Mitsubishi announced today that it will unveil a new electric vehicle concept at the Tokyo Motor Show, which starts on October 29. The new vehicle is called the eX concept and the company hopes to bring it to market in 2020.
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Nissan Motor and Mitsubishi Motors will work together to develop a minicar-based electric vehicle, aiming to release a new model in fiscal 2016 at the lowest price among major automakers. The carmakers have set up a 50-50 joint venture to pursue development. Nissan, which released the Leaf electric car in 2010, is the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicles, with global sales of at least 124,000 units. Mitsubishi has a track record in this area as well, including the minicar-based i-MiEV released in 2009. They plan to co-produce the new car and work together to procure such key components as lithium-ion batteries. The i-MiEV is the cheapest electric passenger car on the Japanese market, starting at 2.52 million yen ($24,300). When government subsidies of up to 740,000 yen are included, it can be purchased for as little as 1.78 million yen.
This will be interesting if they can build a car as good as a Leaf for as little or less than a i-MiEV. If they can do this, the math is almost unstoppable especially a gas prices rise.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fcMJf0tDRY]
A nice option for a truly impressive little EV car. However 20 minutes for every 80 miles of drive time doesn’t really let you take long trips (vs 20 minutes for 170 miles on the Tesla Model S.
It would also have been nice if Chevy was compatible with Nissan/Toyota/Mitsubishi’s CHAdeMO Fast DC chargers so the companies could blanket more the the country with compatible chargers.
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