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" It does no disservice to our 5-day loan of a Mitsubishi i-MiEV that the car arrived in a mini-transporter. True, Mitsubishi&amp;#039;s national headquarters are in Cypress, by Google Maps only 18.8 miles away. But the company wanted us to get the car with a full tank, and the i-MiEV&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;fuel tank&amp;quot; is a lithium-ion battery pack nestled beneath its passenger compartment. We&amp;#039;ve had a good amount of stick time with this tidy little city EV, dating back to July 2008 when I got to fool with one in Cypress on its way east to the New York Auto Show. We got numbers on a later version as part of our March 2009 &amp;quot;Eclectic Electrics&amp;quot; extravaganza: 0 to 60 mph in 11.9 seconds; the quarter mile in 18.7 sec at 73.7 mph; 59.7 mph through our slalom and 0.75g around our skidpad (sorry, Mitsubishi, about those front tires...). Most recently, and with rather more discretion, I drove an i-MiEV the 90 miles from San Francisco to Sacramento, albeit profiting from one of Eaton Power&amp;#039;s 30-minute quick charges at Vacaville in between.  This time around, Mitsubishi is doing nothing more elaborate than dropping off the car, showing us how to plug it in, and saying &amp;quot;See you Friday.&amp;quot; More details to follow during the week, but as background: The i-MiEV is the electric vehicle version of Mitsubishi&amp;#039;s i, its entry in Japan&amp;#039;s hotly contested kei (or minicar) market. The base gasoline version has a 659-cc 12-valve dohc 3-cylinder, and there&amp;#039;s even an intercooled turbo all-wheel-drive variant. What&amp;#039;s amazing about any kei car is its immensely efficient packaging. As I never tire of telling you, I&amp;#039;m bigger than the average bear\u2014yet I am decidedly less than a circus act driving the i-MiEV. In fact, I&amp;#039;ve even tried the back seat (though, I confess, I wouldn&amp;#039;t want to travel several hours back there). Indeed, no one travels several hours anywhere in an i-MiEV. Range in our kind of driving is conservatively rated at 50 to 80 miles; this, compared with its 160 km (almost 100 miles) of home-market range based on that country&amp;#039;s easy-peasy city cycle. We&amp;#039;ll find out how the i-MiEV fares in our hands\u2014and under our right foot\u2014during the next week. Tonight, wife Dottie and I are meeting friends for dinner. Their cars are a Toyota Prius and, lately, a Smart Cabriolet (that replaced a Porsche Boxster and, before that, a Miata). I&amp;#039;ll tell you tomorrow what they think of the i-MiEV. And, for that matter, what we think of it. (First claim: I think this will be my first EV night drive...) Related posts:  Driving the Mitsubishi i-MiEV: A One-night drive... in the Mitsubishi i-MiEV Driving the Mitsubishi i-MiEV: What Have We Learned From a Week with Mitsubishi&amp;#039;s i-MiEV? Driving the Mitsubishi i-MiEV: Mitsu i-MiEV flies quietly under the radar  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/a1312/driving-the-mitsubishi-i-miev-our-mitsubishi-i-miev-arrives-14429/>