txe4

Got £2030 net at WBAC, and kept the type1 cable (another £50 at ebay). Pretty pleased with that for such a shabby car.

Bit of a fiasco. I had the board fixed (£1150) and then something else broke. Expensive.
I've bought a Smart ForFour EV and the faithful old iMiev is here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334493389361
We've never had another car we enjoyed as much as the iMiev and I'm not sure we'll ever have anything as delightfully simple, honest, and efficient again. No tears - it's just a machine - but sad day.

Got £2030 net at WBAC, and kept the type1 cable (another £50 at ebay). Pretty pleased with that for such a shabby car.

Got £2030 net at WBAC, and kept the type1 cable (another £50 at ebay). Pretty pleased with that for such a shabby car.

Got £2030 net at WBAC, and kept the type1 cable (another £50 at ebay). Pretty pleased with that for such a shabby car.

Got £2030 net at WBAC, and kept the type1 cable (another £50 at ebay). Pretty pleased with that for such a shabby car.

Got £2030 net at WBAC, and kept the type1 cable (another £50 at ebay). Pretty pleased with that for such a shabby car.

Got £2030 net at WBAC, and kept the type1 cable (another £50 at ebay). Pretty pleased with that for such a shabby car.

Got £2030 net at WBAC, and kept the type1 cable (another £50 at ebay). Pretty pleased with that for such a shabby car.

It's broken

Either the on-board charger, the DC-DC converter, or both. Fault codes for both. Drives but won't charge.
This was always the risk - it's probably too tired to be worth paying to have it trailered to someone who can fix it, paying to fix it, then getting it back again.

Ah well, it's been a great and faithful car for several years. Bit stuck now.

Just a heads up, the V5 picture includes the DRN so anyone could "sell" it..
 
Hope the smart is as good!

The Misubishi i-MiEV is an electric version of the Mitsubishi i kei car.
 
It was sold here by Mitsubishi, and also rebadged with very minor changes as the Peugeot Ion and Citroen C-Zero.
 

 
I'm here to argue that this thread is allowed in the main forum, and not Modern Shite:
They are SHITE. Rattly, tinny, tiny, plasticy, cheap. It's a proper mingebag motoring experience. Proper old-fashioned RUST. If you get the Citroen version, the interior is BROWN. It is TINY. It will turn around on a road that my "proper" car barely fits down.  REAR WHEEL DRIVE. Bigger tyres at the back than the front, and traction control, in an attempt to make it "boring" - but it will stick its arse out if you drive like enough of a twat. Although you still need to put down £4k to get one, there is no tax or pez to buy, power cost is fuck-all cos it's so tiny and slow (think 2p/mile), and unless you're unlucky there's not much to repair, so the total running costs are right down there with base model Corsas. With 49kW/180Nm, and a throttle curve set with preserving the life of the skinny tyres, and gossamer-thin drivetrain components as #1 priority, it's SLOW. There's none of your LEAF/Zoe traffic light grand prix action - you mash the pedal and 2 seconds later it starts to shift properly. Although the aircon is ferocious, the heater is a complete joke, being both highly thirsty and barely warm, guaranteeing you'll FREEZE YOUR ARSE OFF IN WINTER.  
Lots of it is pleasingly old-fashioned. For example, the rear brakes are drums, and the ignition is straight off the pez version, including having to turn the key to "start" and let go in order to "start" driving. The stereo, although having "modern" features like bluetooth and (broken, of course) iphone integration, is a DIN unit - something we haven't had in a car for more than 10 years. Dash is very simple - you don't even get a clock.
 
The heating controls are beautiful in their simplicity. Knob for fan speed, knob for temperature, knob for setting where the air goes. Plenty of airflow is provided - it cools feet far better than a £150k top-of-the-range Tesla, and you don't have to take your eyes off the road and twat about with a screen to get it going.
 
A very bizarre PSA afterthought is fitted - somewhere in its guts is a mobile phone, and holding down a "Citroen" button on the dash will call someone at Citroen who is supposed to summon assistance if you have broken it or crashed it. Another button next to it, this one red, will supposedly call the emergency services... I need to find which fuse turns this crap off, as it continues (spookily) with the car powered off completely and everything dead. Embarassing having to tell the Citroen emergency chap that you don't want to talk to him, got him by mistake, and don't know how to hang up... modern tech, but 200% SHITE.
 
There is some stuff that can go wrong and would really ruin your day - aircon compressor failure will stop you from charging and the part is £1500; battery pack failure, although rare, would write the vehicle off, the brake pipes are routed above the battery so changing them is a battery-off job (£600+), and parts availability isn't brilliant despite the relatively recent end of sales. Their reputation for reliability is pretty good though - certainly better than the notoriously flakey Zoe or the hilariously-BL Tesla.
 
It's not crusty yet, but there are clear signs underneath that it's not going to last indefinitely. Surface rust is everywhere (though fortunately not the brake lines) - as others noted in the Kei cars thread, the rustproofing on these low-end Japanese things is not the best.
 
They're mostly pretty old now, and the battery tech is old [pedantic point - there are 2 batteries available, a larger one that degrades faster, and a newer smaller one that supposedly degrades slower] so a significant amount of the original battery capacity is gone forever. Mine claims 73% with a CAN bus dongle connected and app running; the guessometer still says 60 miles when charged to full, but the first couple of "pips" on the "petrol" gauge vanish very quickly. The realistic range for one is probably 40 miles in winter, 50 in summer, driven moderately and avoiding >50mph. The battery is tiny so it's entirely realistic to use most of the battery in the morning doing schoolruns and errands, then charge most of the way back to full before doing evening schoolruns, even on the 10A granny cable. It'll take 14A from a proper charging point, which I should probably get.
 
You really can't do long journeys at all - it's tall, and using lots of throttle is inefficient (the faster you drain a battery, the less it has to give), so keeping up with even HGVs on the motorway is ruinous for range. It's for local journeys. A motorway trip would generally require a charge at every other service area passed - in some places, at every single one - so a single charger failure on the (appalling) "Electric Highway" would ruin your day. Getting one home from a distant purchase is not simple and probably best done on a trailer.
 
Despite the slowness and shiteness it is huge fun to drive. You're higher up than you think so you can see quite well, it steers well (now the ditchfinders have the usual EV "5 psi over the recommended" in rather than being halfway to flat), you never have to worry about gears, the stereo sounds great, and the awesome turning circle and tiny size make any kind of narrow gaps or parking a joy.
 
Why? I can't quite justify it financially - we own a pair of thoroughly acceptable cars already - but one of them is too wide, big, valuable, and "bling"for stuff like going to Lidl and doing the school run, especially on the tiny narrow roads here. The other isn't automatic. I enjoy the narrowness when passing things on tiny roads - the "jesus he'll never get through there!" look on other drivers' faces. The cheapness, batteredness, and tiredness of it means the shiter's total relaxation in the face of touch parking, carpark dings, bashed wingmirrors, etc. Have really missed that having modernz. I also feel like I'm not advancing the date of cambelt changes or headgasket failure, decreasing the value of it, or wasting petrol, when going on a "pointless" journey. Very pleasant. Wife acceptance factor is very high thanks to high seating position, small size, small turning circle, automatic, and "meh I don't care if you bash it" relaxation. 

 
 

Bit of a fiasco. I had the board fixed (£1150) and then something else broke. Expensive.
I've bought a Smart ForFour EV and the faithful old iMiev is here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334493389361
We've never had another car we enjoyed as much as the iMiev and I'm not sure we'll ever have anything as delightfully simple, honest, and efficient again. No tears - it's just a machine - but sad day.

It's broken

Either the on-board charger, the DC-DC converter, or both. Fault codes for both. Drives but won't charge.
This was always the risk - it's probably too tired to be worth paying to have it trailered to someone who can fix it, paying to fix it, then getting it back again.

Ah well, it's been a great and faithful car for several years. Bit stuck now.

Update.

It's still shite.

It still works.
It hasn't FTP'd again.


It is getting quite tired now. The battery is degrading, and I'm not sure if it will still do what we need ("go into town and back with the heater on") next winter. Rapid charging is no longer rapid - it tops out at about 7kW, so ~an hour for a "rapid" charge.

In places where it's scraped and dinged, the rot is setting in. Some plastic trim parts have fallen off and now decorate the verges of Yorkshire, wherever they fell. The alloys are awful, look awful, and don't retain air - every few months the tyre place has a go at remove + clean + seal + replace, but shortly afterwards one tyre or another will be going flat. The aircon compressor is dying - it sounds like a diesel engine all on its own. 
The cack-brown-and-hard-plastics interior remains as AWESOME as ever.
 
I've gone so far as to look around at other small EVs available to buy new, but they're all shit (not shite) compared to it - much wider, and yet less useful for carting stuff about because of stupidly-shaped boots/hatches. And £25/30/35k.  Got some financial stuff going on which means a bought-new EV would be preferable, but I just don't want a wider car. With the price of petrol up 20% and the price of power up 300%, I'm not sure the finances *really* make sense - but both wife and I greatly prefer EV for local journeys.

Bit of a fiasco. I had the board fixed (£1150) and then something else broke. Expensive.
I've bought a Smart ForFour EV and the faithful old iMiev is here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334493389361
We've never had another car we enjoyed as much as the iMiev and I'm not sure we'll ever have anything as delightfully simple, honest, and efficient again. No tears - it's just a machine - but sad day.

IDK, I've had two offers of £750 within a few minutes of listing.

WBAC is north of £2k, with the cosmetic stuff declared...and they'd probably not notice the cables missing, which is another ebay £200 or so... but no doubt they will cut their offer in half when they actually see it, and if I turn them down then I have to limp the thing down to them and back home again. It cut out on the Mrs while turning right across an A-road with the kids in the back, which is why it's leaving the household.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225000591235 got almost 3 grand for a broken one quite recently, dahn sarf
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275282095818 got £1300 for one that was actually working, just had been pointlessly dumped and left to rot (grrr what a tit), but in the wilds of Scotland.

My gut says £1500 is about right. Chance of £2k if people get carried away, chance of £900 if I'm unlucky. 

I think if WBAC comes out at £1300 or more than I'll take it, to not have to deal with dickheads, not upset the neighbours with loads of shit cars outside, and to have a nice simple "insurance ends on car 1, insurance starts on car 2" arrangement. I'll feel not-too-bad about it if I get back the £1150 I just pissed up the wall on repairs plus a bit.

I'll do a Smart ForFour EQ thread in modernz once I've had it a bit. I think it's as near to a Miev as you can get new: rare, 4 seats, RWD, shit range, rear seats fold flat and you can get a fridge in even though it's tiny.
 

Bit of a fiasco. I had the board fixed (£1150) and then something else broke. Expensive.
I've bought a Smart ForFour EV and the faithful old iMiev is here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334493389361
We've never had another car we enjoyed as much as the iMiev and I'm not sure we'll ever have anything as delightfully simple, honest, and efficient again. No tears - it's just a machine - but sad day.

It's broken

Either the on-board charger, the DC-DC converter, or both. Fault codes for both. Drives but won't charge.
This was always the risk - it's probably too tired to be worth paying to have it trailered to someone who can fix it, paying to fix it, then getting it back again.

Ah well, it's been a great and faithful car for several years. Bit stuck now.

It's broken

Either the on-board charger, the DC-DC converter, or both. Fault codes for both. Drives but won't charge.
This was always the risk - it's probably too tired to be worth paying to have it trailered to someone who can fix it, paying to fix it, then getting it back again.

Ah well, it's been a great and faithful car for several years. Bit stuck now.

It's broken

Either the on-board charger, the DC-DC converter, or both. Fault codes for both. Drives but won't charge.
This was always the risk - it's probably too tired to be worth paying to have it trailered to someone who can fix it, paying to fix it, then getting it back again.

Ah well, it's been a great and faithful car for several years. Bit stuck now.

The Turkish half of Cyprus is FULL of 70s and 80s Renaults.
 

 
And look at this thing of beauty:
 

 
Quite a bit of not-for-sale-in-first-world-markets Chinese stuff too, like this:

 

The Turkish half of Cyprus is FULL of 70s and 80s Renaults.
 

 
And look at this thing of beauty:
 

 
Quite a bit of not-for-sale-in-first-world-markets Chinese stuff too, like this:

 

The Turkish half of Cyprus is FULL of 70s and 80s Renaults.
 

 
And look at this thing of beauty:
 

 
Quite a bit of not-for-sale-in-first-world-markets Chinese stuff too, like this:

 

The Turkish half of Cyprus is FULL of 70s and 80s Renaults.
 

 
And look at this thing of beauty:
 

 
Quite a bit of not-for-sale-in-first-world-markets Chinese stuff too, like this: