Innovative Automotive Technologies

To aid with yesterday's (unsuccessful) effort to keep the stringency of California's ZEV mandate, the Mitsubishi MiEV lithium-ion battery-powered car was brought into town. The battery technology is a significant improvement beyond lead-acid batteries: vehicle performance doesn't decay quite so readily with battery discharge, and the energy density is greater. This prototype vehicle apparently costs a cool million dollars (although in mass production it would be more like $15,000 to $20,000).

Introduction of electric vehicle (EV) technologies has depended to an inordinate degree on regulatory mandates from the California Air Resources Board:

Jay Friedland, legislative director for Plug In America, an electric-vehicle advocacy group, said the air board once again placed too much emphasis on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

"This thing is a gigantic shell game," he said.

Critics of hydrogen-powered cars point to the vehicles' durability problems and still-astronomical production costs, as well as to the need for building entirely new hydrogen-production and refueling systems.

Backers say costs will come down and infrastructure will get built, and note that hydrogen vehicles have the potential to mimic the long range and fast refueling of today's gasoline vehicles. Battery vehicles, by contrast, are slow to charge and have a somewhat more limited range. They're also expensive.

But they can be recharged from any electric outlet, and supporters say that even several-year-old vehicles cost less to operate than the most fuel-efficient hybrids on the market today.

In general, automotive history has shown that new technologies will be readily adopted, with or without regulatory mandates, if they offer some specific advantages to the purchaser. The lithium-ion battery technology addresses performance issues that deterred people from purchasing the earlier generation of EVs. In addition, this vehicle is larger than previous EVs. People who drive frequently in dense urban cores would be most-likely to benefit from EVs.

This prototype vehicle doesn't yet comply with American on-road safety regulations, and so would have to be upgraded before becoming available to the general public.

Here's a bit more info:

The i MiEV (Mitsubishi Innovative Electric Vehicle) is built around a 47 kW motor. Two variations on the battery pack give the i MiEV prototype a driving range of between 81 and 99 miles between charges, with an 81 mph top speed. Mitsubishi has been giving significant attention to its “i” concept for small, efficient cars. More ambitious plans for in-wheel electric motors, however, have been set aside in favor of the single motor design. Mitsubishi expects to put the i MiEV on the commercial market by 2010 with a starting price of $17,000.

[Update:] Here is an article regarding the i MiEV's appearance at the 2008 New York Auto Show.