Used Mitsubishi i-MiEV Evolution 2014-2015 review

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Mitsubishi's hillclimb special, the i-MiEV Evolution promises a new future for a performance icon

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Designing a competition car, like this Mitsubishi i-MiEV Evolution, to perform at more than 10,000ft must keep even the smartest boffins in motorsport awake at night. Altitude can do punitive, even catastrophic, things to a vehicle.

Thinner air saps power from a combustion engine, puts more strain on cooling systems and requires bigger wings to generate downforce. As you climb, the car underneath you can change drastically.

Although it has supplied cars for customer entries, Mitsubishi itself had never entered a factory team in the event until 2012
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

So, what might start off as a world-class competition car at the bottom of the hill can rapidly become a sluggish, uncooperative vehicle as you near the peak - quickly abolishing any thoughts or dreams of setting a fast time.

There aren’t many places in the world where you can engage in motorsport at that kind of altitude – but you’ll have heard of one. The 12.42-mile Pikes Peak hillclimb, Colorado’s Race to the Clouds, starts beyond 9000ft and ends up, 156 corners later, at 14,110ft.

The finish line for this incredible time trial is three times as high as the summit of Ben Nevis, and to be the quickest to it, you need a very special car indeed.

You need a car like the the Mitsubishi i-MiEV Evolution. It was fast enough to finish second in class and eighth overall (out of 128 finishers) in 2012’s Pikes Peak. And it’s powered not by pistons but innovation, devotion and electricity.

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DESIGN & STYLING

iMiEV Evolution suspension set-up

If you want to make a racing car immune to altitude sickness, electric motors – which rely on air for cooling only – are the perfect place to start.

Mitsubishi Motors started with three of them, all mechanically identical to the one you’ll find in the production i-MiEV EV. One mounts in the nose, driving the front wheels, while the other two are squeezed into the space behind the cabin and drive the rears.

Colour, trim and wheel choices are very limited. For touring use, you might want to develop your own Perspex windscreen and hand-operated wiper
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

Given a software refresh from their conservative production tune, each one spins to a maximum 11,000rpm and produces a peak 107bhp and 148lb ft of torque. They drive through reduction gearing of approximately 7:1.

The layout gives the i-MiEV Evo a default one-third/two-thirds torque split between the front and rear axles, which MMC considers ideal for a racing all-wheel-driver. But the rear motors are connected in parallel and drive a conventional mechanical limited-slip diff. MMC engineers admit that an independent motor for each rear wheel would have brought big benefits on asymmetrical torque vectoring, but they simply didn’t have time to develop such a system. Not for the car’s debut season, at any rate.

The power for those motors comes, via the same high-voltage power management inverters used on the standard i-MiEV, from 96 pairs of lithium ion battery cells housed on either side of the cockpit, in overgrown side pods, which provide 35kWh of stored direct current.

They also account for a third of the weight of the entire car, so housing them inside the wheelbase, low to the ground, gives the i-MiEV Evolution a very low centre of gravity and a perfect 50/50 weight distribution.

The body of the car is a high-strength steel spaceframe – with a roof but no windows – on which panels of carbonfibre-reinforced plastic are fixed. Suspension is by double wishbones at both ends and consists of fully adjustable coil-overs.

Mitsubishi wouldn’t permit us to weigh the i-MiEV Evo. But the scrutineering form for the Pikes Peak records a figure, complete with driver Hiroshi Masuoka – who must account for little more than 60kg – of 1400kg exactly. Not as light as it looks, then. But considering the content, not a figure to be sniffed at, either.

INTERIOR

Mitsubishi iMiEV Evolution interior

Autocar’s timing gear pretty well doubled the complexity of the i-MiEV Evolution’s functional cockpit. There’s a racing bucket seat, a fire extinguisher, two pedals, a handbrake and a steering wheel. And besides an instrument binnacle from a production i-MiEV, there’s little else.

Getting in is one of those processes that spry Japanese men make look deceptively easy, like eating a whole steak and rice pudding with chopsticks. For the heroically proportioned, it’s tricky. A step helps. As does a five-man support crew.

The cabin’s a strangely relaxing place, once you’re over the trauma of getting in
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

There is no door, but you can pick either side to start from, before lowering a leg on to the seat, bracing yourself against the spaceframe, hitching the other leg over and then threading your torso sideways and down.

The detachable steering wheel makes this a little easier, but only in as much as The Times crossword is made easier by possession of a pen. Once in, you realise how low the solitary seat is, and how high the scuttle (which doubles as a spoiler to compensate for the lack of windscreen). Barring the highest extremities of the front wheel arches, you can’t see any point of the front of the car.

Legroom is modest – particularly for a 6ft 4in tester. Padded knee rests are provided to keep you comfy when pulling high lateral forces through corners. 

Want a boot? Of course you don’t. You’ll be more grateful for MMC’s traditional hand-painted Japanese luck charm dangling behind the driver’s seat.

The ignition is engaged via an old-fashioned key and starter button, the Mitsubishi's transmission via a rotary knob.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

Mitsubishi iMiEV Evo rear quarter

We don’t quote 0-10mph acceleration times much. There’s little point when most ordinary road cars do it within a couple of tenths of one whole second. The i-MiEV Evolution does it in 0.5sec, pulling a peak 0.85g. An Ariel Atom V8, complete with launch control, is no faster at that. A Bugatti Veyron Supersport is a tenth slower.

That gives you a flavour of the sheer brutality bludgeoned out when this car’s right-hand pedal is flattened from a stationary start. What does 443lb ft feel like when it’s available the instant the driving wheels start to turn on their hubs? Cruel. It’s the kind of power delivery you should prepare for with a non-aqueous and particularly spongy breakfast. 

Its high-speed performance is a limiting factor only down the straight of the Okazaki circuit
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

But after launch it becomes seamlessly smooth and perfectly linear. It hits 50mph in 2.9sec and 60mph in 3.8sec, so it’s as quick as most supercars off the mark, as well as the last Evo FQ-400.

By that point, however, the electric motors’ power and torque outputs are beginning to tail off. Which is why getting from 60mph to 100mph takes another 8.1sec. Top speed, limited by the redline of the motors, is 115mph. 

Flying past in full cry, the i-MiEV Evolution blends wind rustle, road roar and screaming motors like nothing you’ve ever heard. It taps into frequencies that could probably subdue an angry Rottweiler at 500 paces. Beyond 50mph, from the driver’s seat, the wind howls hard enough around your helmet to totally drown out that turbine symphony.

Stopping is something the car does exceptionally well, even without anti-lock brakes. The iron-hard pedal inspires absolute confidence once you’re used to the effort that it can soak up, and you can bring the car to rest from 70mph in less than 40 metres. That’s a 20 percent shorter distance than in most road cars.

RIDE & HANDLING

Mitsubishi iMiEV Evo cornering

The track at Mitsubishi Motors’ Okazaki factory doesn’t have many bumps. It has everything else: jumps, compressions, hairpins, six-inch-high kerbs and some immaculate topiary. But not many bumps. So we can’t tell you how smoothly the i-MiEV Evo might ride on a chilly Tuesday evening commute. Trust us: considering the tortuous entry and exit routine alone, you’d only take it to the office once.

But it’d be a memorable journey. Assuming you had the commitment, you could pull a consistent 1.3g of lateral load on your favourite corner – pure grip of a magnitude that eludes 99.9 percent of road cars. A Ferrari 458, a Porsche 911 GT3 RS 4.0 or a lightweight track special could equal it. They’d struggle to beat it.

Mitsubishi’s narrow, technical Okazaki circuit brings out the best in the i-MiEV Evo, which stops hard and picks up quickly from low speeds
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

You have to adjust to the super-sharp throttle response before you can get it to go really fast. Rushing on to the power on your way to the exit of a tight bend only invites understeer-related disaster; it’s that easy to ask the contact patches to do too much. 

So you ease all that torque in gradually, as you straighten out the steering, and the i-MiEV Evolution comes to you. And then it comes under your spell by another degree, as your entry speeds creep up and the tyres warm, offering you unexpectedly tame adjustability of attitude as you lift off the throttle on your way towards an apex, as well as neutrality on the power on the way out.

Pitch and roll are breathtakingly well controlled, the body resolutely flat even when you can’t hold your head upright through a fast bend. And the steering wheel is light but so accurate, ready to communicate all the time. It’s an electric power steering set-up, there to mitigate bump steer and dial out torque steer as much as anything, and makes the car surprisingly manageable. 

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

Mitsubishi iMiEV Evolution

There will only ever be one i-MiEV Evolution. When its competition career is concluded, it’ll probably find a home in the museum metres from the track where we tested it, beside Gilles Panizzi’s 2005 Lancer Evo WRC car and Pentti Airikkala’s 1982 Lancer Turbo.

You could offer millions and the men from MMC would just smile politely and shake their heads. It's not for sale.

For Bluetooth connectivity, you’ll need an aftermarket solution
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

We usually praise electric cars for their lack of appetite for fuel, and we’ll do the same here. But don’t think this would be a cheap car to run.

Everywhere it goes, there follows an 18-wheel articulated quick-charging station and a team of enthusiastic engineers, whose consumption of hot saki and salmon skin rolls will more than offset the saving in Sunoco.

Handily, though, the selection of stock i-MiEV parts that constitute the car’s powertrain should make it a bit easier to service and repair than your average one-off experimental high-performance EV.

The typical concerns about range will no doubt put many buyers off however, the i-MiEV's praticality issues even more so.

VERDICT

4.5 star Mitsubishi iMiEV Evolution

The tradition for Autocar road tests like this to end with a five-star verdict. This one doesn’t – because there is still room for ‘evolution’ in this i-MiEV.

It didn’t win the event it was designed for. But next year, with a more practised driver and a few mechanical updates, it could. We’d love to see it happen and are withholding the last half star as a motivator.

A proper zero-emissions rocketship, and father of the next Lancer Evo. Mind-bending
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

Even if it does become a winner, though, the i-MiEV’s real legacy could be bigger still. The official line is that this car is an accelerated testbed for the components you’ll find in the current i-MiEV and in Mitsubishi’s new breed of plug-in hybrids.

Mitsubishi i-MiEV 2011-2015 news

Mitsubishi plans Pikes Peak return with electric racer
Mitsubishi plans Pikes Peak return with electric racer
London Congestion Charge-free cars
London Congestion Charge-free cars
Live from Pikes Peak 2013: "Loeb is unbeatable"
Live from Pikes Peak 2013: "Loeb is unbeatable"
Mitsubishi’s Pikes Peak EV in detail
Mitsubishi’s Pikes Peak EV in detail

What MMC is not saying is that the next Lancer Evo is highly likely to be a plug-in hybrid and equally likely to benefit directly from work done on the i-MiEV Evolution.

This isn’t just a race car, then; it’s cause for hope that Mitsubishi’s rally-bred performance saloon icon can have a sustainable – and seriously fast and exciting – future.

So there you have it, Evo fans: be careful what you eat for breakfast.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.