Mitsubishi shock: ‘i’ will be our first electricar!

MITSUBISHI has reasserted its intention to become the first car company in Australia to offer an electric-powered vehicle.

“Absolutely!” declared Mitsubishi Motors Australia Limited president and CEO Robert McEniry when asked if the electric i-MiEV would beat its burgeoning number of potential competitors to market in Australia.

“(To be first) that is my intention.”

However, Mr McEniry stopped short of nominating a date, except to say that an announcement on the compact EV would be made for Australia sometime during 2009.

“Ultimately we are not talking about it right now – a bit like a duck on water... calm on top, a lot of work going on under the surface,” he said.

“There has been a lot of renewed (interest) happening at the Sydney motor show, which has been happening globally... talking green.

“We have actually looked the other way – instead of talking about ‘what may be’ we would like to talk at the right time about ‘what is’.

“We have the advantage of it being the only electric car on the road at the moment that is being (mass) produced.”

Mr McEniry was responding to Nissan’s claims at this month’s Australian International Motor Show in Sydney that it will beat all others with a small and relatively affordable electric car in 2012.

At the same Sydney show, GM Holden managing director Mark Reuss announced that the Chevrolet Volt was on track to also be released some time in the same year, although he declined to confirm precisely when.

“It (i-MiEV) goes into the first stage of volume production next year,” Mr McEniry said.

“That volume production is really for the Japanese market and selected customers such as government departments, and then in the following year (Mitsubishi Motors Corporation) will take it to volume production ‘Stage II’ – which opens it up to global markets.

“And it will be globally homologated,” he promised, adding that there was a lot of work going on with battery development in order to increase range and decrease size and mass.

“By the time it gets here it may have 'Generation-1.5' batteries.” Mr McEniry said that part of MMAL’s requirement for introducing electric vehicles such as the i-car is that the infrastructure is in place for plug-in models to draw upon cleaner, rather than wholly coal-based, electric energy.

“What we want to make sure of is, even though we may not be 100 per cent pure because of the way the (mains-electricity supplying) grids work, we don’t want to be caught up in actually being contradictory in what we are trying to achieve here,” he explained.

“And I don’t want to go outside hugging trees all day. We need to link in with a form of green energy... to get the offset. How that all ends up I don’t know, we haven’t yet found the final formula.

“We have to be honest with ourselves with the environmental issues... that doesn’t mean we may have to sacrifice what we are trying to do if (the electricity produced for the grid is not 100 per cent clean)... but I don’t want it at the other end of that continuum, where it is all fossil fuel generated,” Mr McEniry said.

As far as the regular, volume-production petrol-powered i-car is concerned, there are other obstacles that still need to be sorted.

“We would still like to get the i-car,” he said. “But there are real hurdles with the homologation requirements for that car to get it in. But we’re still working through that... and if we can work through it we will bring that car in as well.”

Among the issues the current i-car faces are the fitment of costly and complicated side-impact intrusion bars, as well as child anchorage points.

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