{"id":698,"date":"2009-02-24T14:00:47","date_gmt":"2009-02-24T14:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=698"},"modified":"2009-02-24T16:52:43","modified_gmt":"2009-02-24T16:52:43","slug":"i-miev-van-draws-closer-but-will-it-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/698","title":{"rendered":"i Miev Van Draws Closer &#8211; But Will It Pay?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A while ago, I wrote about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/403\" target=\"_self\">imminent release of the all-electric i Miev<\/a> (pronounced &#8220;i meeve&#8221;), due in the UK in 2010. UK motoring publications have now been allowed to test the electric i Miev in car format &#8211; here are a couple of examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fleetnews.co.uk\/RoadTests\/story\/Mitsubishi-i-MiEV\/388344415\" target=\"_blank\">Fleet news i Miev road test<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/motoring\/environment\/4400751\/Electric-cars-the-pick-of-the-next-generation.html\" target=\"_blank\">Telegraph i Miev road test<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/566\" target=\"_self\">mentioned <\/a>two further i Miev related possibilities:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autobloggreen.com\/2009\/01\/08\/mitsubishi-to-supply-the-miev-to-be-sold-as-citroen-and-peugeot\/\" target=\"_blank\">It may be made under licence in Europe by PSA and sold under the Peugeot and Citroen brands<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.autobloggreen.com\/2008\/11\/05\/mitsubishi-to-sell-van-version-of-i-miev\/\" target=\"_blank\">It will also be available as a van in the UK in 2011<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if volume production in Europe by the PSA group might bring down the i Miev&#8217;s estimated \u00a317-\u00a320,000 price tag (for the car version), blamed on the poor yen-sterling exchange rate (the i Miev&#8217;s made in Japan).<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also possible that for a van used exclusively in London, the extra cost of purchasing the i Miev might be cancelled out by having zero road tax, congestion charge or MOT costs and much lower fuel bills &#8211; Mitsubishi estimate that the i Miev will only cost 45p\/100 miles to run. I don&#8217;t have the figures but instinct says that the loss of a diesel bill might be enough to make the whole life costs roughly equal &#8211; although resale value could be a big unknown.<\/p>\n<p>Even in a best-case scenario, the i Miev still only looks useful to niche, city-only markets and drivers who don&#8217;t do more than 70-80 miles a day and can hookup their cars or vans to mains electricty every night.<\/p>\n<p>(Thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.simplemotoring.co.uk\/blog\/electric-hybrid-cars\/mitsubishi-i-miev-road-test\/\" target=\"_blank\">SimpleMotoring.co.uk<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.carhireplace.com\/news\/car-reviews\/electric-car-reviews-3-very-different-animals\/\" target=\"_blank\">CarHirePlace.com<\/a> for the road test links.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The i Miev electric van may be getting closer to UK reality, but will it pay for commercial operators to use it when it arrives? Only in certain circumstances, I think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[139],"tags":[219,475,621,176],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}