100 miles?

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I'm driving a Mitsubishi iMiEV as my main car at the moment. Like the Nissan LEAF, this has a claimed range of 100 miles. In reality, this equates to a real world range of around 75 miles if I'm driving carefully - i.e. top speed of around 60mph and gentle acceleration. This can drop to nearer 50 miles if I'm driving like a lunatic.

Me? Drive like a lunatic? Surely not, officer...

In the winter when it gets really cold, the range does suffer. The coldest it got for me last winter was -4°F (-20°c) and the range dropped to around 50-55 miles when driven carefully and down as low as 28 miles when driven harder.

That said, the Mitsubishi iMiEV is not the same car as the LEAF. The range on my G-Wiz drops only by around 6-10 miles in really cold weather, but that is because it has a pretty efficient battery heating system built in.

When discussing range, I normally recommend that people work out how many miles they usually drive in a day and then double it. The figure they get is the minimum range of electric car they should buy. So if you're usual daily drive is 50 miles, buy an electric car with a 100 mile range. If your usual daily drive is 20 miles, you need a 40 mile minimum range on your electric car.

That way, you've got enough range in hand for the occasional emergency, for the odd diversion and for the time you just plain forgot to plug the car in (and yes, that does happen). It also means you never have to worry about range. Simple.
 
MikeBoxwell said:
I'm driving a Mitsubishi iMiEV as my main car at the moment. Like the Nissan LEAF, this has a claimed range of 100 miles. In reality, this equates to a real world range of around 75 miles if I'm driving carefully - i.e. top speed of around 60mph and gentle acceleration. This can drop to nearer 50 miles if I'm driving like a lunatic.

I think iMiEV's 100 mile range is too optimistic - what with just 16kwh battery. I don't think they will get 100 mile EPA certification even with LA04 circuit - probably 65 to 70 miles max.
 
evnow said:
I think iMiEV's 100 mile range is too optimistic - what with just 16kwh battery. I don't think they will get 100 mile EPA certification even with LA04 circuit - probably 65 to 70 miles max.

Didn't the iMIEV end up offering two different battery packs - a 16kwh one or a 20kwh one? I don't know under what circumstances you got which.
 
mwalsh said:
evnow said:
I think iMiEV's 100 mile range is too optimistic - what with just 16kwh battery. I don't think they will get 100 mile EPA certification even with LA04 circuit - probably 65 to 70 miles max.

Didn't the iMIEV end up offering two different battery packs - a 16kwh one or a 20kwh one? I don't know under what circumstances you got which.

16KW on the 2009 version...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imiev
 
evnow said:
I think iMiEV's 100 mile range is too optimistic - what with just 16kwh battery. I don't think they will get 100 mile EPA certification even with LA04 circuit - probably 65 to 70 miles max.
Don't forget that the iMiEV is a much smaller car than the LEAF and has a smaller, less powerful motor. I believe the 100 miles is based on the LA04 circuit. I'm getting far more than 65-70 miles out of the car at the moment.

I had a chance to talk to the technical development team at Nissan UK last month. They were very cagey about the real range for the Nissan LEAF because it really will depend on conditions, how its driven and so on. That is especially true in places like the UK which can get cold in the winter, which does have an impact on range.

When I'm asked about range on electric cars, I always recommend that people work out how far they normally drive in a day and double that figure. They should then choose an electric car that has that range: so if your daily drive is 25 miles, choose a car with a 50 mile range.

Then you never have to worry about range. It doesn't matter if you forget to plug the car in one night. It doesn't matter if you have an emergency and have to go somewhere straight away. It doesn't matter if you need to make an extra trip out. It doesn't matter if you need to make a diversion: whatever happens, you then know you'll always have ample range to do whatever it is you want to do.
 
MikeBoxwell said:
Don't forget that the iMiEV is a much smaller car than the LEAF and has a smaller, less powerful motor. I believe the 100 miles is based on the LA04 circuit. I'm getting more than 65-70 miles out of the car at the moment.

I don't think iMiEV has published a LA04 range. Their 100 mile is from the Japanese 10-15 cycle - which is a lot less realistic (in the US urban areas).

http://green.autoblog.com/2010/05/04/more-range-anxiety-with-the-mitsubishi-imiev/

Mitsubishi quotes a 100 mile range for the iMiEV under the Japanese 10-15 cycle which is notoriously optimistic.
 
I think the iMiEV got a claimed range of 200km (125 miles) on the 10-15 cycle, which I think is based on getting four Japanese people to push the car everywhere. Here in the UK they're telling people that the car has an 80 mile range and that is realistic.
 
MikeBoxwell said:
I think the iMiEV got a claimed range of 200km (125 miles) on the 10-15 cycle, which I think is based on getting four Japanese people to push the car everywhere. Here in the UK they're telling people that the car has an 80 mile range and that is realistic.


Actually, I've checked and you're right - the iMiEV was 160km (100 miles) on the Japanese 10-15 cycle. Apologies.
 
MikeBoxwell said:
I think the iMiEV got a claimed range of 200km (125 miles) on the 10-15 cycle, which I think is based on getting four Japanese people to push the car everywhere. Here in the UK they're telling people that the car has an 80 mile range and that is realistic.

LOL. Yes, the 10-15 cycle is absurd.

Anyway, everywhere I search I only see 100 mile range (160km) on 10-15 for iMiEV. The following is from Mitsu website.

http://www.mitsubishi-motors.co.nz/microsite/imiev_v01/news_10.asp
 
Back
Top