The Green Car Vision awards celebrate a car that's got its headlights pointed down the road of the future. Among this year's five finalists are two serial hybrids (Chevrolet Volt and Fisker Karma) two electric cars (MINI E and Mitsubishi i-MiEV), and one hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (Honda FCX Clarity). It seems like a pretty good breakdown of where things stand now, with serial, plug-in hybrids and electric cars duking it out in center court and a hydrogen vehicle thrown in to keep things honest. Three of those cars -- the MINI E, i-MiEV, and Clarity -- are on the roads right now, albeit in limited numbers, and the Fisker is due to hit the scene at the end of 2009, while the Volt bows in 2010. The winning car will be announced on February 3 at the Washington, D.C. Auto Show.
Somewhere, our pal Mike Bumbeck is smiling, because Mitsubishi has produced yet another vehicle worthy of its classic "Super Potential" slogan. No, there's no new-fangled Starion, unfortunately, but there is now an i MiEV police car. Mitsubishi has supplied one of the teensy EVs to the Kanagawa Prefecture police, who will test it through March of next year. Sure, it's not particularly intimidating, but it is (ahem) arrestingly cute. As mentioned at AutoblogGreen, we'd have had that battery pack power a set of on-board tasers, too. Talk about missed opportunities...
I'm the resident kei car obsessive here at Autoblog. That means I'm the guy who actually thinks, "That is awesome," when he reads the (Google translated) announcement of yet another Suzuki Wagon R variant. Hell, I did two posts on the one-off Hello Kitty Mitsubishi i. Keis are cool. So, you can imagine how happy I was to see that Mitsubishi brought along a small fleet of its i minicars to the New York Auto Show this year.
Mitsubishi's focus at the show was squarely on the the all-electric i MiEV, which goes on sale in Japan next year and will be tested in North America this fall. The gasoline-powered version was on hand, too, though. I drove the i MiEV for AutoblogGreen, and was a passenger in a black i Turbo. Head over to AutoblogGreen for driving impressions of the i MiEV, and note that many of the observations there apply to both the electric and gasoline-powered cars.
The i Turbo you see here is powered by a 660cc 3-cylinder that delivers around 64 horsepower. It's got around half the torque of the electric i MiEV and it's buzzier-sounding (obviously), but it felt just as well-suited to city driving in New York as its battery-powered counterpart. It can comfortably transport four adults and a bit of cargo, too. Try doing that in a smart.
Mitsubishi is monitoring public reaction to the cars this week, so if you go to the show and like what you see, make sure to let them know. Me? I'll happily take one in black -- with a DAMD kit for optimum not-exactly-badassedness.
It is exact, children, there are other exposures of car being raised in addition to Frankfurt. In October, everyone moves to Tokyo, where Mitsubishi will reveal an electric cut sportsman based on I MIEV which they currently control with companies of power in Japan, like a new concept of truck called the Concept-ZT. If we must guess, to name ZT envisages next Galant. If it is indeed the case, it is an improvement.
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