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imiev - the first electric shite?


txe4

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On 5/29/2018 at 2:19 PM, mk2_craig said:

The organisation I work for took ten Ions on a 3 year lease in early 2013. Thats been renewed at least once and as far as I know they're all still with us. I think we must be trying to get our moneys worth, the original agreement was probably based on a list price of almost 30 grand each!!

 

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I agree with all of the pros and cons listed above. The lack of clock annoys me though I suppose you could always chuck in any old DIN size radio with that feature. I love being able to lower the window to listen for approaching traffic when trying to exit a minor road with crap visibility.

 

Seldom for sale but the last one I saw a few months back was 4995 with hardly any mileage.

Ours have now all gone back with some replaced by electric Smart ForFours, others by petrol 108s because the leasing costs are far lower. 
 

I never really noticed any battery degradation on the Ion allocated to my section. We probably covered something like 25,000 miles in just over six years. 
 

The Smart is quite a nice car and definitely not shite, though range is no better. Not sure we’ll hang onto this one for as long. 

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10 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

What kind of fruit takes the charging lead out of the car?

Me... left it plugged in at the office charger. I’d assumed (wrongly) that there would be a cable in the car.

Call it first-time teething issues! Perhaps I should be called somewhatfoolish?

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8 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

The i-Miev has some pretty good onboard battery diagnostics from what I've read over on the French Car Forums.  You may well find that there are a small number of cells in the battery pack which are responsible for the drop in capacity (they're in series, so the available capacity is essentially determined by the weakest cell in the pack).  It's not beyond the realms of a competent DIY job to swap out cells in the pack...it is a lot of work, but it is doable.

I've got caniOn. I haven't got weak cells - they're all approximately equally fucked. 

 

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14 hours ago, txe4 said:

Update.

 

Still got it. It still works. It's passed two MOTs  with no hassle. 

 

The battery is deteriorating, slowly but steadily, down to 52 miles estimated range on a full charge - which drops to 30 if the heater is turned on. 

 

The a/c compressor hasn't died...yet...and it will still rapid charge, but it's now very slow - falling to about 6kW at 50% - so not really viable. It gets load of use, several trips a day, out, back, onto charge, rinse & repeat.

 

Still does everything we need as a runabout. My inclination is to sell it - as it's still worth a tidy amount, and the changing EU emissions regs in 2020 will see a flood of cheap new EVs and PHEVs - but wife is absolutely determined that it's the best car she's ever had and we're keeping it.

Out of interest does that reduction in battery capacity correspond to a reduction in how much charge it will accept in the first place? I.e. you're not 'wasting' energy, it's the equivalent of you're fuel tank just getting smaller as opposed to your engine becoming worse on fuel.

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^ great question!

Also, how does range equate to time?  if wind resistance wasn't invented, could you travel for 2hrs at 30mph or 1 hr at 60mph given a 60mile range?  Or do you find longer slower journeys more taxing on the battery?  Do these have any regenerative doo hicky?

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26 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

ImiEV does have regen, indeed the regen is adjustable according to taste.

It does have regen, and given that it's RWD and so all from braking the rear wheels, it's surprisingly powerful.

 

It's adjustable in 2 ways:

The first little bit of brake pedal travel increases regen - so gently resting a foot on the brake gives slightly more regen (and also, usefully, puts the brake lights on...)

Also, on genuine Mitsubishi-branded imievs, the gear selector has an additional position after "D": "B", in which there is extra lift-off regen. On the Peugeot iOn and Citroen C-Zero branded cars, this isn't present - although AFAIK the functionality is there, and if you replace the gear selector plastic surround with the Mitsubishi part (or drill it out...) then you can add "B" mode.

 

45 minutes ago, willswitchengage said:

Out of interest does that reduction in battery capacity correspond to a reduction in how much charge it will accept in the first place? I.e. you're not 'wasting' energy, it's the equivalent of you're fuel tank just getting smaller as opposed to your engine becoming worse on fuel.

This is a very interesting and thoughtful question.

The TL;DR is that you mostly lose capacity but you do lose some efficiency.

The longer version is: that internal resistance of the battery increases as it ages. If you remember being tortured with equations in school physics lessons: the power lost (to heating) within the battery is equal to current squared, times resistance. This means that as the battery ages, it becomes less efficient under both charge and discharge, but this inefficiency is much worse *at higher currents*.  Therefore - there's not too much effect if you're bimbling around gently and charging at home on AC, but if you're hooning and rapid charging then there's a significant effect. If you want to drive fast, everything is against you - you're losing to electrical inefficiency proportional to the square of current, and to air resistance proportional the square of speed.

In some EVs you can see a restriction on available power as the battery ages - all owners of older Teslas are now intimately familiar with this issue, and LEAF owners see the top of the power meter "bubbles" disappear on cold mornings if they have tired batteries.

 

40 minutes ago, shedenvy said:

Also, how does range equate to time?  if wind resistance wasn't invented, could you travel for 2hrs at 30mph or 1 hr at 60mph given a 60mile range?  Or do you find longer slower journeys more taxing on the battery?  Do these have any regenerative doo hicky?

As per the above - driving fast is inefficient due to the physics of both air resistance and the battery.

But, the longer the car is switched on for, the longer you spend running the various auxiliaries - lights, coolant pumps, ECUs, brake pump, etc etc. In the case of the heater, which is ludicrously inefficient, this is really critical in the imiev - the heater will flatten the battery quickly and you have to think carefully about it if you're in a long traffic jam. A plug-in heated seat is about 30W (vs 6000W for the heater) - but it won't clear condensation from the windscreen. You can use just the aircon, no heat, on "recirculate" - but after a while, in cold weather, it will freeze up and stop drying the air. Also the passengers will protest quite vigorously about this arrangement if the weather is at all inclement. I live on a hill in Yorkshire, with obvious consequences for both clemency of weather and ferocity of passenger protest.

Heating & aircon aside, the other stuff isn't too bad, the most efficient speed will be in the 10-20mph range generally for EVs. 40mph isn't MASSIVELY worse than 20mph, but 60mph is MUCH worse than 40mph, and 80mph is terrible. 

You can save a lot of power by looking a long way ahead and anticipating. Regen is all well and good, but the most efficient thing is never to have accelerated in the first place.

 

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4 hours ago, willswitchengage said:

Out of interest does that reduction in battery capacity correspond to a reduction in how much charge it will accept in the first place? I.e. you're not 'wasting' energy, it's the equivalent of you're fuel tank just getting smaller as opposed to your engine becoming worse on fuel.

I wonder to what extent other ageing components reduce the “fuel efficiency “ so to speak. Binding brakes, poor wheel alignment, worn bearings for example. 

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Out of interest, is there much of an aftermarket for battery refurb? I am dimly aware of this outfit:

http://www.hybridbatterysolutions.co.uk/

Which although specialists* in hybrid batteries, may potentially be useful for full fat EV shite? Or am I totally ignorant (it won't be the first, or last time) on this sort of thing? I appreciate dealer battery refurb will be eye-wateringly expensive if even available, but my understanding* of EVs was that the charging and motor components were the expensive bits, relatively speaking, and the battery packs themselves were less expensive. Or am I massively simplifying a highly complex mixture of battery, charging and motor component balancing like a moron?

More importantly, if you swap the big wheels off the back and the smoll wheels off the front around will it drift better m8?

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17 hours ago, Stanky said:

Out of interest, is there much of an aftermarket for battery refurb? I am dimly aware of this outfit:

http://www.hybridbatterysolutions.co.uk/

Which although specialists* in hybrid batteries, may potentially be useful for full fat EV shite? Or am I totally ignorant (it won't be the first, or last time) on this sort of thing? I appreciate dealer battery refurb will be eye-wateringly expensive if even available, but my understanding* of EVs was that the charging and motor components were the expensive bits, relatively speaking, and the battery packs themselves were less expensive. Or am I massively simplifying a highly complex mixture of battery, charging and motor component balancing like a moron?

 

At the moment it's all fairly expensive, but the battery pack is the really expensive part. When you get in a £20k Zoe you're really sat in a £5k shitbox atop a £15k battery.

 

There's been a market for hybrid battery refurb for a few years, there are a lot of Prius on the roads and they do sometime suffer battery problems. Generally when EV packs fail there's a bad cell or two and swapping it out will sort you - but it's still a niche job and most mechanics are obviously terrified of it.

 

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More importantly, if you swap the big wheels off the back and the smoll wheels off the front around will it drift better m8?

The handling is already sufficiently entertaining, thanks. In fact I put it up the arse of some bird's disAstra last month - someone pulled out in front of her and she could stop a bit quicker than me.

Luckily both her car and mine are complete sheds so she wasn't bothered. Had to gently* adjust some plastic trim back in to place but all's well.

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  • 1 year later...

Update.

It's still shite.

It still works.

It FTP'd once for the wife in the summer. The "gear selector" cable, which runs from the "gear stick" in the cabin to the electric motor at the back, gets sticky. There's a switch which is meant to detect which gear (forward/backwards/neutral/park) is selected, and if it doesn't detect "park" it won't let you start up (or charge). It was completely filthy - I sprayed oil over it, worked the shifter backwards and forwards, and it sprung back in to life.
 

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  • 7 months later...

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.

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On 6/1/2018 at 9:52 AM, Datsuncog said:

 

I believe it can.

 

I'm sure he's never* tried it though.

 

Out of interest, the same guy drives a bright metallic green Megane 1 with the dashboard completely rebuilt to a fairly detailed replica of the time machine in the film. It's without doubt the only mid-range 90s Renault I know of to be fitted with a flux capacitor.

If Renault built flux capacitors…..

C35CFA4E-6061-4480-B5B2-E3E88B48B53D.png

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13 minutes ago, Kiltox said:

Is the E-Up the closest replacement? @twosmoke300 has one on lease, not sure how it’s going. 

Ugh, so...I wrote down all the non-enormous 4/5-door EVs on a piece of paper and looked at the measurements
E-up/Mii/Citigo, Soul, Honda E, etc (the Stellantis things - Corsa, Peugeot, are crap EV systems shoehorned into petrol designs and neither economical nor reliable)

The EUp was the only one that looked any good on paper but I went to the stealership and came away thinking "naaaah".
It's bigger than the imiev but has less space inside. It takes months and months to get one and the dealers were knobs.


Particularly, the imiev with seats down has a completely flat loadbed that will take a washing machine, or one of those massive rubble sacks builders merchants use, full of garden waste, and let you close the boot. The EUp - no doubt constrained by newer laws about crash safety etc - has a tiny postage-stamp-sized hole in comparison. The kids are getting a *bit* big for the imiev, but the EUp doesn't actually have any more space - and its longer range means you could, otherwise, actually do real journeys in it - except that in 2 more years time the kids' legs aren't going to fit in that space for a whole hour.

All the others are wider than the imiev, and a big part of the joy of it, is the ability to accelerate towards small gaps on country roads, when almost anything else other than a motorcycle would have to stop and reverse. 

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1 hour ago, Kiltox said:

i3? Stupid doors aside, it’s very practical for its size.  Unlikely to be as narrow though sadly. 

Yeah thought about it, but I read a lot of forums & EV-owner Facebook groups are there are too many "some component failed and it FTP'd and cost 3 grand to fix" stories.

Contrast, say, LEAF or MG EV groups which are pretty serene on the reliability of the vehicles and are all about range and charging-point rage, because nothing major really goes wrong with them.

Also, as you said, clown-car doors, and insurance cost is a bit more hefty, and I'm of an age that can't ever break the mental association between "BMW driver" and "dickhead", even if it's all about the 4 rings of success (kek) now for those people.

 

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2 minutes ago, garethj said:

Electric motorbike?

I want to move children and bring back carfuls of shit from Lidl.

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Another, exactly the same but less fucked?

Not ruled out. Sadly, not available brand new, which means actually paying tax on the money used to buy it. If I hate everything else, the logic kinda suggests this doesn't it...

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We test drove a Honda E and almost bought one.
Loved the car, loved the design, loved the tech, quite spacious inside for passengers. Went like a rocket, rear wheel drive and taxi like turning circle.

However awful boot and poor range, and due to dramatic change in circumstances this end did not purchase.
Still debate if we did the right thing as we have solar panels so could have run thing for free, but the occasional trip to Stoke could only really have been done with a charge mid trip.

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51 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Smart forfour EV?

I owned a Mitsubishi i (660cc, turbocharged, automatic) from 2007 until 2014, during which I did 83K trouble free miles. These were the basis for the I-miev and were almost identical inside, so I understand the favourable comments about interior space within a very compact exterior package.  Mine was suffering from corrosion coming through from the inside of panels on the bonnet and over both rear arches - which Mitsubishi refused to do anything about despite the car having a valid perforation warranty and all body inspections and servicing up to date by a main Mitsi dealer. After 83K miles the turbo and waste gate failed catastrophically and the repair was estimated to be more than the car's value. I released the vehicle for recycling - but someone in the trade bought it and it is still to this day limping on at 102K.

I test drove a Smart for Four rear engined car because I liked the engineering, but interior space was very poor compared with the 'i.'  If the electric one is basically the same inside, rear seat legroom is almost non-existent and the front accommodation also feels cramped compared to the i/I miev.

I have yet to see any car, electric or otherwise, which combines the superb packaging of the i miev.  Everything these days is bloated and heavy without offering much more interior space or practicality.  SUV style vehicles are pretty hopeless in cities and narrow country lanes.

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