Haha. Nice. The benefits of a small car. Hahaha! I would have loved to see the reaction of that Prius driver! LOLOL! If it's more normal than the Smart, then that's a good thing. However, I will say that I see a lot more Smart cars on the roads today than any time previously. They seem to be becoming more acceptable amongst the general public (here in Southern California). That's good to know it will have no problems accelerating in traffic ... But why is this little car so heavy??? (2600lbs! My 2004 Corolla weights 2450lbs, is much larger, and has a heavy engine that this car does not have)
Well I could say the same thing about our 2000 Corolla LE which came in at 1,050kg (nearly 200lbs lighter than your Corolla and it's the top model). 130km/h is a tad slower than the smart, however.
They seem to fail to mention the 15-20 min Empty-80% charge time possible if you can find a CHAdeMO charging station... The picture of the charging plug they show is a CHAdeMO plug - not the standard J1772 plug for 120-240V charging. But overall a fairly positive article. The weight of the pack is probably the biggest culprit behind the heavy curb weight - the pack probably weighs around 450 lbs. Your typical aluminum 4 cyl gas engine probably weighs a third that.
People need to start realizing that this the reality of EVs and even PHVs with long EV ranges. They also need to understand the difference between necessary and unnecessary weight. Weight is bad to efficiency, but if you cut the weight and range of the battery, you can doom the model to commercial failure. Designers can take advantage of the necessary weight from the battery. Take the Tango, without the weight of low mounted batteries to lower its center of gravity, it would be undrivable. It needs the weight to stay stable.
I drove a Leaf last weekend. The iMIEV seems to "pull" off the line with a little more force than the Leaf. It's probably heavy because of crash standards that pretty much require the car to protect against a massive-SUV-driving-idiot.
Mitsubishi has the i-Miev going about 85 miles on a full charge. Fully charging the battery using a 220-volt should take 7 hours, and a 110-volt system should need about twice that.
