Farewell to my MIEV

Mitsubishi i-MiEV Forum

Help Support Mitsubishi i-MiEV Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

BillThompsonMIEV

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 19, 2012
Messages
137
Location
San Antonio, Texas
I sold my MIEV SE with 4,500 miles to http://www.carmax.com here in San Antonio, TX. Sale price was $9,000. I purchased a 2015 Mitsubishi Mirage ES with the following accessories applied: window tint, cargo tray, rear bumper guard, and dealer applied (no choice) fabric and paint protection. MSRP with accessories was $17,980. Applicable discounts of factory rebate, factory military rebate, factory customer loyalty rebate, and dealer discount made price of car $12,134. Sales taxes, license/registration, title and document fees were $1,047. Total price was $13,181 minus the $9,000 sale of the MIEV made out the door price $4,181. Dealer was http://www.missionmitsubishi.com. Dealer (the owner) at first was willing to accept the MIEV as trade in, but his used car manager said there would be difficulty selling an electric car. Dealer asked me to sell car to Car Max at the already Car Max appraised price. The owner increased his discount to cover the sales tax benefit of trade in to him. Why sell? Value of MIEV's is falling rapidly and quite frankly I became tired of all the pre-planning of distance etc.
 
Sorry to hear that Bill - Your contributions here and your shared documentation of your use of the car will be missed. I always enjoyed looking over your statistics, but I often wondered why you only charged it when it was nearly empty - That practice must have often made you wonder if you had enough juice to get where you needed to go.
BillThompsonMIEV said:
Why sell? Value of MIEV's is falling rapidly and quite frankly I became tired of all the pre-planning of distance etc.
I would put that in the past tense - Their value has already 'fallen' to near rock bottom - I don't see it going much lower anytime soon. I think you probably absorbed just about all of the depreciation. Whoever winds up with your 4,500 mile car for less than $10K will be getting a real bargain. When they look back at their driving costs 8 or 10 years from now, it's going to be the best value they could ever imagine

I think if 'pre-planning your trips' because of the car's limited range was an issue for you, it might be that you just weren't meant to drive an EV. I can honestly say that in more than 2 1/2 years and about 25K miles, neither the wife of I have ever had that concern, despite the fact that we rarely ever fully recharge the car. They say that 95% of most trips made in most cars can be done in 30 miles or so and I think for us, that number is probably even lower - Our iMiEV quickly became the vehicle of choice and we have trouble keeping the battery charged on our gasoline car

Good luck with your new Mitsu - It sounds like you got a pretty good deal

Don
 
Hummmm... sounds like I could get a good deal on a Miev from CarMax. I was just mentioning to my wife that during our almost three years of owning a Miev, we needed a gas car about 1% of that time. We're contemplating getting a second Miev to replace our old stand-by gasser. If we needed a gasser in the future for a trip, we could just rent one for a day or two or use Zipcar. Because we are retired, we drive almost exclusively around town. Guess it all depends on our curcumstances. I stopped keeping track of the amount of gas we have saved.
 
CarMax refused to haggle on one I was interested in that they were selling in SoCal - the person giving me the information was clueless about the car and very snooty. When it turned out the car was from Arizona, I lost interest. Bill Thompson's iMiEV is such low mileage the battery must be in excellent shape and I'm pretty sure he took reasonable care of it. BTW, I just bought a second i-MiEV, an SE Premium, for under $10K (details forthcoming).
 
Joe, congratulations on your new purchase! She's a beauty.

Question for you...I am looking at acquiring an used MiEV from a distant dealer. What advice can you give me re what to look for? I'm guessing that asking the dealer the condition and/or range of the MiEV is probably beyond the scope of the dealer, so how can you be sure what you are getting is indeed a good deal? I'm particularly concern about the condition of the battery since--as far as I know--we do not have a replacement battery quote from Mitsubishi unlike in the Nissan Leaf's battery replacement program. Would you take a chance from purchasing a low-mileage MiEV from a hot place like in Texas? Florida? Any advice will be most appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Dave
 
micmel2 said:
as far as I know--we do not have a replacement battery quote from Mitsubishi unlike in the Nissan Leaf's battery replacement program.
Actually, from the Bad cell and Reduced Range thread:

Cost of new pack is $14,143 all cnd $ value at 0.86 usd. Cost with 2 plug floor, 2 clips eng. room cover, 2 nuts RR susp coil spring, 4 flat washer, labor, $17300. But they gave me a credit of $17300.(!)
In USD, that would be $12,226.50 for a new pack, and $14,954.73 with labor. That's $764.16 per kWh. I don't think you can buy the battery, though, not without buying the rest of the car ;) .
 
Thanks, I remember reading about that thread. Such a high replacement battery cost is very uncompetitive against the Nissan Leaf's $5500 quote for a new pack--and that is with a 24 kwh pack vs. our 16 kwh. I was hoping that Mitsubishi would match the price with something more competitive.
 
Back
Top