Mitsubishi i and iMiEV coming to Canada

Canada will be seeing the Mitsubishi "i" and iMiEV cars in the next two years.  According to a Mitsubishi representative at the 2010 Calgary Auto Show, Mitsubishi will not only be bringing the iMiEV full electric car to Canada, but the i sub-compact as well.

The iMiEV is said to be available in 2012 and the i may precede its arrival.  In Japan the i car is available in Fwd and 4wd, in Canada we should expect just the Fwd car.
Power in the JDM i comes from an Aluminum 12 valve turbo 3-cylinder engine with MIVEC, routed through a 4-spd transmission, that is placed just ahead of the rear axle.  This rear-midship  placement allows vastly more interior space in the cabin.  Output is only 660cc's, so it fits in the Kei category of Japanese ultra compacts.  I think Mitsubishi will end up putting in a slightly larger power unit for the Canadian market, around 1.4-1.6L output and 100-115 hp.

 Filling out the front wheel wells are 145/65R15 and in the rear are 175/55R15, it's nice to see 15" wheels on a car of this size.  Rear seats are also 50:50 split folding.

In Japan they also have navigation and other techy options such as AWD, Automatic Climate Control, key-less entry, its doubtful we will see many of these here to keep costs low. 

Japanese are offered the car for around $14,400 if you take a straight yen
=CAD conversion for the base car.  Expect around that or perhaps $1000 less than that when it comes to our shores in mid 2010.

The iMiEV is expected in 2012 after cold weather testing and the City of Vancouver have evaluated the car and given feedback to Mitsubishi.  When asked about a price for the iMiEV he said it could be around 40k, which is going to be quite a barrier to entry.  The Nissan Leaf EV is said to be in the late 20's USD.  So we'll have to wait to see how much the latest EV will cost Canadians when it plugs-in here.

Hopefully battery technology will advance enough in the next couple of years to make EV's an affordable choice.