What became of the purple i-MiEV?

After I had my fun in the tiny Mitsubishi i-MiEV, I passed the car down to my other half who would drive the car each day to work, to family, and home. The daily round-trip was 20 miles. Charging would be needed every other day. Since we shared one charger at home, I would have to plan my charging for the days he would not need to charge. Because I could easily go four days without charging my BMW i3, this was not usually a problem. On occasion, I would plug in the i-MiEV at 9:00pm. It would finish by 2:00am when he was leaving for work. I’d have him plug in my car as he unplugged his car and I’d have a full charge by 7:00am.

Just as had happened with me, the characteristics of the i-MiEV motivated my partner to opt for driving surface streets rather than the freeways. The i-MiEV was based on the Japanese Kei-car requirements, which limits horsepower to just 63 ponies. Around town, that much power is more than ample, but pulling onto the freeway was a real task for the little car. As I had noticed before, he found driving on the streets seemed more relaxing than taking the freeway. On the freeway, everything is rushed, and you sense this as you drive. On streets, you’re traveling slower and notice more details of your surroundings. Plus, the instant torque means you have an advantage at each traffic signal to leap ahead of the other cars.

Together we managed to accumulate nearly 80,000 miles in the i-MiEV. When the time came, I sold the car to a family in Santa Cruz. They already had an early electric Fiat 500e and were hoping to get a four-door EV to accommodate their teen-aged kids better. Towards the end of our i-MiEV’s journey, the car wouldn’t charge. I tried at a ChargePoint charger to determine whether it was my home charger at fault (it wasn’t). So, I took the car to the local dealership. They needed the help of a remote diagnostic tool and the engineering team in Japan to isolate the problem. Six months (and two service managers) later, I received a call that the car was now repaired and ready to take home. I was dreading the repair bill, but Mitsubishi covered the cost of the repair. It was the happiest possible ending to the longest lasting repair that I have ever experienced. I sold the car just a few months later and used the new charging controller as a selling point.