Being a new owner of a Mitsubishi Miev, I pay attention to the advertising the company does. I’ve seen virturally no advertising about this car, and don’t quite know why.
I think it is on par with the Volt and Leaf (but less expensive), yet the company does not advertise. I’m sure the dealerships aren’t happy about that either.
It has extensive testing in the past years - here, Japan, and Europe. It’s performance and reliability has been great.
Mitsubishi’s future in electrics looks good. There are other electrics on their drawing board, and they own a battery company in Japan. Seems like they believe in the future of electrics. Yet, no advertising.
When the RAV4-EV was introduced all of the RAV4-EV owners wondered the same thing. It was “lease only” for 6 years which helps explain that period, but when it went on sale to the public in 2002 I didn’t know about it for 8 months… and I was following it pretty closely!
It really seems like for the established car companies sales of their EVs is not important. They need to be able to say they offer them, and they need federal “points” for making them. But sales are simply not important.
In fact, the general consensus is that Toyota lost money on every RAV4-EV they sold. Limits the incentive to sell any, eh?
My opinion is they are still in their research phase and are using the limited number sold to provide ‘real world’ testing. They do not advertise because they really don’t want to sell large numbers of them.
David may be well be right. Also, I found out something interesting yesterday. I called a Mitsubishi dealer in Poway, CA with a question about the Miev. The service manager was astonished that I had a Miev. He said, “We haven’t received any yet” I replied that I’ve had one for almost two months, purchased at another dealer not far away. He really seemd astonished.
Apparently, only selected dealers in S. California have them. Possibly most Mitsubishi dealers in the U.S. still don’t. I guess it would be unwise to advertise them if the dealers don’t have them, and their service people aren’t trained in them.
Hi guys,
I work in a Mitsubishi dealership in the Chicagoland area. We are able to sell the i-MiEV, but not all dealers are. We started selling them in early March 2012.There is special equipment that the shop has to have and special training as well, in order to become an authorized dealer. We also wish there was a bigger push for advertising. There are a lot of people out looking at them but very few that are willing to make the jump to ALL electric. I really do think it is the way of the future, but I don’t own one either. :o
Months later, and still no advertising campaigns for the i-MiEV. Mitsubishi has announced the Outlander PHEV, and 2 more electric vehicle concepts that they will be releasing at the Geneva Auto Show. I guess they are serious about electric vehicles.
Perhaps they know the i-Miev is too small of a vehicle for the North American market in general? We’ll have to see if they push any of their upcoming EVs harder.
