iMiev for Christmas

Well, I may have to take it all back - it just might be that Mitsubishi can deliver me an iMiev in 2010!

Today I spoke with Mark Whyte of Mitsubishi Motors Australia (MMAL), about the MMAL lease program and about the iMiev roll-out in Australia. True to his word, shortly after getting off the phone an MMAL lease agreement arrived in my inbox. Now I just have to see if we can put together the legals to make all this come together.

You have to hand it to Mitsubishi - they have consistently been delivering on the detail of their undertakings in the production roll-out of EV's in Australia, and on the phone I can see why - Whyte is pragmatic and straight-forward about the iMiev, for example talking about issues of range in Australian conditions.

Under that professionalism you can hear how pleased he (and MMAL) is about the success of the iMiev program so far. All of the cars that MMAL have been able to persuade their parent company in Japan to ship to our shores have been snapped up, even tho' this number was considerably more - 110 units now - than they had originally been earmarked for.

Now it will be up to the reaction of the early-adopting corporates that have signed up to lease the iMiev, to see how the program goes in 2011. Electric vehicles require a radical rethink - and for traditional fleet owners having EV's on the lot is a whole new ball game.

What do we do with that petrol card now? How will drivers of the fleet-owned vehicles handle plugging in?

For my part having been writing about EV's since 2007, the chance to finally have one will be a pretty big deal, and I can't see any problems at all with getting along with the iMiev.

Watch this space and I'll keep you updated on this development!