Review Back in 2009, I took one of the first pre-production Mitsusbishi iMiEV’s in the UK for a spin. Spool forward to 2011 and you can now have the e-car with a Peugeot or Citroën badge on the nose. But there have been enough, albeit subtle, changes to warrant a another shufti.
Peugeot’s iOn: a familiar shape that looks good in black
Firstly, this isn’t just a case of badge-engineering. PSA Peugeot Citroën and Mitsubishi have been collaborating on various automotive projects since the late 1990s, and when both companies’ thoughts turned to e-cars some obvious synergies emerged. Read the rest of this entry »
Review If the key to making a good e-car is keeping the size and weight down then the Smart Fortwo – a fine example of what can be achieved with a clean sheet of paper, an open mind and no regard for such bourgeois eccentricities as rear seats or a boot – should make an ideal candidate for electrification.
Smart’s Fortwo ED: the ultimate urban runaround?
Before anyone gets too excited, I should come clean and clarify that you can’t actually buy a Smart ED at the moment. The cars currently rolling off the Hambach production line in France with Tesla-supplied battery packs are limited run demonstrators for use in field trials and for lease to select commercial customers. Read the rest of this entry »
Review While the name Prius hasn’t achieved the same degree of synonymity as Transit or Mini, it’s still the one nine out of ten motorists will think of when you say the word ‘hybrid’. You can thank Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio for that, and the fact that Toyota have sold 1.2 million of the things since the first one rolled off the production line back in 1997.
Toyota’s fourth-gen Prius: greenest yet
For the Prius’ fourth incarnation, Toyota has delivered a car that is entirely new. And so it needs to be because Honda is also now competing for hybrid market share with its equally clean-sheet-of-paper Insight – reviewed here.
We said all that needed saying about the physical similarities between the Insight and the Prius when we reviewed the former in August. Driving the Prius has only reinforced the similarities. A couple of casual observers even asked when we had changed the colour of our car.
Despite being marginally longer overall and in wheelbase than the Insight – 4.46/2.70m vs 4.40/2.56m – the Prius is only slightly more spacious in the rear. While boot space is also a little better, you still won’t be using it to shift wardrobes about. Sit up front and there’s very little in to choose between the two cars when it comes to space. Read the rest of this entry »
Review Much midnight oil was burnt at Register Hardware while deciding just when and with what we should begin our Leccy Tech car tests. Try as we might, we just couldn’t convince ourselves that battery powered quadbikes like the G-Wiz or Think City were the place to start. Nor could we rustle up much enthusiasm for third-party modifications like the Electric Car Corporation’s battery powered Citroën C1.
Mitsubishi’s iMiEV: a proper electric car, at last
So we decided to wait for a dyed-in-the-wool electric car from a major car maker, and that car is the iMiEV from Mitsubishi, a leccy city car that will go on sale in the UK in limited numbers at the end of the year. It’s made of good old-fashioned steel and won’t fold up like a wet cardboard box if it’s involved in an accident.
The iMiEV’s exterior is frankly something of a love or hate affair, though our test car was hardly flattered by all the advertising and information logos that Mitsubishi had plastered all over it. Of course, the basic shape, with its rather bulbous cabin and extremely short front and rear overhangs, has nothing to do with the specific needs of electric propulsion since it’s carried over from the petrol-driven Mitsubishi ‘i’ city car, a vehicle not available in the UK. Read the rest of this entry »
