging bays close to the entry doors would no doubt win over some of those 48 electric vehicle owners to go to their centres instead of any others.

But you're right though, how many regular households do anywhere near 100km in a day ?? i.e. take the kids to school, pick up some groceries, go home, then go out and pick up the kids from school in the arvo... what would that be here, less than 50km, even though schools and shops are more than 6km in any direction from my place, and I don't have the kids to do the school trips.

Just thinking back to last week when we did the weekly shopping run with detours, it was still less than 90km. This shopping trip was from Logan Village, to Slacks Creek, to Loganholme, to Beenleigh then back to Logan Village, in other words a lot further than most would do on a regular day.

That all said, if not for trips that I do away that are well in excess of 100km, a electric car has a lot going for it.

A lot of people have two cars in the family anyhow. If one is a ev for 95% of the driving and the 2nd is a gas burner then you have the odd long trip coverd . We will keep our 4wd diesel ute to cover that need and sell our 4cyl run about.

I just parked our car at the local shopping centre and I'm in our car on my iPhone. There is a 15a ip66 power outlet on the wall ne'er my car hmmm handy .

Kurt

I'd expect that early users of petrol vehicles would have had much the same trouble getting fuel.

I'm pretty sure that in the very early days, the only way to buy petrol was in drums (roughly 20 litres I think they were) no doubt it would have been fairly expensive. And of course not every town would have had a store with drums of petrol sitting around waiting for the owner of one of very few cars on the road to buy it.

It's very much a "chicken and egg" problem really. Look at how the availability of LPG went - It's really only in the past 15 or so years that people with LPG cars haven't needed to carry a list of places where they could buy fuel. Even diesel has been similar - it's only quite recently that diesel has been on "normal" pumps under the roof intended for filling cars rather than only on a pump in the open intended for use by large trucks. It all comes down to there having to be demand for the fuel in order to make it worthwhile for anyone to sell it.