The economic climate may be recovering, slowly for most, rapidly for some but it’s effects haven’t worn off the population.
In order to please the market which is getting an ever growing taste for electric vehicles but isn’t yet ready to let go of the price cuts, incentives and so on Mitsubishi have announced that they will be cutting the price of their i-Miev.
The Japanese at Mitsubishi are aiming to lower the price of their electric vehicles to $21,890 by 2012 and that would equate to a 30% cut in the current price of the i-Miev. This seems very interesting but is it just a headline that’s full of hot air?
Well, it shouldn’t be, there are two main factors behind Mitsubishi’s decision concerning the i-Miev and these are the batteries and the production capability. The Li batteries make up most of the car’s cost and their mass production is expected to lower the costs significantly. The other main reason behind this ambitious plan for the Mitsubishi i-Miev is the fact that the company will have a plant coming online in April of 2012, which will produce 70,000 units per year and thus contributing further to cutting battery costs to less than 1 million yen per vehicle, from 2.5 million yen. In addition to mass production of a battery, Mitsubishi says that it will also work with suppliers to reduce the number of components, thus making volume production more feasible.
